Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="The_Gneech" data-source="post: 5381610" data-attributes="member: 6779">Random thought: probably the closest JRRT "sociopolitical" analogue to Conan (being an outsider barbarian) would be either a Dunlending or one of the Woses. So I could see a mental exercise where Ghan-Buri-Ghan lops off Denethor's head and names himself King of Gondor -- and how would the M-E setting react to that as compared to Hyboria.Certainly, I can see the nobility of Gondor reacting to that in a very similar way to the nobility of Aquilonia react to Conan. But on the other hand, Denethor is not an indolent, tax-fattened parasite of a noble, either. (A bit deranged, yes, but not a parasite.) I doubt many (if any) of the people of Gondor would see Ghan-Buri-Ghan as a liberator the way the Aquilonian commoners see Conan.Ghan-Buri-Ghan rising up and taking out Sauron, on the other hand, might get a warmer reception. Maybe. But of course, one of the key themes of LotR is that power is inherently corrupting -- conquer Sauron, and you become Sauron. (This in turn leads to questions about Aragorn's reign that I've always thought could stand more scrutiny, but which aren't really that germane to the JRRT/REH discussion.)Does Conan become Sauron? Depends who you ask; the poet Rinaldo certainly thinks so, but that's because he's one of them college boys who hate anything that's popular. Conan obviously doesn't think so, and the implication is that neither does REH ... but you can also bet that a generation or two later, assuming Conan actually establishes a dynasty, one of Conan's descendants does. That's just the nature of the beast, in REH's work.-The Gneech <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f60e.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":cool:" title="Cool    :cool:"  data-smilie="6"data-shortname=":cool:" /></blockquote>

Verification