Melkor
the mighty of the Ainur, who became Morgoth
Names and Titles
- Melkor — “the mighty, that arose in might” — the name by which the greatest of the Ainur was known; his true Valarin title is Melkórë, “He who arises in Might”. -
After the theft of the Silmarils, Fëanor named him Morgoth, “the Black Foe of the World”, and by that name he is known ever after in the Quenta. He is called the Great Enemy, the Dark Enemy, Lord of Darkness, and “the Master of the Fates of Arda” in his own pride; among Men of the East the shadow of his name spread as a fear of “the Lord of the Dark”. The Valaquenta calls him “the mightiest of those that dwell in the world, until he forfeited himself”. He began as “the most powerful of the Ainur… gifted with a share of the Light and of the knowledge and the desire of making”; his fall is the shadow that hangs over the entire legendarium.
The Fall
In the remembrance of the Elves, his ruin began before the Music: “he went often alone into the void places seeking the Imperishable Flame”
— the Secret Fire that belongs to Eru alone — “and desire grew hot within him to bring into Being things of his own”. Unable to create, he desired to possess and to command: “he desired all things, and their order… and he said: ‘I will rule the world.’” In the he wove his thought of power and self into the themes of Eru, and “some of his thought crossed into the theme of the One, and shed darkness on it”. Discord, and ruin, and the third theme that Eru taught the world from his discord. His doom was weighed from that hour.
Life and History
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In Arda before the Elves. Entering the world with the other Valar, Melkor claimed a great part of its substance as his own — building the great fortress Utumno far in the north, and corrupting the works of the Valar (above all the The Two Lamps, which he overthrew) until the first design of Arda was broken and the Valar removed to Aman.
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The chain and the parole. When the Elves woke at Cuiviénen, Melkor set his agents among them — corrupting whispers, dark riders, and the first orcs — until Oromë reported their coming. In the war that followed (“the War for the Sake of the Elves”), Tulkas overthrew and bound him in the great chain Angainor, and he was brought captive to Valinor. There, “at the end of three ages of the Valar… his fetters were loosed, and for a while he dwelt in Valinor as a counsellor… but the Valar were deceived”; his feigned humility (and Manwë’s clean trust) gained him freedom to walk among the Noldor.
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The poisoner of Valinor. In his freedom he sowed the seeds of quarrel — the whispers that corrupted the pride of the Noldor, the feud of Fëanor and Fingolfin, the savage dooms that led to the death of Finwë. Beneath his counsel he and his servant Ungoliant destroyed the The Two Trees of Valinor and stole the The Silmarils of Fëanor, slaying the father of the Noldor in the darkening of the world. Then he fled to Middle-earth.
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Morgoth in the North. In Beleriand he raised Angband beneath the towers of Thangorodrim, multiplied his armies of orcs and balrogs, bred dragons, and for five hundred years of the First Age waged war upon the Elves and Men — from the first rising of the Sun (when he was “taken in his fortress” by the host of the West and chained but spared for the sake of the Silmarils) to the long sorrows of the Battle of Sudden Flame and the Nirnaeth.
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The theft and the War of Wrath. The theft of the two Silmarils he had — though he wore them in his iron crown with blistering hands — was the ultimate cause of the doom of Beleriand and of the West’s final reckoning. In the The War of Wrath (the Great Battle at the end of the First Age) the host of Valinor under Eönwë overthrew him; he was “cast… into the Void beyond the Walls of the World”, the Door of Night was set against him, and “the Chain of Doom” was laid upon him till the The Dagor Dagorath.
The Nature of his Evil
Tolkien’s later writings (Morgoth’s Ring, “Myths Transformed”) develop him as the cosmic principle of waste and dominance: he scattered his power into his works (the marring of matter, the domination of his creatures) until he was diminished — “the spirit of Morgoth at last was but a shadow and a memory, and his power passed into the world”. Unlike Sauron, who sought order and lordship, “Morgoth wanted to destroy and to make all things in his own image”. His eye could not see the good; his sovereignty was negative — the hatred of anything that lived freely.
In the Texts
Melkor/Morgoth is the centre around which the Quenta turns; the History of Middle-earth traces his growth from the immature tyrant of the Lost Tales to the almost-Principle of disorder of the later period. The name-change Melkor→Morgoth is itself a piece of the narrative: Fëanor’s curse bears it, and the Sons of Fëanor will not use the name of the Dark “Morgoth” save in war. See also the dedicated page Melkor.