The Tale of Tinúviel

Today we’re going to talk about two tangentially related topics, THE SILMARILLION and Magic The Gathering: Arena.

If I remember correctly, I first read THE SILMARILLION when I was either seventeen or eighteen. I got it at the small-town bookshop in the small town where I grew up – the bookshop, alas, no longer exists and the storefront is now occupied by a place selling kitchen fixtures. I still have the specific paperback copy of THE SILMARILLION I bought – it was the gold mass market paperback that showed the Fall of Númenor on the cover, and the cover blurb said it was the history of the Elves of Middle-Earth.

Since I had read THE LORD OF THE RINGS when I was sixteen, I was definitely interested in trying THE SILMARILLION. Reading THE LORD OF THE RINGS gives a sense of a vast history behind the story, a history that had been going on long, long before Bilbo ever met Thorin Oakenshield and found the Ring in the goblin-tunnels beneath the Misty Mountains. At the end of RINGS, there are bits and pieces of that history in the various Appendixes, but it had never been fully explained.

So I thought THE SILMARILLION might be an intriguing read, and at seventeen or possibly eighteen, I was already very interested in fantasy worldbuilding, which would serve me well later in life.

Now, it must be said, THE SILMARILLION is kind of a difficult read. Like, it starts with a creation myth, and then has a long section where the Valar order the world and explains who each of the Valar are in great detail, and the Elves don’t even show up for a while. In terms of the text, it feels like a combination of reading an ancient chronicle like something Xenophon or Tacitus wrote combined with the Epic of Gilgamesh and the historical books of the Bible, specifically the ones where every chapter starts with “King Whoever did evil in the eyes of the LORD, more than all his predecessors combined.” So, in terms of reading, THE SILMARILLION is a heavy lift.

What did I think of it the first time I read it?

In all honesty, THE SILMARILLION blew my underdeveloped adolescent mind.

It was one of the first fictional things I read that was truly epic in scope. Like, some parts of it I just didn’t get, but I had just enough historical knowledge at the time to grasp some of the inspirations – like the Valar were kind of like the Greek/Roman gods without the jerkish behavior, Melkor/Morgoth was an analogue for the devil, Númenor was inspired by Atlantis, and so forth.

As you get older, some of the memories of adolescence get hazier, but I can still clearly remember reading portions of THE SILMARILLION in that gold mass market paperback for the first time – the Music of the Ainur, Fëanor and the Silmarils, Melkor and Ungoliant, the Battle of Tears Unnumbered, Fingolfin’s duel with Morgoth, Beren & Lúthien Tinúviel, Túrin and the dragon Glaurung, the Fall of Gondolin, the voyage of Eärendil, and finally the War of Wrath when Eärendil casts the great dragon Ancalagon the Black from the sky onto the towers of Thangorodrim and Morgoth is overthrown.

And finally Maglor, in despair and grief after so much suffering, casting the final Silmaril into the sea and forever wandering Middle-earth singing of his regret.

All these amazing epic and tragic scenes that catch in the imagination. I mean, I can’t remember what I had for lunch yesterday, but I do remember reading THE SILMARILLION for the first time.

About that time, I started digging around my school’s library, and found some of the various History of Middle-Earth books that Christopher Tolkien had published from his father’s copious notes. Among them was THE LAYS OF BELERIAND, which included a epic poem Tolkien wrote about the quest of Beren & Lúthien but never got around to finishing. (The poor guy enjoyed puttering so much that it is probably astonishing that he finished THE LORD OF THE RINGS at all.) I don’t generally enjoy poetry, but since I already knew the story of Beren & Lúthien, I was able to follow along, and the sheer craft and skill of it blew my mind. Like, I never have had any interest at all in writing poetry, but this was amazing.

THE SILMARILLION, like THE LORD OF THE RINGS and THE HOBBIT, is one of those books that will endure the test of time and become part of sort of the cultural canon, like Sherlock Holmes, Romeo & Juliet, Ebenezer Scrooge, and so forth.

Let’s jump forward many years to 2023, when I started playing MAGIC THE GATHERING ARENA. The game received a THE LORD OF THE RINGS-themed expansion pack, which I started playing with in June when it made its way into the app. It’s a point of pride that I’ve never spent any actual USD money on the game, but I’ve won enough matches that in-game gold starts to accumulate, and the only thing to spend the in-game gold on is in-game card packs, so I’ve gotten more and more LORD OF THE RINGS-themed Magic cards.

One of the cards is The Tale of Tinúviel, which is an enchantment card that distributes its effects over three turns. On the first turn, you pick a creature to be invulnerable for the next three turns. On the second, you can pick two creatures to have lifelink until the end of the turn. On the third, you can bring back one of your previously killed creatures. It’s a powerful card, which is fitting, since in THE SILMARILLION Lúthien forces Sauron to flee and puts Morgoth and his entire court to sleep long enough for her and Beren to escape from Angband with one of the Silmarils.

Anyway, the very first time I played The Tale of Tinúviel card, I was losing the match pretty badly, but I played the card, and it turned things around just long enough for me to win three turns later. It was an interesting experience, since it brought back the memories of reading THE SILMARILLION and THE LAYS OF BELERIAND for the first time all those years ago in a previous century.

And amusingly, I played a match right before I published this post, and I won because I used The Tale of Tinúviel yet again. 🙂

-JM