P&CE Discussion of Tolkien, LOTR, Silmarillion, and Amazon’s Expensive Commercial Attempt at Fanfic

I'm almost finished reading this....



Definitely discussion about how important and expensive horses were. But at least around this age (Marshall served primarily under Henry II and then Richard) a knight usually had two horses max, unless he was ridiculously wealthy. Most weren't.

 

LOL, well, the fact that Asbridge does get into the weeds a bit on how expensive it was to be a knight wasn't meant to be a criticism (at least not akin to your tedious DM from high school...). It's actually a really good book---quite interesting. As were his two books about the Crusades. I'd highly recommend them.

As an aside, I'll be in London next week, and will make a point to go to Temple Church to see Marshall's tomb.

 

LOL - we were the opposite

Like when you got a horde of 1m GP by defeating end boss dragon, the DM would typically assume you just assembled a mule train to move the loot

 

Interesting. IIRC elsewhere they said there should be a wagon train for both the rohan army and the mordor army - so i guess that would mean the Rohan riders could just have 2 horses but all the kit and food etc would have to be moved up by wagon train

 

The same blog has extensive posts about how GOT battles are really badly written - especially the dothraki

 

Probably a big contributing factor in the difference is that Tolkien actually saw combat and was on the front lines at the Somme in the summer of 1916.

 

I don't think the plan was to give the ring to an Eagle - instead, you ask the Eagles to fly a small group (a hobbit or two, and maybe a wizard) to Mount Doom without telling them why.

 

The Nine had just been washed away by a flood (presuming that this discussion is taking place at the council of Elrond in Rivendell). It would be some months before they were back in Mordor ready to ride their flying beasts. And I don't think there was like a magic wall around Mordor - an Eagle flying over the mountains would certainly get the attention of the Eye, but what can the Eye do about it, blink real hard? Eagle gets in and out before any ground forces sent by Sauron can react. The other question is if Mount Doom was guarded. Frodo and Sam were only able to walk there unmolested because all the troops got called to the north gate when Aragorn came with the remains of the forces of the West after the battle of Minas Tirith. If there was a platoon of orcs on Mount Doom guard duty, that would be a pretty quick end to the story of the Eagles dropping hobbits off there.

It's also likely the Eagles say no if Gandalf asks. "You want us to fly these pudgy little guys to Mount Doom? You're nuts. Have fun storming the castle."

OK, this is a better point. Boromir never bore the Ring but he was tempted by it.

 

i mean the whole quest aspect doesn’t stand up too much scrutiny in the first place.

i felt especially the idea of the eye being distracted was a bit hamfisted and the movie highlighted that.

 

even if the 9 were back on deck i don’t get the impression they were like the luftwaffe ready to scramble against a squadron of eagles.

it’s hard to see how the eagle wouldn’t be at mt doom before sauron would have warning and could react. even if spies saw the eagles in bound they have no way to warn barad dur faster than eagles can fly

also i didn’t get the feeling the eye is a literal thing that can see every enemy at a distance. my impression it was more supernatural and an evil presence.

 

to give tolkien his credit he didn’t use plot armour, macguffins etc often but the eagles probably were a bit of a plot hole at the end.

 

it’s really obvious when you play MERP and see all the character stats written down why tolkien had to find plot devices to sideline powerful good guys. if they had all got together they’d be way too powerful.

 

but the crebain can’t fly faster than the eagles to warn anyone.