Thread by @CptHollingworth

All stories end, even if we want them to go on forever. In fact, The War of the Ring has two literary endings...

But what comes after that last page has turned, and with tears in our eyes we put our tales away.

It's #TolkienFriday, and we're looking at what happens next.

Those two endings? In the greater scale of the story, this is the last line of The Silmarillion:

"...and an end was come for the Eldar of story and of song."

When they take ship for Valinor, it is very much the end not just of an age, but a whole history.

In The Return of the King though, the story is much more personal, and the journey ends not with the Elves, or with Frodo, but with this:

"And Rose drew him in, and set him in his chair, and put little Elanor upon his lap.

He drew a deep breath. ‘Well, I’m back,’ he said."

But there are endings, and then there's Tolkien, who wrote WAY THE FUCK more than could ever be published within the frame of those books.

Until Chris Tolkien, his son, came along, and published 16 VOLUMES OF ACADEMIA on the creation of Middle Earth.

Easy there tiger!

But that's mostly historiography, and a list of very silly names for Frodo before he was called Frodo.

One chapter of Volume 4 does touch on what was to be the sequel to LotR, however. Tolkien wrote a whole 13 pages though, and you know what stopped him?

It depressed the FUCK out of even him.

"I found that even so early there was an outcrop of revolutionary plots, about a centre of secret Satanistic religion; while Gondorian boys were playing at being Orcs and going around doing damage..."

"... I could have written a 'thriller' about the plot and its discovery and overthrow — but it would have been just that. Not worth doing."

So fuck that noise, if it's not good enough for him, it's not good enough for me, and holy shit is that a lesson for any creative out there

But through the Appendices and other sources we've a good idea of what happens in the couple of hundred years after the War of the Ring.

And look, it's not 'fun', per se, because EVERYONE FUCKING DIES.

Except for one character.

The Fourth Age kicks off with what can only be called a massive population explosion in The Shire. Everyone is having kids like kids are about to be outlawed.

Not only does Sam have 13 FUCKING children, but even Merry and Pippin get married and have kids.

Sam, now the master of Bag End, is not only fertile as heck, but he also becomes a big man in the Shire.

He's elected to 7 consecutive terms as mayor, and no doubt continues to oversee the regrowing of his prized home after the despoils of Saruman.

Because FUCK YOU SARUMAN.

Merry becomes the Master of Buckland (to the Shire's south), and Peregrin the 32nd Thain of The Shire itself.

They both keep growing, thanks to certain excesses of consumption away south, and Merry even outstrip the legendary Bullroarer Took himself, over 4'5".

YUGE.

(Bullroarer Took, if you don't know, is the inventor of golf)

Now, while the Hobbits are being all fecund and wholesome, Aragorn - now King Ellssar - is not sleeping on his ruggedly handsome laurels.

He's kinda sorta REBUILDING THE KINGDOM OF OLD!

It is very heroic.

He not only restores the Kingdom of Arnor, but he spends some time in the north himself.

And while there, with his wife, Arwen Undomiel, Sam and Rose's firstborn, Elanor the Fair became a maid to the Queen herself.

She even lives in Gondor for a year, with her parents.

But the Hobbits are fair from cornering the market on settling down and having kids.

Faramir and Eowyn have children. So to does Eomer, King of the Mark, and this is just epic.

He meets and falls in love with the daughter of Imrahil, Prince of Dol Amroth - Lothiriel.

Legolas himself noted that the blood of the Eldar still ran strong in the people of Dol Amroth, and now that line becomes a part of Rohan.

I'm kinda happy for the big lug.

Eomer swears eternal friendship with Gondor, and once Arnor is secured, he and Aragorn basically go off to be WARBUDDIES.

They retake South Gondor, Rhovanion, and beat the snot out of the Corsairs of Umbar. They beat the Haradrim, and Aragorn even takes Dale under his protection

Eomer is known as Eomer Éadig - the Blessed.

Through all of this Faramir and Eowyn have been restoring the garden realm of Ithilien, of which he is Steward.

He has a bit of help - Legolas sets up digs there, with many folk from Mirkwood.

Not to be outdone, Gimli sets to his now life's work in the Glittering Caves behind Helm's Deep, revealing there all the glories that he and Legolas had first scene during the siege.

But they both find time to help in the restoration of Minas Tirith.

The early Fourth Age is basically all your favourite people being awesome as heck and creating beauty and splendour and security and - like the story it follows - I never want it to end.

All stories end.

WHOSE FUCKING IDEA WAS THIS!??

Samwise has kids, grandkids, and probably great-grandkids. A bit over ten years after the birth of Aragorn and Arwen's son, Eldarion, Sam quietly gives the Red Book of Westmarch (which is all the books we have now) to Elanor, and rides for the Havens, and then Valinor.

Before they both die - as they must - Sam sees Frodo one last time.

Merry and Pippin, knowing that their time must come, still feel allegiance to their far away second homes, so they both travel south, to live in Rohan and Gondor.

The same year, aged 93, King Eomer the Blessed dies, and is laid to rest beneath a mound crowned with Simbelmynë.

Merry and Pippin, too, pass away, a year after Eomer. Faramir and Eowyn, that all die.

Their heirs die.

Aragorn and Gimli and Legolas are the last of the Fellowsip. But the lands of Middle Earth know peace unheard of in previous ages.

But all stories end.

In the 122nd year of the Fourth Age Aragorn knows his days are numbered, and he has bitter words with Arwen.

She wants him to live a while yet. He wants to make peace with his mortality, and embrace that gift.

"In sorrow we must go, but not in despair. Behold! we are not bound for ever to the circles of the world, and beyond them is more than memory, Farewell!" he says to her.

"Estel!" she cries.

But Aragorn is gone.

And I simply cannot do justice to the words of Tolkien here.

"Then a great beauty was revealed in him, so that all who after came there looked on him in wonder; for they saw that the grace of his youth, and the valour of his manhood..."

"... , and the wisdom and majesty of his age were blended together. And long there he lay, an image of the splendour of the Kings of Men in glory undimmed before the breaking of the world."

Note: This scene in the movies FUCKING BREAKS ME.

HE'S STILL WEARING BOROMIR'S BRACES WHAT THE HECK

And as if that's not enough, Merry and Pippin are laid in state beside him, and entombed together on the Rath Dinen.

But Arwen's heart is broken, and as she said to Aragorn in those last days, "There is now no ship that can bear me West."

She chose the doom of Luthien Tinuviel ages before her. She travels to Lorien, though it is a shadow of its former self.

She goes to the hill of Cerin Amroth, where her fate with Aragorn was first entwine, and she lays herself down among the flowering Niphredil and Elanor, and she dies.

Lost forever to her people.

WELL FUCK THIS, says Legolas.

Legolas builds a ship in Ithilien, and he sails it down the mighty Anduin.

He takes a very old Gimli with him - the last of the Fellowship of the Ring - and he sails into the bay, and into the sea, and across the ocean, and the ocean drops away, and he takes the Straight Road.

To Valinor.

But... not all stories end.

We know these things because 50 years after Arwen's death, the Red Book of Westmarch is first copied. And it is copied again, and again. It is translated from language to language, from Quenyan into Westron...

And then, by an Oxford Professor into English, when all the tales it contained are so distant as to be less than memory.

The Downfall of Numenor suggests there is one more great battle to come, which will see Illuvatar's song sung again, and in that we may all have a part.

I find that comforting - that no matter how dark our days may get, it can only reveal greater beauty.

And when all stories do end... None can say what lies beyond.

FIN.

Only a bit of ugly-crying and I think I got away with it.