Elthir
Grey Havens
Apr 30 2018, 8:28pm
Views: 3685
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my unhelpful answer (and not considering Orcs hailing from Elves as a certain fact)
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To my mind Tolkien himself doesn't seem too sure about this question. He actually asks himself this in a text. After musing about the question of heritability and other things, Tolkien notes...
'In that case Elves, as a source, are very unlikely. And are orcs 'immortal' in the Elvish sense? Or Trolls?'
JRRT, text VIII, Morgoth's Ring
But by the end of this text Tolkien has concluded that the majority of Orcs are perverted beasts, with possibly some Elves in the mix, explaining...
'It remains therefore terribly possible there was an Elvish strain in orcs. These may have even been mated with beasts (sterile!) -- and later Men. Their life span would be diminished. And dying they would go to Mandos and be held in prison until the end.'
But then Tolkien adds a passage in which he simply says orcs are beasts! So one wonders if he had maybe rejected the idea of an Elvish strain here, or was just not mentioning it again due to brevity.
And that's not the only text about Orcs in any case, as in text X we have Orcs made from Men [the chronology was altered to allow this], and the Orcs were said to be short-lived compared with the life span of Men of higher race, such as the Edain.
But...
'This last point was not well understood on the Elder Days. For Morgoth had many servants, the oldest and most potent of whom were immortal, belonging indeed in their beginning to the Maiar; and these spirits like their Master could take on visible forms. Those whose business it was to direct the Orcs often took Orkish shapes, through they were greater and more terrible. Thus it was that the histories speak of Great Orcs or Orc-captains who were not slain, and who reappeared in battle through years far longer than the span of the lives of Men.'
JRRT, text X, Myths Transformed, Morgoth's Ring
In my opinion the Maiar-orcs were never supposed to be the main source of Orcs in any case, but they could explain some exceptionally powerful, or exceptionally long lived orcs.
(This post was edited by Elthir on Apr 30 2018, 8:29pm)
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