When is history not history? Can you write a fictional history as objective truth?

Amazon’s Rings of Power is a controversial adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s work. I say J.R.R. Tolkien’s work, but the Silmarillon was published posthumously by his son Christopher and Guy Gavriel Kay (Fun Fact: just a few days after I was born!). Thus it includes an unknown amount of stitching and glue before even reaching print. Now, we have a screen adaptation of the myths of Middle Earth, and not everyone is happy about it.

First off, I’m not going to address the criticisms about POC in the Tolkien universe except to say that they’re just plain bigotry and unworthy of serious examination.

But the main complaints about the show tend to focus on changes from Tolkien’s history and personalities of major characters changing. I’ll try to do it without getting into spoilers. It may be a bunch of nearly 50-year-old histories from an 80-year-old story about thousands-of-years-old-events, but the second season of the TV adaptation just recently streamed.

Rather than delve into specific instances and debating them point by point, I want to consider an entire premise:

Is the Silmarillon an omniscient, factually unimpeachable account of fictional events that took place in the Tolkien universe…

…or…

Is it an in-fiction accounting of myths and legends, inaccurate and biased and incomplete and extrapolated and pieced together from conflicting sources, as would be a modern, real-world history?

I find the latter premise more enticing.

Heroes’ flaws get blurred out. Great feats become exaggerated. Enemies take on deific proportion, making their downfall all the more glorious for the victors. Dates are approximated, fudged, flat-out lied about. Political agendas, familial pride, and propaganda supplant the desire for a factual accounting of events.

I’m not even sure whether it helps matter of hinders them that some of the participants in that history are so long-lived as to be able to either verify, subvert, or refute those historical accounts.

I also think it allows for a little more flexibility and freedom when adapting such a work. After all, when history leaves blanks and question marks, a filmmaker or director is well within their rights to pencil in their own thoughts.

There’s always been a nagging question at the back of my mind when a book or movie hits you right at the start with a disclaimer that it’s based on actual events, a recounting of something that took place, or any other boast that it’s less than pure fiction.

What if, by the time you see it, the fiction had already begun?

So, tell me: Is the Rings of Power meant to be a true story in the Tolkien universe, or is it, itself, a fiction within the fiction?

Go watch the show. It’s pretty good.