# What if Gandalf was the villain and Sauron the anti-hero?



## BalrogRingDestroyer (Feb 22, 2018)

Supposing that Mairon HAD repented after Melkor's defeat and that Olorin had, wanting to try prevent the reign of someone like Melkor, come to Middle Earth, at first with good intentions, but eventually bringing in a "tyranny of good" where he tried to make the world right according to his view, doing it in the name of Eru, but eventually becoming a tyrant. (Sort of like what Tolkien said he'd have become if he'd have taken the Ring.)

Meanwhile, Mairon, trying to free himself from the tainting of being Sauron and associated with Melkor and, would be gradually doing good deeds, though not always for the purest motives, and becoming better.

Eventually, Mairon would try to help bring down the corrupted Olorin and that would be the main tale.

I'm wondering how Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit would have gone had it been more gray vs gray instead of black vs. white.

I mean, instead of Simba vs. Scar, to use a Disney analogy, it would be more like Iago vs. Claude Frollo.


Would this be an interesting route to go for a fanfiction or a terrible one? 


One of the flaws, to a degree, of Tokien's works is that most of his characters are pretty much solid black or white. A few like Thorin, Gollum, Denethor, Boromir, Grima Wormtongue, Meaglin, some of the elf lords like Feanor, or even Saruman appear to at least have good and evil qualities in them, but the rest seem to be solidly classified as saints or scoundrels.


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## Sailawen (Apr 29, 2020)

I personally don't know. I do agree with your last statement there, yeah some characters like Maeglin, are good and evil, though.


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## Alcuin (Apr 29, 2020)

BalrogRingDestroyer, I commend to you _The Last Ringbearer_ that pursues precisely this line of reasoning. Originally written in Russian, an English translation can be found here.


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## Firawyn (May 3, 2020)

"Good intentions pave the road to hell."

I think that simple statement is very much at the core of Tolkien's writing. While one might suggest that Gandalf was all good, and Sauruman all evil, at the end of the day I look at the character of Saruman, and I don't see him as evil. I see him as a man who spent many years fighting for a good cause, and then when an enemy he'd been fighting and fighting and fighting just kept coming back came back _again_, he basically lost hope. He gave in to despair and fell into self preservation mode. He took actions to preserve himself and his position of power, perhaps even with the hope that if he maintained is power, that in the long term he'd be able to help some of the survivors of the war at their doorstep. Gandalf became his enemy because Gandalf called him out on his lost hope, and the principles he'd lost in the process. 

"A wizard should know better!" Fangorn said of Saraman, when he began burning down the forest. Saruman _did_ know better. He did it anyway. This, I think, was one part a plea to be stopped along his own self destructive path, and one part a choice made so that he couldn't change his mind regarding the commitment he'd made to Sauron. Once he'd burned Fangorn forest, his fate was sealed. He was tainted and made evil. His right to be called a Wizard - a title which was only ever associated with those who respected the earth around them - was called into question.

I use Saruman as an example, but you'd be hard pressed to find a single character in Lord of the Rings that I couldn't argue the good and evil qualities of. Other works, that's harder. Mostly because I'm more familiar with LotR and the Hobbit. Cut me some slack, it's been at least seven years since I've read any of the other books. LotR and Hobbit I reread frequently. 😏


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