Everyone Dies (Except Galadriel)

Characters: The Lords of the Valar, Part One

The Ainur/Valar. It's time for me to discuss each one in detail, partly because that's what I feel like doing right now. It's Part One because I have the flu, so writing has been intermittent all day in between sleeping. 

And if you forgot, the Valar is what the Ainur are called 90% of the time.

I'm starting with the Lords of the Valar. I personally think Mandos and Manwë are the coolest. Mandos mostly (because who doesn't like the Head of Doom and Gloom), but his cursing of the Noldor made me want to punch him in the face a little. 

Oop, spoilers. My bad.

Manwë, whose full name is Manwë Súlimo, has an insane amount of titles. The most important ones are the King of the Valar, Lord of the West, and Lord of the Breath of Arda, which is a fancy way of saying that he's the god of wind. 

For the most part, Manwë's not a bad guy. He's like, the boss of the Valar, but his brother Melkor (whom we've discussed) was more powerful. He apparently was so pure and full of goodness that he was literally unable to comprehend evil or recognize it. I guess that's sort of a good thing, except we all know that this book wouldn't exist unless everything was going to implode with tragedy and crying, so Manwë's slightly useless in that sense. He's married to this chick named Varda. See the next chapter for more on her.

Tolkien also literally tells us that Manwë is the favorite child of Eru.

And then everyone wonders why Melkor's all bent out of shape. 

Hm. Nope. Can't think of any reason at all. 

At any rate, Manwë's servants and whatnot include the actual wind, as well as his herald whose name is Eonwë and isn't really important until later. Also Gandalf and those gigantic eagles, but that's a topic for another chapter. 

Manwë is described as dressing in blue robes; he also apparently has blue eyes. His name means, "blessed one"; the name "Súlimo" means "the breather". 

Which is, as I said, just a fancier way to say wind.  

Our old friend Melkor is Manwë's brother, apparently, and he's pretty much the opposite. Even though he was born/created first, Tolkien tells us that Eru liked Manwë better anyway.

Melkor has a lot of names and titles, most of which include spoilers, so I won't go into them just yet.

What Melkor seems to really want is power, corruption, and to rule the world, which...aren't exactly the best things to try and obtain, but to each his own, I guess. I'll really be talking about him later, but the name Melkor means "born out of might" so I guess that's something. Though being the brother of "the blessed one" kinda makes his name seem a little pale in comparison.

Melkor has really been a rebel since the beginning, first with the whole "ruining the cool music" thing. 

Right now, he's pretending to go along with everything.

Any bets on how long that's gonna last?