Gandalf plans all of history.... A new conspiracy...! Gandalf is Belthasar and has access to FATE . Frodo is the result of Project Frodo ?

Sorry for the uninitiated.

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Wait no... Kid must be Sam, and Frodo is Serge...?

Haha Chrono Trigger! That's one of my all time favorites!

Love that game, and it has a time traveling story that actually makes sense.

Played through that so many times, to see all the endings, and just because I wanted too after.

Since someone mentioned this thread recently, I thought I'd revive, as I miss lore discussions.

So here's the question...how much do you think the Valar intervened in events of the Third Age, specifically around the time of the War of the Ring. Did they just send the Istari and that was enough? Or can you find other evidence of their helping the Free Peoples? Is the favor of the valar actually a thing in lore terms?

I personally don't know if the Valar per se helped during the Free People's march to the Black Gate (that's what the card is depicting I believe) but if I'm not mistaken, Tolkien said somewhere that the last act of intervention the Valar made was returning Gandalf to life.

Nice move,Raven1015!

This is a very though question, seen the few things that speak of this. I would tend to think of the Istari as one of few, if not the only physical act of 'intervening'.
Of course, there is also Gandalf the Grey turning White. Glorfindel is there to end the Witch-King's rule up in Angmar and saved Frodo and Eagles. Also, the visions of Faramir and Boromir might be from the Valar.
Another remarkable thing is from the Unfinished Tales, I think, the rejection of Saruman his spirit.

But to explain their limited interventions in the Third Age, I have found this.

It is stated that the power of Manwë and the other Valar was also lessening. They were instructed to prepare Arda for the arrival of the Children and as time progressed, things became more and more 'things', they were 'weakened.'
I do not believe they did nothing, but they surely didn't sent out Örome to hunt Orcs.


A note in the Myths Transformed essays in History of Middle-earth 10:

Another note from the same essay.

Nonetheless the breaking of Thangorodrim and the extrusion of Melkor was the end of 'Morgoth' as such, and for that age (and many ages after). It was thus, also, in a sense the end of Manwë's prime function and task as Elder King, until the End. He had been the Adversary of the Enemy.

The Valar 'fade' and become more impotent, precisely in proportion as the shape and constitution of things becomes more defined and settled.

I personally don't know if the Valar per se helped during the Free People's march to the Black Gate (that's what the card is depicting I believe) but if I'm not mistaken, Tolkien said somewhere that the last act of intervention the Valar made was returning Gandalf to life.

I think it was Illuvatar himself who brought Gandalf back (see here http://lotr.wikia.com/wiki/Eru_Il%C3%BAvatar#Interventions).

Letter 156

He was sent by a mere prudent plan of the angelic Valar or governors; but Authority had taken up this plan and enlarged it, at the moment of its failure. 'Naked I was sent back – for a brief time, until my task is done'. Sent back by whom, and whence? Not by the 'gods' whose business is only with this embodied world and its time; for he passed 'out of thought and time'.

Then Illuvatar intervened again at Mount Doom, causing Gollum to trip.

Letter 192

Frodo deserved all honour because he spent every drop of his power of will and body, and that was just sufficient to bring him to the destined point, and no further. Few others, possibly no others of his time, would have got so far. The Other Power then took over: the Writer of the Story (by which I do not mean myself), 'that one ever-present Person who is never absent and never named'* (as one critic has said).

Huh. But at that point couldn't just about anything that happens that is attributable to "fate" also be attributable to Illuvatar? I mean, we know that Eru Illuvatar is a different entity to the Valar and pretty much the elven word for "God", the supreme being, etc. If we consider, as the Silmarillion states, that all that happens in it, including the LOTR trilogy, is just the mythology/cosmology of the elves and that Middle Earth is in fact our world but in a different onthological state, then Illuvatar is basically the same being as the christian God. So then we could make the conclusion that, if only Eru was responsible for bringing Gandalf back, then the Valar had no part in it.

When he says 'gods' he definitely means Valar. When he says 'Authority' he refers to Eru Illuvatar, No need to dig any deeper than that. The Valar didn't have the power to bring Gandalf back.

Still, that doesn't make it a less interesting point.

On the letters, I would like to share the Tolkien Professors standpoint.

He says that once a book is written and published it is in the 'commonwealth'. He means by this that (the case was Tolkien) once his books were published, it's done. Tolkien does not have a 'higher' opinion then anyone else. His letters are his interpretation of the written story, so they are not some sort of appendix. You have to work with the story as is published, nothing more and nothing less.

That makes an interpretation the Tolkien Professor would come up with, on the same level as a letter or something Master of Lore might come up with.

I find this an interesting point and agree with him on most account.

Luck, fate or providence is a significant theme of Tolkien's, and the Valar's participation in the Music of the Ainur suggests that they are in some sense involved as the story unfolds.

As Gandalf tells Frodo, the Ring

"abandoned Gollum. Only to be picked up by the most unlikely person imaginable: Bilbo from the Shire! Behind that there was something else at work, beyond any design of the Ring-maker. I can put it no plainer than by saying that Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, and not by its maker. In which case you also were meant to have it. And that may be an encouraging thought."

The vision that Faramir and Boromir received is a bit like the old Laketown song foretelling the return of the King under the Mountain, with rivers running golden. At the end of The Hobbit, Bilbo hears about Laketown's new prosperity:

"Then the prophecies of the old songs have turned out to be true, after a fashion!" said Bilbo.

"Of course!" said Gandalf. "And why should not they prove true? Surely you don't disbelieve the prophecies, because you had a hand in bringing them about yourself? You don't really suppose, do you, that all your adventures and escapes were managed by mere luck, just for your sole benefit? You are a very fine person, Mr. Baggins, and I am very fond of you; but you are only quite a little fellow in a wide world after all!"

a thought came to him, as if some remote voice had spoken, and he fumbled in his breast with his left hand, and found...the Phial of Galadriel.

...

And then his tongue was loosed and his voice cried in a language which he did not know:

A Elbereth Gilthoniel

o menel palan-diriel,

le nallon sí di'nguruthos!

A tiro nin, Fanuilos!

Notice the passive voice, which leaves the source ambiguous: "a thought came" and "his tongue was loosed." In letter 278, Tolkien translated Sam's invocation as:

O Elbereth Starkindler from heaven gazing-afar, to thee I cry now in the shadow of (the fear of) death. O look towards me, Everwhite.

Sam then confronted Shelob with the Phial, which burns her deeply and drives her away (earlier, the Phial had only temporarily rebuffed her):

It flamed like a star that leaping from the firmament sears the dark air with intolerable light.

That definitely seems like an intervention by Varda Starkindler. It's similar to Sam asking Galadriel for rope after climbing down a cliff in Emyn Muil (and the knot comes undone), and for light and water in Mordor (which they get).

The Valar's interventions in the Third Age are generally indirect, as Arda becomes less explicitly magical, but they fit into the broader picture of "luck" helping those who persevere in virtue.