Cruelty or Consequence?

Well, I never thought I’d end up writing about this, but I’ve seen way too many people drawing the wrong conclusions. Not necesarily out of stupidity or delusion, but way too many people want to put all blame of the Fall of Númenor on Pharazôn and act like sinking the rest of the island was a dick move. This is a wrong take, so let’s talk about it.

Before you come at me, I have the Silmarillion and have read the Akallabeth, or Downfall of Númenor, several times, and neither of those times has it translated as “Númenor was collateral damage” or “Númenor shouldn’t have been sunk”. Númenor’s fall was triggered by Pharazôn’s actions, yes, but that was hardly the only reason for it happening. The reason for the island sinking into the sea was centuries of corruption coming to a tipping point.

As we read in the Akallabeth, over time, Númenor grew jealous of the elves. Though they were descended in part from elves, had long lives, and did not succumb to illness, they did not have eternal life, nor were they permitted to enter Valinor. For a time, they were content with this setup, but as time went on, they grew afraid of death and jealous of the Eldar. This caused them to slowly abandon the ways of the elves. And it’s important to note that the ways of the elves aren’t just the ways of the elves. They had their beliefs, their rules, their ritual come from the Valar, who were carrying out the will of Ilúvatar, the real, existing god of the world. When we say Númenor abandoned the ways of the elves, they abandoned much more than just elven rituals. It’s the very god of the world they cast aside. And they did it out of jealousy. They started abandoning worship, rituals, and Elvish as a language. The island became separated into two groups, the Faithful and the King’s Men. The King’s Men were antagonizing the Faithful and outlawing everything elven-related.

By the time we catch up to the present in the Akallabeth, the island is almost entirely corrupted. This is only worsened by Sauron’s arrival. While people might argue that Númenor is innocent in the final stretch because Sauron manipulated them, that’s a false argument. Yes, Sauron manipulated them, but he built his lies on the already existing corruption of the island. It was their pride, their jealousy, their insatiable thirst for everything they could not have that he exploited. Sauron told the Númenorians that the Valar and the Elves are gatekeeping Valinor. That it is not a place that is forbidden to mortals, but the place that gives them their immortality, and if Númenor goes there, they could seize it for themselves, and become immortal. He also told them that from Valinor they could go beyond the world and find new ones to explore, and if they ran out of worlds to explore, they would have the power to create more, essentially telling them they could become gods. And to top it all off, he told them that Ilúvatar doesn’t exist, that he is but a story the Valar and the Eldar made up to excuse them keeping immortality and Aman from Númenor, and that the true god was Melkor. But it was Númenor that believed it. In their pride, jealousy-fueled hate, and never-ending need for more, they grew to believe that they were mortal not because that is the fate of men, but because the Eldar and the Valar are assholes. They grew to believe not only that Eru does not exist, but that they could become like him and create worlds. Every lie Sauron told was built on beliefs Númenor already had, and they believed it out of pride and ego.

And unlike some people would make it sound, their final offences weren’t small at all. They didn’t just “burn some people and go where they were not supposed to” (actual argument I got once). They took up the worship of a false god, who also happens to be the origin of evil and everything wrong with the world. In our words, they were devil-worshipping. And in the name of this false god, they burned people alive as offerings, using it as an excuse to get rid of anyone who might still be Faithful. And they broke the rules of the world by going where they were not permitted. Not because the Valar are jerks gatekeeping Aman, but because the rule is, no mortal may set foot in Valinor. They are mortals, whether they like it or not. Therefore, they were breaking one of the biggest rules in the world.

The entire island was consumed by corruption. The way it translated to me was spiraling further and further down into absolute chaos. And while Sauron did play a part in this and Pharazôn was a dickhead who usurped the throne, the entire island was at fault. They weren’t just the fallout. Everything that happened happened because of their doing. Had it not been that way, the island would not have sunk. If the problem truly was Pharazôn, why would Ilúvatar destroy the entire island? We have no reason to believe he’s a malevolent god who will just strike down innocent people because he’s mad at their king. In fact, we have every reason to believe that he is kind and merciful. Beyond Tolkien’s religion, which he heavily included in his writing, Ilúvatar grants Aulë the dwarves, he gives Yavanna the chance to have her creations better protected, he gives Beren and Lúthien the chance to be reborn. But I cannot find a single instance of him being cruel. Some might say the sinking of Númenor is proof, but that is a single instance as opposed to a pattern of merciful kindness despite disobedience. Eru is good and he is kind and merciful. And the remaining Faithful are proof of this, because they survive. Their ships are spirited away by great winds that are clearly of divine origin, so that they don’t get caught in the fall. And the book describes that the Valar had laid down their governship of the world and handed it over to Ilúvatar, which means it cannot be explained away as Manwë saying, “Okay, dad’s gone too far.” It HAD to have been Ilúvatar who saved them. If he didn’t save the rest, that means they weren’t worth saving.

This story is one that parallels the biblical theme of cleansing armageddon. Wherein a place or the whole world cannot progress the way it is, and the only option is to burn it to the ground and start over. In each of those stories, there is a clear offense of the place being destroyed, usually being sin and non-belief, that causes them to be deemed beyond saving. There are also always people in those stories who are not part of the irreversable corruption, are forewarned about the destruction about to come, and sent to safety. The same thing happens to Númenor. A corruption takes over the island, starting not with Sauron and not with Pharazôn, but their own actions going centuries back. The corruption grows too deep and cannot be reversed after the arrival of Sauron. (Again, Sauron is not responsible for the corruption, he just built on it.) Seeing the depth of their corruption, Ilúvatar decided that the only way forward was to destroy it. Cut the problem off at its roots. And he took the Faithful, who did not get corrupted, to safety. We don’t know if they were forewarned because the narrator of the story doesn’t even know, but it’s entirely possible. Amandil knew to prepare ships and collect the Faithful. How would he know that if he wasn’t in some way, shape, or form, forewarned? And he set out to Valinor to try and plead with the Valar. Why would he do that if he didn’t know something was coming? We have no reason to believe Ilúvatar made the decision to inflict such drastic measures lightly. Sink an entire island, take a continent out of the seen world, and reshape the entire planet is not something one does because some humans broke some rules. These are drastic measures, set as consequences, for very real, very grave decisions all of Númenor made.

And it’s not as simple as “Most of the King’s Men were already gone anyway” either. Pharazôn took a huge fleet with him to Valinor, yes. But there is no way for the entire island population to be part of that fleet. There definitely were people, not just women and children, who were not on those boats. And if the island at that point were mostly devoid of the corrupted, Ilúvatar would not have destroyed it. There would have been no point, and we don’t have any reason to believe Ilúvatar is so cruel that he would’ve destroyed the island if most on it were innocent. And if we do a bit of math, it becomes obvious that there could not have been more Faithful than King’s Men. It was in 2251 of the Second Age, during the reign of Tar-Ancalimon, that the Faithful and King's Men were split into two groups. The King's Men were already at this point the larger group. It was in 2899 that Ar-Adunakhor was crowned, and it was during his reign that the Faithful were persecuted and the ways of the Faithful were outlawed. It was in 3319 of the Second Age that the island fell. So if we do a bit of calculations, we get that for 1068 years, the King's Men and Faithful were separate groups. The dislike of elves was going even further back. And for 420 years, the ways of the elves were outright forbidden. This means there was absolutely no way that there was enough Faithful on the island combined for it to be worth sparing, let alone more Faithful than King's Men.

As has been pointed out to me, with Pharazôn gone, Míriel would have been queen and likely would have led the kingdom in the ways of the Faithful, had the island survived. But that isn’t that simple either. As Rings of Power shows us, a Faithful ruler after generations of King’s Men would not be well-received, and Míriel would be hated and would likely fail in returning the island to the ways of the Eldar. And it’s a flawed argument that most remaining on the island to be led by Míriel would be Faithful, as all known Faithful were collected by Elendil, and there weren’t that many of them, otherwise, there would have been more ships documented. And Pharazôn may have taken a great fleet, but that can’t mean the entire island. The logic doesn’t add up with this argument. And again, the island would not have been destroyed if most on it were Faithful. The island HAD to be destroyed because it was too corrupt, and there was no other way of dealing with it.

One complaint I never understood is the argument of “But the children!”, framing the entire thing as a dick move on Ilúvatar’s part because “The children!” This is NOT because I’m heartless and promote child murder. The argument here is that the children are innocent, have done nothing, and sinking them was a dick move, cause “it’s not like those babies were born being like ‘Haha! Let’s burn people!’” This argument is flawed for a key reason. It assumes that the children are innocent, were always innocent, and will always remain innocent. Not to sound like a literal Disney antagonist, but that’s not true. Those children that everyone is so hung up on were born into a corrupt society. And this corruption didn’t just start, it’s been going on for generations. Sure, breaking generational cycles is a thing, but an entire generation born into such corruption as had taken over Númenor wasn’t going to change in its entirety. The children that went down with the island were born into and being raised in a society that was proud, selfish, and corrupt, worshiping the origin of evil, burning people, and believing themselves better than anyone else. They weren’t going to grow up and decide to restore the worship of Ilúvatar or their friendship with the elves. The corruption wasn’t going to stop because in that moment the children were innocent. Those children have done nothing YET. They were born into a corrupt environment that was going to turn them into corrupt adults, who would’ve followed in their corrupt parents’ footsteps. And that’s not speculation, it’s a certainty, it’s how people work. Arguing the children’s innocence is a flawed argument and will remain so no matter how hard you try. The children, too, had to be destroyed. Not because it’s right or okay that they died, but because there was no other way to stop the corruption.

Now, this does not mean I’m heartless, nor is Ilúvatar. It is sad that kids died. That anyone died. That what was once a great civilization had to fall. But it was not a dick move, it was not collateral damage, and “But the children!” will never be a viable argument against it. Ilúvatar made his decision, and he didn’t make it lightly. The offenses it was a response to were severe. He needed a severe punishment. He needed to destroy the island. Because that was the only way to rid the world of its corruption and the damages it could cause. And again, he did not cruelly destroy everyone who did not deserve it. The Faithful were saved by Ilúvatar and given a chance to rebuild and avoid their ancestors' mistakes somewhere else.

And Ilúvatar did care. And my proof for this comes from The Silmarillion itself, as I touched on already. But I also brought up Yavanna earlier, and while rereading that part for this essay, I came across a very important line that speaks to who Ilúvatar is. “Do then the Valar suppose that I did not hear all the Song, even the least sound of the least voice?” Ilúvatar is addressing Yavanna’s fear for her creations, plants and animals, which most would argue are less than humans or, in this case, all the Children of Ilúvatar. But he is also talking about everything beyond that. “The least sound of the least voice”. So why would we think then, that if he paid attention to the least sound of the least voice, that he would not pay attention to all the lives lost? To all the lives otherwise touched by The Fall? He heard the least sound of the least voice, so why would we think then, that he did not see the youngest, the oldest, the most innocent, and the most cruel? He heard the least sound of the least voice of the Ainur so why would he not pay attention to his own creation? Why do we think he was cruel enough to pointlessly kill his own children, his own creations, when he cared enough to grant protection to Yavanna’s creations that most of us would consider far less than those Children?

The only person we know for sure who died but didn’t deserve to was Míriel. Now the thing is, there was no way to save Míriel. She could not join the Faithful in their preparations, and we don’t know what was happening to her during Sauron’s influence. We know she died trying to climb to Meneltarma, to Ilúvatar’s temple, to plead for her people. Now she was collateral damage. But there was nothing to be done about it. And I hate it, and she is one of my favorites on Rings of Power, and I’m gonna cry for days when she dies, but the fact remains. Elendil and his sons gathered all they knew to be Faithful, but how could they possibly get to the queen? Isildur couldn’t even get a fruit from the court without nearly dying. She can’t have known they were prepping those ships. And again, I’m not being cruel, and neither was Ilúvatar. If anything, Míriel’s death serves as a reminder that actions have consequences on even those who are innocent. If people want to argue all who died while being innocent so much, I can argue that. Being innocent, doesn’t mean there are no consequences. The island, the King’s Men, were being corrupt, and there were consequences. And those consequences touched those who weren’t being corrupted. Such as Míriel. We can cry all we want over her not having done anything wrong, but that’s not the point of her death. Her death shows that our negative actions born of negative beliefs and/or feelings can and will have effects on other people. They may not have done anything, but we did, and what we did had direct consequences on those who did nothing. And this is not because some god up there is being evil, it is merely how the world works. Actions warrant consequences. Míriel was innocent, she didn’t deserve death, but the rest of the island wasn’t, and they needed to be cut down. And there was no way of doing that without killing Míriel and anyone else who might have been Faithful but failed to be on those ships. And to save the island because of a few that might not deserve it would have just let the problem continue and inevitably grow. The island had to go, and therefore, so did Míriel.

There’s of course the idea that Ilúvatar is all powerful and could’ve saved the innocent, and I had someone put forward the opinion that Ilúvatar didn’t care about any of the other offenses of the island except for Pharazôn sailing to Valinor, because if he had, he would’ve done something beforehand. But he did do something beforehand. The Valar, the leader of whom shares council with Ilúvatar himself, who are the spokesmen of Ilúvatar, told Númenor what to do, what the rules were, they reminded them of the rules, and explained why they exist. Númenor decided to say “Fuck it!” and went and broke them anyway. And of course, there was Tar-Palatír, who, despite all odds, grew up Faithful and grew into a king who wanted to lead the island back to the ways of the elves and the worship of Ilúvatar. And he got a vision that if Nimloth dies, Númenor is finished. Where do you think he got that vision from? Who do you think, with his all-powerful might, made it possible for a Faithful king to be born into a line of King’s Men? Ilúvatar did try to stop the corruption beforehand, and Númenor didn’t budge. They got worse and worse, and when they broke the very rules of the world, there had to be consequences. And, yes, Ilúvatar could have saved the innocent. If he has the power to make Aman part of the Unseen World, he has the power to save those who didn’t cause offense. But here’s the thing, it’s not his fault that they died, it’s Númenor’s. The Children of Ilúvatar have a little something called free will, and the majority of the men of Númenor used theirs to commit atrocities, become tyrants, and decide that nothing was ever going to be good for them, they used their free will to decide to become gods and defy the rules of the world, and there were consequences. And like I said, sometimes the consequences of our actions affect those who did not commit them. This does not make Ilúvatar an asshole.

Númenor’s fall is tragic, but it needed to happen. Its trigger was not a single person, it was not cruelly getting rid of people who did not deserve it, and there is no amount of crying over temporarily innocent children that will change that.