Talk:Witch-king of Angmar/Archive 1

Vendetta against Isildur

I noticed that the Witch-King carries out Sauron's campaign of revenge against Isildur's legacy specifically. Sauron is foiled when Isildur absconds with a sapling from the White Tree in Numenor and is defeated when Isildur cuts the One Ring from him. Fast forward to the Third Age, the Witch-King launches into an attack on Arnor first, the heirs of Isildur's fourth son. He overruns Cardolan with evil wights, captures Fornost as his own and drives the last king off to die in the icy wastes of the north (the cold climate itself a remnant of Morgoth's long occupation of Utumno and Angband). A young prince of Gondor to the rescue is what ousts him and wreaks Angmar. Years later, the Witch-King takes Minas Ithil, the city built and ruled by Isildur (and home to the White Tree for a time). He then issues a challenge to the now King of Gondor, the same who bested him as a prince long ago. He violates the terms of the duel and captures the king. Ithilien, the land once personally ruled by Isildur, is depopulated and turned into a wilderness. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.30.122.50 (talk) 12:12, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

I would say rather a determined campaign against the Faithful. Sauron sought to dominate Middle-earth, and the Kingdoms in Exile were thus necessary targets, the only ones with substantial strength to resist him. Tolkien writes (App A?) that the Witch-king went after Arnor first because it was in disarray while Gondor remained strong. (Though how "Tolkien's sources" knew that is a mystery: no-one that we know of actually interviewed the Witch-king.) As for Ithilien, it lay next to Mordor; Minas Ithil was militarily the obvious place to start in the push against Gondor. Certainly both Sauron and the Witch-king could carry grudges -- this is clear from Gandalf's descriptions -- but Isildur's line and lands also just happened to be in the way. (And of course this is mostly speculation, falling squarely under WP:OR.)  Elphion (talk) 14:03, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

All true, but I think Tolkien strongly suggests that the Witch-King was a king or chieftain among the Black Numenoreans; and as such, he would have a special hatred and grudge against the Dunedain and all their kingdoms. 214.13.130.104 (talk) 13:26, 16 March 2010 (UTC)TexxasFinn

Where does Tolkien imply at all (let alone strongly) that the Witch-King was a chieftain of the Black Númenóreans? Look at the timeline alone: The Nine have already appeared by about SA 2251 (Appendix B), when the division in Númenor was only just beginning, and long before the Kingdoms in Exile had even been dreamt of. Elphion (talk) 21:45, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Named

I know that Tolkien never named him, but in The Atlas of Middle-Earth: Revised Edition, Karen Wynn Fonstand gives his name as Angmar, most notably on page 56 (Battles - T.A.: 1200-1634). Given that the book was not endorsed by Tolkien's estate, I don't feel it's that relevent, but I thought I might include it to see if it warrents mention in the article. 173.180.89.129 (talk) 13:04, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

That might be the way noblemen sometimes get referred to by their titles. E.g. 'John Smith, Duke of Buckingham' gets shortened to 'Buckingham'.

—WWoods (talk) 04:30, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

I don't know why he's called the Witch-king here. In LOTR (the book), he's called the "Lord of the Nazgul", e.g., in "The Battle of the Pelennor Fields". That would seem to be the name he is most commonly known by.--Jack Upland (talk) 10:40, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

Fonstad is not a particularly reliable source; she imposes her own interpretation on Tolkien in many places, without being very careful about indicating where her invention supersedes Tolkien's. "The name he is most commonly known by" depends on whether you're talking about the text or the general public. Appendix A makes it clear that he is the Witch-king, and (in my experience) this is the name usually used by readers. -- Elphion (talk) 14:00, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

If that is true, the Appendix and the movies have overshadowed the book itself.--Jack Upland (talk) 09:54, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

Tolkien wanted to include much of Appendices A and B in the text itself, but the publisher balked at making the books any longer. "Witch-king" was well established long before the movies appeared. -- Elphion (talk) 12:49, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

He's referred to consistently as the Witch-king in Unfinished Tales, the hunt for the ring contains a lot of the back story to what was happening just before the Nazgûl arrive in the shire. GimliDotNet (talk) 19:17, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

This is an WP:INUNIVERSE approach. In the novel itself, he is not referred to as the "Witch-king". If Tolkien wanted him to be known as this, he would have called him that throughout the novel, rather than just mentioning the name in the Appendix. (In any case, as far as I can see in the Appendix, he is only referred to as the "Witch-king" only in relation to his time in Angmar, but not the "Witch-king of Angmar". In fact, the Appendix says he was "known as the Witch-king", but he was really "the chief of the Ringwraiths".) The novel was a best-seller; Unfinished Tales wasn't. In fact, the whole article is very "in the universe", and it gives a distorted image to what Tolkien wrote.--Jack Upland (talk) 19:08, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

But this is an article about the Witch-king, not the Witch-king as he appears only in LOTR. It makes perfect sense to take all of Tolkien's many passages about him into account; in Tolkien's vision it was all one vast swath of history -- and indeed, that's what gives it the depth lacking in most other fantasy. "Best-selling" is immaterial. -- Elphion (talk) 15:08, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

"Powers and abilities"

I am removing this section, added by User:Drdoom028, for several reasons: it is not encyclopedic in tone; descriptions not taken from the book itself are not sourced from reliable sources (see WP:RS); and much of the text is largely copied from fan sites. The whole notion of "Powers and abilities" reads like an RPG manual, not an encyclopedia. We often have a "Characteristics" section for these characters, and much of this material would be appropriate to add to such a section. But it should be added in discursive paragraphs, not in "bullet point" headers, and above it all, it should avoid modern trendy phrasing like "telepathy" and "telekinesis", which are utterly foreign to Tolkien's artistry and vision. Also, much of this is already covered under Nazgûl and need not be repeated in detail here. This article should focus rather on what sets the Witch-king apart from the others. -- Elphion (talk) 13:44, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Why did the text get deleted?

The following responds to a question by Rheinamacher (talk · contribs), who started this section at 08:43, 27 November 2019 in regards to reversion of their edits primarily adding "non-canonical" names for the Witch-king. -- Elphion (talk) 15:06, 27 November 2019 (UTC)

I have reset the article to before your changes, and removed your unneeded copy and paste of most of it to the talk page. Please be more careful with you edits as you are the one who seems to have removed this text, and remember to sign your posts with four tildes (4x~) so we know who has made the edit. Britmax (talk) 12:38, 27 November 2019 (UTC)

Rheinamacher's text in the article was reverted primarily because this article is about Tolkien's character, not the multifarious mostly non-notable versions of it in the gaming community. The HTML comment in the article (which Rheinamacher changed unilaterally) indicates the consensus view of the editors. Proposed changes to that consensus should be discussed here on the talk page before edits are made to the article. -- Elphion (talk) 15:06, 27 November 2019 (UTC)

(Since the "Names and titles" section has been deleted, I'm changing the comment to refer to "Adaptations" instead.) -- Elphion (talk) 15:48, 27 November 2019 (UTC)