This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Robert: The full textual history of LoTR is too complex for this page, but Tolkien didn't originally intend for 'The Hobbit' to be in the same world as The Silmarillion -- the references he included were closer to shout outs. When he did start writing LoTR, he decided it took place over the mountains on the edge of the old map, just a few hundred years after the Silmarillion ended. He didn't change his mind until into The Two Towers, maybe later, so much of the story was written before the backstory was invented, and not changed afterwards.
Robert: LotR wasn't written before the Hobbit. The simplified sequence of events was:
- Tolkien writes the Silmarillion, and keeps rewriting it, but doesn't publish.
- Tolkien writes various minor stories which include Shout Outs to the Silmarillion, but none of them are published.
- Tolkien writes The Hobbit, including Shout Outs to the Silmarillion. This time, he does get it published.
- Tolkien starts writing LotR. Two chapters in, he decides to make it a sequel to the Silmarillion, occuring a few hundred years afterwards and off the Silmarillion's map. Much later, when the book was more than half-written, Tolkien extended the time gap to 6000 years. LotR is published.
- Tolkien continues rewriting the Silmarillion until he dies, when it, the minor stories, and all his jottings get published.
As far as this trope goes, the 6000 years Tolkien inserted between the Silmarillion and LotR would enough to justify the minor inconsistencies, even if he hadn't removed most of them while revising the Silmarillion.
The inconsistencies between The Hobbit and LotR are much larger. Having the Silmarillion available to provide backstory was no help resolving this, because The Hobbit was also inconsistent with that (consider the giggling elves of Rivendell, teasing the dwarves). Instead, Tolkien Ret Conned the ring, and swept the other discrepancies under the carpet.
Of course, even this simplified explanation is far too detailed for this page. It belongs on the LotR page, when that gets written, if it belongs anywhere.
Ununnilium: I thought that Lot R was at least partially written when Hobbit came out; that's why, for example, he has them mention the Necromancer, as a nod toward Sauron's slowly-coming-to-frutition-plans.
Robert: No. The History of Middle Earth series makes it clear that Tolkien didn't explicitly identify the Necromancer with Sauron until he'd started on LotR, though he may have been thinking of the Necromancer as being like Sauron. None of the plot of LotR existed when The Hobbit was written; much of the plot didn't exist when LotR itself was written.
Ununnilium: Huh, interesting. Weird, then, that he'd put a dangling plot point like that and Gandalf's going off to do stuff in there, but I guess he knew he was going to do somekind of sequel.
Robert: Unlikely. We've got all his working notes, and they apparently don't indicate that. It seems Tolkien was simply superb at making the unplanned look planned. For instance, most of Aragorn's lines in Book I were written for an hobbit called Trotter. Tolkien managed to change his race, and his Back Story, with hardly any changes in the actual text.
I may write a LotR page soon, where all this stuff can go (more on the discussion page than on the page proper, perhaps), unless someone else volunteers to do it first.
Ununnilium: Obviously, I'm wholly unprepared for such an undertaking. Anyone else?
Tanto: I'm leaving it in, but technically the Zelda games do all take place in the same continuity (at least according to Nintendo). The fact that the map keeps getting remixed is more of an example of Gameplay and Story Segregation than this, methinks.
--- I was going to say something about how Prince Caspian, the second book written, takes place hundreds (thousands?) of years after The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, in Narnia time. In there they explain that humans came through and settled there in that time. However, in the Horse and His Boy prequel there's tons of people hanging around shortly after the events of the first book, and I believe even the end of "Wardrobe" makes reference to princes coming around from other countries to marry Susan. And now I'm utterly confused.
Ununnilium: There's two separate groups we're talking about here - Caspian's people, and the Calmorenes. The first did indeed come through inbetween the books. The second, we've got no origin for.
---
Closet_Skeleton The Star Wars Example doesn't make sense as written, Exar Kun was never claimed to be the first Sith Lord since he's taught by another Sith Lord in his first (not as a ghost) appearance and Darth Bane was first mentioned in the Phantom Menance novelisation which was published years after the stories involving Exar Kun. It's also incorrect that the creation of the Sith keeps being put further back since most of the Retcon that goes on moves it further forward.
