There is no doubt these
battles stir the blood—light against shadow,
dragons against valor, the air humming with ruin and courage. From the flames of the
War of Wrath to the black tide on the Pelennor, each is a thunderclap in the long storm of
Arda’s history. But to ask which was the greatest? That seems a question
Men ask when they have not yet seen the cost of war up close. Wouldn't the greatest war be the last so that none more would follow? Even after
the Ring was destroyed,
evil was not.
If you would ask
Tolkien, I think he would have answered not with a ranking, but with silence. Because he had seen war firsthand. Not the tidy kind with noble charges and trumpets, but the grim chaos of the Somme. Trenches. Gas. Men turned to mud. He knew the horror of war firsthand, and he carried that weight into
Middle-earth and his writing. In his legendarium, greatness in war is never triumph without tears. The
Valar’s victory over
Melkor broke the world.
Fingolfin’s duel with
Morgoth was glorious—and utterly hopeless. The Field of Cormallen blooms with gladness, but it is bought with
Frodo’s unhealing wound, not to mention all of the other horrors wrought by the
War of the Ring. In Middle-earth, the “greatest” war is
the one you hoped would never be fought.
And still… war comes.
Perhaps the true answer lies not in the scale of the clash or the beauty of the banners, in how great a hero was, but in the quiet aftermath. The replanting of
the White Tree.
Sam’s return to Rosie. The singing of lamentations in the
halls of Mandos that none of the living ever hear (other than
@Glorfindel Goldtress, maybe?).
So perhaps the true answer lies not in the scale of the clash or the beauty of the banners, the might of the heroes, but in the quiet aftermath. The replanting of the White Tree. Sam’s return to Rosie. The singing of lamentations in the halls of Mandos that none of the living shall hear.
Because, as Tolkien once wrote in On Fairy-Stories, “The oldest and deepest desire is to hold communion with other living things.” Not to destroy them. Even Morgoth began not with a desire to conquer, but to possess—to make the music his own. And that was the first battle, truly.
So no—there is no greatest war. Only the long grief of Arda, and the light that flickers stubbornly through it.
Sorry to disappoint those looking for a scoreboard.
_____________________________
Klaatu of the Intersecting Rounds
Monarch of Mild Confusion
Bearer of the One Sock That Was Lost in the Great Laundry of
Mandos
Erudite Architect of the Archival Egg-Chamber of Eä
Rotational Adjunct to the Steward of the Speculative
Halls
P.S. For what it’s worth, the greatest war I ever witnessed was the Battle of the Tea Totalers of Narcus 9 versus the Vodka Warlocks of Gooblat 7. Seven minutes long, not counting the vodka pouring. It involved six explosions, two polkas, a goose named Henry, and a giant inflatable beaver that was allergic to maple
trees. The truce was written on a 2x4 piece of lumber that had a black dahlia tattoo it received one night after hanging out with the Vodka warlocks. Utterly magnificent.
