The Rings of Power are magical artefacts in J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium, most prominently in his high fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings. The One Ring first appeared as a plot device, a magic ring in Tolkien's children's fantasy novel, The Hobbit; Tolkien later gave it a backstory and much greater power. He added nineteen other Great Rings, also conferring powers such as invisibility, that it could control, including the Three Rings of the Elves, Seven Rings for the Dwarves, and Nine for Men. He stated that there were in addition many lesser rings with minor powers. A key story element in The Lord of the Rings is the addictive power of the One Ring, made secretly by the Dark Lord Sauron; the Nine Rings enslave their bearers as the Nazgûl (Ringwraiths), Sauron's most deadly servants.
Glorfindel is a fictional character in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium. He is a member of the Noldor, one of the three groups of the Calaquendi or High Elves. The character and his name, which means "blond" or "golden-haired", were among the first created for what would become part of his Middle-earth legendarium in 1916–17, beginning with the initial draft of The Fall of Gondolin. His name indicates his hair as a mark of his distinction, as the Noldor were generally dark-haired. A character of the same name appears in the first book of The Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring, which takes place in Middle-earth's Third Age. Within the story, he is depicted as a powerful Elf-lord who could withstand the Nazgûl, wraith-like servants of Sauron, and holds his own against some of them single-handedly. Glorfindel and a version of the story of the Fall of Gondolin appear in The Silmarillion, posthumously published in 1977.
In J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium, Lothlórien or Lórien is the fairest realm of the Elves remaining in Middle-earth during the Third Age. It is ruled by Galadriel and Celeborn from their city of tree-houses at Caras Galadhon. The wood-elves of the realm are known as Galadhrim.
Gil-galad is a fictional character in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium, the last high king of the Noldor, one of the main divisions of Elves. He is mentioned in The Lord of the Rings, where the hobbit Sam Gamgee recites a fragment of a poem about him, and The Silmarillion. In the Last Alliance of Elves and Men, Gil-galad and Elendil laid siege to the Dark Lord Sauron's fortress of Barad-dûr, and fought him hand-to-hand for the One Ring. Both Gil-galad and Elendil were killed, and Elendil's son Isildur took the Ring for himself. Gil-galad briefly appears at the opening of Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, and features in several video games based on Tolkien's Middle-earth.
A half-elf is a mythological or fictional being, the offspring of an immortal elf and a mortal man. They are often depicted as very beautiful and endowed with magical powers; they may be presented as torn between the two worlds that they inhabit. Half-elves became known in modern times mainly through J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth writings but have origins in Norse mythology. A half-elf appeared in Lord Dunsany's 1924 book The King of Elfland's Daughter.
HeroQuest, is an adventure board game created by Milton Bradley in conjunction with the British company Games Workshop in 1989, and re-released in 2021. The game is loosely based around archetypes of fantasy role-playing games: the game itself was actually a game system, allowing the gamemaster to create dungeons of their own design using the provided game board, tiles, furnishings and figures. The game manual describes Morcar/Zargon as a former apprentice of Mentor, and the parchment text is read aloud from Mentor's perspective. Several expansions have been released, each adding new tiles, traps, artifacts, and monsters to the core system.
Lord Soth, the Knight of the Black Rose, is a fictional character appearing in the fantasy realms of Dragonlance and later Ravenloft. He is depicted as a death knight and fallen Knight of Solamnia from the world of Krynn.
A fantasy trope is a specific type of literary trope that occurs in fantasy fiction. Worldbuilding, plot, and characterization have many common conventions, many of them having ultimately originated in myth and folklore. J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium for example, was inspired from a variety of different sources including Germanic, Finnish, Greek, Celtic and Slavic myths. Literary fantasy works operate using these tropes, while others use them in a revisionist manner, making the tropes over for various reasons such as for comic effect, and to create something fresh.
In many works of modern fantasy, elves are depicted as a race or species of pointy-eared humanoid beings. These depictions arise from the álfar of Norse mythology influencing elves in fantasy as being semi-divine and of human stature, whose key traits are being friendly with nature and animals. However, this differs from Norse and the traditional elves found in Middle Ages folklore and Victorian era literature.
Hordes of the Things is a 1980 BBC radio comedy series parodying J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings and to a greater extent the fantasy genre in general, in a style similar to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It was written by "A. P. R. Marshall and J. H. W. Lloyd" and produced by Geoffrey Perkins. It is unrelated to the game of the same name.
Sophie Lara Winkleman, styled as Lady Frederick Windsor, is an English actress. She is married to Lord Frederick Windsor, the second cousin of King Charles III and son of Prince Michael of Kent.
Nick Perumov is the pen name of Nikolay Daniilovich Perumov, a Russian fantasy and science fiction writer.
Muddle Earth is a children's novel by Paul Stewart, published in 2003, and illustrated by Chris Riddell. It is largely a parody of The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien. Like LOTR it is divided into three sections: Englebert the Enormous, Here Be Dragons and Doctor Cuddles of Giggle Glade. In 2011, a sequel titled Muddle Earth Too was published.
Gathering of Heroes: Legend of the Seven Swords is a 2018 American science fiction fantasy action film starring Martin Kove, Christopher Atkins and Trygve Lode. It was shot in 4K on the RED ONE digital cinema camera in Colorado, USA.
In J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth writings, the Dúnedain were a race of Men, also known as the Númenóreans or Men of Westernesse. Those who survived the sinking of their island kingdom and came to Middle-earth, led by Elendil and his sons, Isildur and Anárion, settled in Arnor and Gondor.
Ronal the Barbarian is a 2011 Danish adult animated fantasy comedy film co-directed by Thorbjørn Christoffersen, Kresten Vestbjerg Andersen and Philip Einstein Lipski, and their third cinema feature.
Character pairing in The Lord of the Rings is a literary device used by J. R. R. Tolkien, a Roman Catholic, to express some of the moral complexity of his major characters in his heroic romance, The Lord of the Rings. Commentators have noted that the format of a fantasy does not lend itself to subtlety of characterisation, but that pairing allows inner tensions to be expressed as linked opposites, including, in a psychoanalytic interpretation, those of Jungian archetypes.
Scholars, including psychoanalysts, have commented that J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth stories about both Bilbo Baggins, protagonist of The Hobbit, and Frodo Baggins, protagonist of The Lord of the Rings, constitute psychological journeys. Bilbo returns from his journey to help recover the Dwarves' treasure from Smaug the dragon's lair in the Lonely Mountain changed, but wiser and more experienced. Frodo returns from his journey to destroy the One Ring in the fires of Mount Doom scarred by multiple weapons, and is unable to settle back into the normal life of his home, the Shire.
