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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Desdichado" data-source="post: 2782281" data-attributes="member: 2205">That's not retconning, that's just wishing he had used different words to avoid the unfortunate preconceptions that he was unexpectedly saddled with.  And I don't know how serious that really was; what Letter specifically are you referring to, anyway?Not that Tolkien didn't contemplate some extremely serious retconning of his setting, but since all that retconning was going on behind the scenes, and nothing that was already published was due to change, I don't see what the big deal was.  Don't forget--everything M-E related besides The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings itself was published posthumously.  I don't know that retconning The Book of Lost Tales up to The Silmarillion standard, and then further planned (but not completed) retcons as mentioned in War of the Jewels, Morgoth's Ring and The Peoples of Middle-earth even count as retcons anyway, since none of it was published.Well, that's because technically it doesn't.  I mean, the real-world calendar fits well onto it, because Middle-earth is supposed to be a mythical age of the real world.  There is an Appendix at the end of Return of the King that explains the calendar situation, though--essentially, Tolkien "translated" dates into a Gregorian calendar, but he also details the calendar that the characters actually used, and how it differs.Er, well, he is Sauron, plain and simple.</blockquote>