Was Aragorn Black? A look at the research.
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- čas přidán 4. 06. 2024
- Upon the release of Magic the Gathering, Universes Beyond, Lord of the Rings, Tales of Middle-Earth there was a lot of controversy around the fact that Aragorn was depicted as a black man. Now a year later the Librarian of the Rings takes a look back at this and delves into research from the books to see whether Aragorn could have been black.
I am a historian and a natural scientist, and in my opinion you forgot two very important facts: Tolkien's world building and his interest in natural science and history.
1. Tolkien clearly said that the North-west of Middle-earth represents Europe and that Rhun is Asia and the Hot Countries south of Harad is Africa. He also wrote that the Shire has the latitude of Oxford, Minas Tirith the latitude of Florence in Italy and Pelagir in southern Gondor the latitude of Troy.
2. Tolkien changed the original myth about the creation of the sun from the last fruit of Laurelin and decided that the sun existed from the very beginning of time and that the story about the fruit of Laurelin was just a "mannish myth". Christopher Tolkien wrote that his father believed this change to be an "inevitable necessity", because he considered the old myth as too primitive. Tolkien wrote: "You cannot do this anymore" (Morgoth's Ring, "Myths transformed). Important about this change is the fact that the sun is the _only_ reason why Humans have different skin colours at all.
3. Tolkien also fundamentally extended his old timeline from 1 Valian Year = 10 Years of the Sun to 1 Valian Year = 144 Years of the sun. Which means that according to the new timeline about 60,000 years had passed between the awakening of Elves _and_ Men and the death of the Two Trees. Why did he do this? To adapt his chronology to the scientific knowledge of his time and to give Men and Elves more time for a natural evolution and sundering. Tolkien attempted this most severe change despite the great problems the new timeline created for the history of the Elves (e.g. the age of Finwe, Elwe and Ingwe). He wrote that the 60,000 years were „adequate, if not scientifically long enough". Which means that he was aware that in reality evolution needed more time than 60,000 years, but that this change was all he could do to adapt the history of Elves and Men to the rules of evolutionary biology. Despite the many chronological problems he cared so much about scientific accuracy that he put an unbelievable amount of work into these changes. (The Nature of Middle-earth, chapter "The awakening of the Quendi").
So, we know three things:
1. The North-west of Middle-earth represents Europe, Rhun is Asia, the Hot Countries are Africa.
2. The sun existed from the beginning of time and
3. Elves and Men existed about 60,000 years before the two trees died.
Skin colour has scientific reasons, not ideological reasons. The first humans had no clothes, no houses and no cars to move around. They were exposed to the hot African sun all of the time. A dark skin colour was the perfect protection against the strong UV radiation at this latitude, the strongest UV radiation we have on our planet. Strong UV radiation not only burns the skin, it also destroys vital Vitamin B. Lack of Vitamin B can cause serious illness, disabled offspring and death. Without the dark skin the first humans would not have survived. But….when humans finally came to Europe, the dark skin very fast became a severe disadvantage, because of the lack of sunlight in the North. Humans need to absorb Vitamin D from the sun, and a light skin colour can much better absorb Vitamin D than a dark skin, especially when you have to cover your skin because of the much colder climate. A lack of Vitamin D also causes illness, disabled offspring and death. And that is the reason - the only reason - why Europeans are white and why humans have different skin colours.
Long story short: We know how much Tolkien cared about scientific accuracy and an realistic world building. And we have a precise description of the geography of Middle-earth in relation to our world, especially to the different latitudes. As Anor, Eriador, Rohan and Gondor are part of Europe and people had neither cars, nor planes, trains or ferries to migrate in great numbers it is only logical to assume that 99% of the people - with the exception of some Marco Polo style adventurers and tradesmen - were white. For simple scientific reasons.
1% doubt is left. Maybe Melian was black :) Or a close ancestor of Aragorn was one of the Marco-Polo-style adventurers and tradesmen from the South. That's possible. But the scientific estimate says that he was a white guy.
Thanks for your well thought out comment, I appreciate you sharing this with us and taking the time to give us your sources. I should have stated in the video that I do not think Tolkien himself imagined Aragorn was black, simply that there isn't strong evidence in the book that his skin was any particular shade, and therefore I don't see any issue with an artist or art director choosing to depict him as black.
I don't know how Melian's genetics would work since she could probably take any form she wanted... but Tolkien did leave a lot of unknowns
@@TheLibrarianoftheRings I don't have any issues with that decision, either. Art is free. Adaptations can do whatever they want. I am looking forward to 2040 when copyright ends. Then we will see some wild things 😄
@@anni.68 I'm a little afraid of those wild things, I'm sure there will be some great stuff and not great stuff. But as Corey Olson says it will all help us think more deeply about the source text.
You've omitted some facts from outside the LotR books (like the Silmarillion) where Tolkien specifically describes Numenoreans as fair-skinned on numerous occasions. LotR and the Hobbit specifically leaves a lot out to focus on story and setting whereas the Silmarillion delves into the meat and potatoes - the finer details - of his works. The appendices in this universe are paramount to understanding it. I would recommend revisiting this video after delving into the larger legendarium. I'd suggest starting with the Silmarillion. A warning, however; it is quite thick reading. I am sure that will not be an issue for a librarian such as yourself though. (EDIT: I see you've already read it. I've listed the chapter below for you to reread)
From the Silmarillion: the chapter titled “Of the Voyage of Earendil and the War of Wrath.” Elros (who men descend from - specifically Numenoreans) decided to be man instead of elf, whereas his brother Elrond decided to be elf. We already know from descriptions Elros and Elrond originally were both fair-skinned elves. All Numenoreans descend from Elros. This is part of the reason that Numenoreans live much longer than other races of Men - they are in part, elven. Without this context, your conclusions are only partially informed. The details it provides even give us the indications of what type of Europeans Tolkien was basing the story on. There is enough to rule out Italian, Spanish or Greek. Most of the descriptions are Germanic and Scandinavian as is the folklore surrounding them (i.e. elves and dwarves).
Now I do believe that the specifics of Aragorn were purposely left vague on purpose as we as readers want to all idealize ourselves as Aragorn. Too many specific details on his description doesn't allow us, the reader, to become the most virtuous character in the story. It is in that spirit that his race is completely irrelevant. He is supposed to be all of us, in a sense. Tolkien doesn't want to break that immersion by making a character so narrow most of us cannot embody him.
I mean I'm glad that you dug into this, but the answer is fairly obvious as Tolkien was writing a British modern folklore (his words) and was based on the British history of Angles and Saxons settling the British Isles (also his words). We have to keep in mind the era in which Tolkien wrote in Britain was quite homogeneous - there wasn't much diversity. I do not think he chose to omit any particular races, just that it was not a reality of his time, era, or location.
Changing historic media for modern sensibilities is a disservice to the author, the source material and history itself. How can we learn from the mistakes of the past, or the successes, if we do not accurately depict them?
I think the particular issue that many MTG and LotR fans have in this is that the source material was wielded in a culture war-type fashion by WotC specifically to trigger traditionalists and conservatives who hold Tolkien's works as the pinnacle of High-Fantasy. I say this as a liberal myself, please note. I would use the card "Aragorn, the Uniter" as a prime example. Note the skin color of the other Gondorians (Numenorean descendants) following Aragorn in the card art. It would have been easier to simply represent them as they've always been represented either in Peter Jackson's films or the weekend cartoons of the 70s and 80s. We have to keep in mind many of WotC employees are very deeply activist and feel compelled to agitate what they perceive as "white supremacy" wherever they see it. It was a very intentional "stick in the eye" to a group that is predominately young white males. WotC knew would the characters they chose to represent as black would anger them the most, as they are the most heroic and idyllic. WotC was well aware the 50+ years of perception that has formed around these characters.
It's unfortunate as I hate other peoples works being weaponized as ideology in either direction by the people who didn't create the work. We need to honor the authors original vision. The source material needs to be respected. We are currently seeing this as well in Star Wars with George Lucas very openly speaking out about Disney not honoring his vision.
Tolkien would not have wanted any of this discussion.
Thanks for your thoughtful comment with sources. I need to clarify that I don't think Tolkien conceived of Aragorn as being black, and I never state that in the video, if I had to guess how Tolkien pictured him I would definitely say white for many of the reasons folks have brought up here, but he never says that in the text which was the point I am trying to make. You are correct that I have read the Silmarillion (many times), as you might imagine I am often deep in the legendarium working on the channel.
I have to correct something you pointed out, all Numenoreans are not descended from Elros, they are descended from the Edain who fought against Morgoth (see the Akallabeth), so Elros is not an Adam figure for the Numenoreans from whom all descended, but his line does have longer life than the others and he is an ancestor of Aragorn. As I noted in the video in the Nature of Middle-earth it says that the Numenoreans were "not of uniform racial descent"
I also have to disagree that we are supposed to see ourselves in Aragorn or that he is supposed to represent an everyman character. That is what Peter Jackson and team did with Aragorn in the films, but in the books it is the Hobbits that are supposed to fill role, which is why most of the story is told at the hobbit level whenever there is a hobbit present.
I cannot say that I know what WotC or any individual employee there was thinking when these art direction decisions were made. But I can say that there is no internal reason in the book for Aragorn and the Gondorians following him to be the same race. As noted in the video the people of Gondor that the Numenoreans found were a mixed people, who would have been further mixed with the Numenoreans who were not of uniform racial descent. Aragorn was not from Gondor himself, he is from the remnant of the north kingdom (which as others have noted here would likely have led to him having lighter, not darker skin) but it still means that he and the Gondorians following him would not necessarily look like each other. Especially if his mother was dark skinned as the MTG folks chose to portray her.
While I don't think Tolkien would have approved of the toxic way some of his fandom has developed, I think he would have approved of the close readings of his text that these modern adaptations engender, he himself was a close reader of his own work, always seeking evidence from the text for explanations he gave.
Thanks for taking the time to engage in this discussion, I appreciate you watching and thoughtfully commenting.
A well written character should be relatable to people despite their physical appearance, and that's exactly what Aragorn is.
This should go without saying, but The Lord of The Rings is a western fantasy. It can be assumed all the characters are white unless otherwise described differently. I mean for example if a book took place in an African inspired fantasy world, it would go without saying all the characters would be black unless otherwise stated right?
Tolkien wasn't worried about describing the race of characters, but that's because Middle-Earth is basically just Europe, so almost all of the characters in the book would obviously be white. If all your characters are white, then why take the time to describe something that can be easily surmised. You wouldn't describe a character by talking about how they have 2 eyes, 2 legs and 2 arms, you only describe aspects that make them unique from other characters. If any character was black like an African, I have no doubt Tolkien would make sure to describe that, because well he did that with the Easterlings. He took the time to describe what their race looks like, because it was different and unique compared to the main characters.
Character. Tolkien gives this description of Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings: lean, dark, tall, with "a shaggy head of dark hair flecked with grey, and in a pale stern face a pair of keen grey eyes." In The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen, he was said to be often grim and sad, with unexpected moments of levity.
The reason depicting Aragorn as a black man is so controversial is, like you said, his previous representation as a white man, but not even that is really that important. We had a lot of examples of previously established characters being changed significantly throughout the history, however, this sort of backlash over race changes is very recent, and exclusive to western productions.
The actual reason behind the controversy is because representation of minorities was addopted by western political parties, usually the ones more aligned to the left, and by changing the race of a white character to not be white you are in effect demonstrating that you care about representation of minorities, and you are likely to be aligned politically to the political parties that preach these values. The same happens if any politically charged topic is addressed in a piece of media, including immigration, religion, racism, poverty, etc... People that dislike those parties for whatever reason, and it tends to be around half of the population, would then see these displays as a sign of allegiance to the opposition, and generate annoyance. It gives the impression that the piece of media is being coopted into being a piece of propaganda for messages you do not necessarily agree, and diverting it from it's original intent. This makes it hard for people who enjoy that media to share and associate with it, due to the perception of being associated with those political parties as well.
However if a Japanese or Korean creator does exactly the same thing, this is usually not even noticed by the audience as significant or relevant, because there isn't any pattern of political pandering coming from those regions, so the perception of threat is non existant.
In the case of the MTG cards, this came after years and years of constant political signaling and pandering, so it is quite natural to see this race change as part of a broader effort to pander and signal virtue. It is just seen as impossible that the MTG creators just happen to think that Aragorn would be best depicted as black out of nowhere, and that political influence had no role to play in that decision.
However, the person being annoyed is not necessarily aware of the reason behind the annoyance, and is usually unable to trace the annoyance back to it's source. That is why they instead try to retroactively rationalize, claming that Aragorn was depicted as white, or that this is violating the source material somehow, which might in fact be true, but is usually not the actual reason why you are annoyed.
In the case of Aragorn, the fact that an european author didn't felt any need to delve into the character racial traits heavily indicates that the character was intended to be of a similar ethnicity then the author was accustomed to seeying. The same can be assumed for authors of any ethnicity, especially in older periods of time where multi racial cities were quite rare. This pattern can be found on nearly all pieces of literature in history. A lot of attention is given to the person's race when it is out of the ordinary for the author's region, but close to no attention is given when the character is the same race as the author. Interpreting lack of attention given to a race as being a wildcard where anything can be inserted seems overal disingenuous, as any person attempting to genuinely represent what the original author intended would consider it to be extremely more likely for the author to have a person of the same race in mind, compared to the alternative. The fact that a person can go through the writings and make a stong effort to not violate any specific clear mention just feels like diverging as far as you can get away with, instead of attempting to make a faithful depiction.
I think this is one of the reasons why no one cares about Nick Fury or Hiemdal being black in the marvel movies, it was done before they started making everything political with those films. They just did it because they were great actors who fit the roles very well.
For me with lotr my biggest problems with the race swapping was the fact it isn't as tolkien wrote it, and he was very serious about what he wrote and anything being changed in it by others. And with mtg they even swapped the easterlings, who are dark skinned people of middle earth to be white because they didnt want black villains.
But beyond that with other media I think it's kind of disrespectful to randomly swap a characters race so you can fill out a checkbox that says "we have met our diversity quota and don't really care about anything beyond that."
That and I feel like people should write original characters instead of changing existing ones, or is it that hard to come up with something new instead of slapping a new cover on something and making it out like it's better because the white guy is now black? If I were black I would hate that. If it were the other way around where you made a black character white to appeal to some sort of political or social group I would hate that too.
I can't remember where I read it, and it might be a secondary source, but I distinctly remember that Tolkien had described either Aragorn in particular or Numenoreans in general as looking like southern Europeans - think Spain, Greece, and particularly Italy. This is probably from some apocryphal source such as a letter or something, not published canon.
Ah yes. Let’s take a mythology made to be Englands and make the characters African and African American skinned.
I don’t see any possible reason why that wouldn’t make sense.
I can’t tell if this video is sarcasm but Aragon was not black. When a darker skin character does show up in LOTR such as the men from the south and those on the Elephants (idk how to spell the name of them) they are described with darker skin. Aragon is also from the far north. I think it’s obvious that Danithor reminded pippin of Aragon in his overall appearance including his skin. Plus the line of stewards were related to the old kings.
Arguing Aragon was black is like arguing that King Arthur was black because we don’t actually have any descriptions of his skin color from the original legends
In the video I do not argue that Aragorn was black, I simply state the evidence and explain that MTG is not depicting Aragorn counter to any information in the book, they are doing as good an adaptation based on the descriptions as anyone. Remember that legally they only have access the LOTR and the Hobbit. While it is true that Tolkien originally started out to make mythology for England that idea seems to have faded as he went along, and is certainly not present in the LOTR text which they have adaptation access to.
@@TheLibrarianoftheRings I wouldn’t say that idea faded as even on his death bed he always pretended he was taking the stories from The Red Book bilbo and Frodo wrote. I’d also say that it’s fairly clear a large insperation for Aragorn was King Arthur, which would at least be something to consider. You can like the card art but to say it would be an accurate depiction of the character I think is really stretching the line.
I’d also bring up that this was written in the 50s. Literature only recently really started describing a large amount of details for characters. That’s a recent phenomenon in writing. The time tolkien wrote his story and for much of human history, writing generally didn’t describe a lot of detail like skin color. It was either not important or assumed based on context. It only would come up if it was relevant or important to the meaning or themes of the story. Thus expecting the writing to mention skin color for every character is putting a modern expectation on an older form of writing
@@TheLibrarianoftheRings id also point out that when has anyone looked at a white man and said “he reminds me of this black man I know” when refering to apperance. For the part with pippin. My brother is black and I’m white and even though we have some similarities maybe no one is going to look at one of us and think of the other.
All he said is that Tolkien never said which is true. Also Tolkien built a whole planet of people with a rich history. If it's a thing Tolkien probably wrote about it. The idea is to use your imagination. Unless you are suggesting people from England can't Imagine a black person. There is and has been black people all over the place for a very long time if you didn't know.
There are very much valid reasons to depict Aragorn as black: if a black british person wants to depict Aragorn as black to feel more related to him, that would be fine, Tolkien was making a british cultural epic, so it would support his purpose, not erode it.
That is quite clearly not what was happening in this case. The unified depictions in the art prove that they were a corporate mandate, not an artistic inspiration.
I think the most important argument for Aragorn's skin colour (or of every character, for that matter) is Tolkien's sense od aesthetics. He wrote those characters specifically to satisfy some kind of aesthetic, that's also the reason why Hobbits look anachronistic in relation to Middle Earth's setting.
Tolkien would have never written a black character as the king of Gondor if that didn't carry a deeper meaning: given that Isildur's lineage should probably be white because geography and stuff, Aragorn would be white, too; if Aragorn was black that would imply some ancestor went on a journey out of Middle Earth for some reason and would not be just a matter of mixing things up because that could happen in reality. Tolkien just didn't work like that.
I don't see any problem in Aragorn being black in itself, it's just he wouldn't fit the aesthetics, and I think they are VERY fundamental, especially for an author like Tolkien.
I might have written in a broken English, I apologise in advance.
I disagree on the 'pale' and 'dark' discussion. To me, they actually seem like a simple contradiction in Tolkien's writing. The only way I could reconcile them is to try and claim that he was RELATIVELY so, to the describing person - but would Gandalf use a descriptive term to Frodo that wouldn't be within Frodo's own knowledge and conception? Seems really odd to me.
'Gray', like 'pale' seems impossible to me as a description with someone as dark-skinned as in the Magic cards.
I think that the biggest consideration is that Tolkien's own background, as a white man in England, writing based upon early medieval Anglo-Norse mythology is such that he probably would called out fairly clearly if major characters were so dark-skinned. Does that matter in a depiction? I dunno - but I am also unsure if a clear contradiction would matter to any greater extent; just as Shakespeare gets reimagined to other eras, it's not unreasonable to take artistic license for whatever reasons.
I'm going to be 100% honest. (Hear me out... )
When I first saw the art, and all the while of using the cards, I had a strong distaste for their choice.
You're first five minutes told me why. I didn't really consider it, but I suppose it was almost completely because he wasn't depicted as literal Viggo Mortensen.
You are completely correct. My entire conceptualization of Aragorn had been in the context of his depiction in Peter Jackson's movies.
I remember, even in my first reading of the books, they were already tainted by early depictions and trailers of the movies before I had even seen the movies.
I'm going to re-read the trilogy later this summer, and see what I can do to re-imagine him in a differing light.
I think. in hindsight, their choice to depict him this way was almost completely an attempt to escape the Comparison to Viggo.
I had initially thought it to be an attempt to pander and court controversy to either drum up conversation and discussion, or even just to try to attract new bodies into the game...
I thought that Hasbro and Wizards assumed "We already have the Magic nerds... Were gonna get the LotR nerds just because it says "Sauron" on a card.... Let's try to attract some people who are only here because 'Black Aragorn' got printed."
Now... While I do not fully discount the probability that it factored in in some small amount.... I think the majority of the issue they were facing was avoiding the comparison. They wanted to drive home a novel image and interpretation of his character and give their onw depiction something that makes it stand out.
That said... It still feels bad.
I am, in this moment, much less hostile to the change given the context that your video has added.
That said... If we all knew it was so simple and easy to just hand-wave Aragorn's race... You wouldn't be making this video and I wouldn't be writing this comment.
The fact that you have to make this video to seemingly justify the possibility is proof that it's kind of absurd. Don't you think?
Thanks for your comment. This is exactly why I hope they cast new actors in the hunt for Gollum, we have to move beyond this one cultural conception of Tolkien's characters that the Jackson films have engendered. I have played heavily with the MTG LOTR cards and I would say they are one of the best adaptations of Tolkien's work that I have ever engaged with. Almost all of the mechanics seem to be thought out with specific book passages in mind and how they translate in to the world of MTG.
I hope you enjoy your reread of the books (although it make you like the movies less, at least that is what happens to me).
@@TheLibrarianoftheRings I highly disagree. If it were not Peter Jackson leading on the project then I would agree. However, the fact that Jackson is and Andy Serkis is directing it is instantly going to create expectations you cannot overcome. It will have to be a very similar depiction or there will be riots. This universe is almost impossible to capture, however, and very few as as talented as Jackson. Everyone before him and after him so far have failed, and studios are not going to take that financial risk unnecessarily.
I was also more irritated by the race swap than I expected.
I think there are multiple reasons.
1) Aragon is probably the most self identification figure in LotR. If figures have different race/gender/sexual orientation than yourself than it distances it. And the audience of LotR was always white and male and hetero. So Aragon was "taken away" from them.
That's different than having a diverse line up from the start . This explains also why nobody was upset about the rohirim.
2) LotR is western fantasy. It looks and feels like a fairy tale of northern Europe. And it is based on it.
So a "ranger" like figure from the woods is expected to be white.
3) I'm for diversity and thinking about this for the LotR is a good idea in principle. But making American black seems forced. It's PC on the nose.
4) having ab African/American Black figure brings it's own cultural background.
5) I'm no Tolkien expert, but as I understood, Aragon is a descendent of this human civilisation of this sunken city.
So Tolkien referenced Atlantis/Greek culture.
So Aragon shouldn't be white!!! He should be dark skinned European. Somehow like in the old Bakshie animated Movie. And this would also be way more representative since Europeans and middle eastern, south Americans could look like that. There would have been a better solution to be more diverse and more source accurate. And this is frustrating.
There is more to diversity than having a black token/tolkien. (Yes, this is a Southpark reference)
I think that it's fine that literature can be interpreted in different ways
"Aragon is probably the most self identification figure in LotR"
That's precisely why Aragon in my opinion shouldn't be strictly any race really. Even if majority of the audience was white cishet men, I doubt the book was written for that demographic specifically. The fact alone that Aragorns race was never stated beyond "human" speaks volumes to that idea. (Human) race was simply never an important topic in the books, the core themes are written to berelateable to anyone regardless of the circumstances of their birth. Was Aragorn most likely imagined as white by Tolkien? Absolutely. But why artifically alienate non-white readership when the author managed to avoid it?
Having several conflicting portrayals is the best compromise, since you can't expect them to just never depict Aragorn anywhere and arbitrarily picking one does a disservice to the book, which took full advantage of the fact that Aragorn can be anyone really. It drives in the point that it's not the colour nor features of the man that matter, but the actions and ideas they portray.
So I think the difficulty with the MTG depictions here isn't per se that it's hard to believe that Aragorn could be black; it's that it's hard to believe that (a) Aragorn could be black *consistently with* (b) Elrond and Arwen being white. For that to be true, Aragorn would need to have very little genetically in common with Elros and the original Númenóreans more generally--and in that case, why should he be any longer-lived than the men of Gondor?
To be clear, I certainly don't think there'd be a lore problem if Elrond and Arwen WERE black. While their Edain forebears were certainly white, I don't remember anything specifying that Thingol or Melian (and therefore Lúthien) were; and since the MTG Galadriel is dark-skinned herself, so too could have been Indis, Finarfin, Fingolfin, Turgon, and Idril. So maybe the moral is: it's cool that MTG is going for diverse representation here, but it would be much cooler if they were fully consistent about it!
(edit: and when I originally posted this comment, it had slipped my mind that of course Arwen is Galadriel's granddaughter! While this doesn't bear on Aragorn's depiction, it does make it all the weirder that she's so pale!)
Yeah I hadn't really thought about Arwen since I was focused on researching Aragorn, skin tone can be vary widely between grandparents and grandchildren though, but you are right that Arwen is very light skinned in these cards. I think Melian could technically look like anything because she is crafting her own form as a Maiar and can put it on or remove it at will (not being incarnate like Gandalf is).
@@TheLibrarianoftheRings Thanks for the reply! And again, I don't think there's anything preventing the elven side of Elrond and Arwen's family from being dark-skinned. As is often the case in Tolkien, we're explicitly told about hair color (the Houses of Fëanor and Fingolfin are dark-haired; the House of Finarfin is blond), but not skin color--and it makes total sense that the elves would have awoken at Cuiníeven with a wide range of complexions. But I really think that Aragorn DOES have to be genetically close to the first generation of Númenóreans for his longevity to make sense.
This may be incredibly pedantic, but "was Aragorn Black?" is a terrible question. Aragorn is a fictional character. The real question that *might* be interesting is "did Tolkien intend for Aragorn to be Black?" and that question has nothing to do with MtG because their question is "did WoTC intend for Aragorn to be Black?" and the obvious answer is "yes."
Which, btw, is covered, so I know you agree with my pedantry.
alternatively: "how closely does the MtG representation of Aragorn align with Tolkien's?" and that, I feel, is the question you've actually answered, and I've interpreted that answer to be "Yeah, pretty darn good, they captured everything Tolkien emphasized about him." I agree. It's weird that some people get hung up on a singular aspect of a character. Nobody cares that Toby McGuire looks nothing like Andrew Garfield or Tom Holland; they're all accepted as Peter Parker. But change the skin color and everyone goes nuts.
Marvel fans are pretty use to dealing with the concept of different versions of the characters across different worlds and timelines. Tolkien fans not so much and to be fair it's not part of his storytelling mechanic (although he did dabble in time travel, so maybe...). But you are correct, if you actually look at the cards they have captured Tolkien's emphasis really well in the way he becomes revealed as the King over time.
I love both versions of him! People can hate.
They both bring something different to the character for sure.
Im all for well integrated diversity, but I cringe every time I see my black aragorn cards.
I understand that they don't meet everyone's expectations, but I think they look awesome
@@TheLibrarianoftheRings I can appreciate the art, definitely, but its just like you said. I hear "Aragorn" and I think Viggo. Its just impossible for me to make any other connection.
This is why we need a new actor in the Hunt for Gollum, Viggo is great, but we need many depictions of Aragorn.
What I would say is that Tolkien probably would have been cool with people depicting Aragorn as black, Ralph Bakshi is kicking himself for not thinking of it, and skin like ivory could describe a texture or sheen rather than a color although this is unlikely.
Yeah it is hard to say how he would have felt about it, I wonder what Christopher would have said if he had lived to see it.
I don't really care what arbitrary skin colour Tolkien imagined for his characters. It is a work of fiction and re-imagenings as well as artistic freedom from artists while depicting said fiction is one of the corner stones of fantasy art as a genre.
I have only ever seen one type of argument why Aragorn shouldn't be black in MTG's enterpritation of Middle Earth, and that's the type of argument I hope your content moderation takes care of.
The problem is how much time the moderation takes, even good comments don't see the light of day for a while because I can't be watching it all the time. But I get to them eventually.