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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Desdichado" data-source="post: 1281946" data-attributes="member: 2205">I just typed this up in another thread, but it's a much more complicated story than this.Although The Silmarillion does indeed state at one point that orcs are corrupted elves, this should hardly be seen as authoritative.  The Silmarillion is a chimeric book put together by Tolkien's son Christopher and borrows from many periods of Tolkien's writing, some separated by as much as several decades.  Christopher later regretted the presentation of The Silmarillion and that's one of the reasons he's been publishing the History of Middle-earth series, to put his father's writings about the Eldar Days in particular, back into their proper context.  The evolution of the stories from The Book(s) of Lost Tales to something that much more closely resembles The Silmarillion is interesting.  It seems quite clear that Tolkien was not convinced that orcs were debased elves, and in fact a whole series of late-ish essays found in Morgoth's Ring, recently published, he specifically denied that.  Had he lived a few more years, in fact, that would have been abundantly clear, and Christopher likely never would have published The Silmarillion in the form that he did (although personally I believe he still wouldn't ever have published anything in his lifetime; he was too much of a tinkerer to ever give up and call it done.)Some summary bullet-points from these later writings:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Orcs are corrupted men, not elves, at least for the most part.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The Awakening of Men is moved forward in the chronology; Tolkien himself wrote that the timing as it was formerly constituted didn't make sense, and with the idea that orcs are corrupted Men instead of Elves it makes even less sense.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Some minor Maiar spirits took orc-like forms, and became baldogs -- something like a minor balrog in many ways.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Orcs were much shorter in lifespan than the Numenoreans, although I have no idea where they fit relative to "regular" Men.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The original breeding of the orcs was a project that Morgoth delegated to Sauron -- Morgoth had lots of great ideas, but very poor execution because he devolved into a being of almost pure rage and hatred and lacked patience or subtlety.  Sauron, being formerly of the people of Aule, on the other hand, was uniquely talented for this type of work.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Saruman's version of the Uruk-hai was a "rediscovering" of an earlier Sauronic secret -- Sauron had been breeding orcs to get different breeds for some time (note: the "black Uruks of Mordor" appeared much earlier than Saruman's defection, for instance.)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Although the text of the Lord of the Rings itself talks about half-orc breeds, it actually only implies that the orcs Saruman uses have a Mannish strain in them.  The "On Orcs" essay in Morgoth's Ring confirms this finally.</li> </ul></blockquote>

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