[Galorme]

The thing is I don’t see why everyone sets so much store by what is "real" or "valid" or "cannon". I was thinking about this before, how different is the story in the Lost Tales different to the Silmirilion. If you take the Sil as True, does this mean you take the Lost Tales as False? Every story he wrote contradicts another in some small way, the Sil had to be changed a lot to fit with the LoTRs. Personally i love the Books of Lost Tales, and the story, I think, is better than the Sil. If i was to have read that first, then read the Sil, I would have felt a lost would have been lost (not least the tale of the End of Days).

You can say "what would the professor/JRRT/ 'The Master' [img]smilies/frown.gif[/img] have thought" but to be honest he was only a man, albeit a clever one, and he doesn't really matter. What matters is what you enjoy in the books, what you get out of them. I love the story of the End, and I set a lot of store by it, purely because I think the Sil is lacking without it. But I hated the loss of Eriol as well, and all the characters of the Cottage and the Lonely Isle. They bought the story to life in a way that makes the Sil look old and dead by contrast. That view is just as valid. If I was to say “therefore the Sil is wrong” I would be mistaken. A story cannot be ‘wrong’. It can only be good or bad. And the End is a good story, and if you think that also then re-read it, think about it, discus it. But don’t ask whether it was ‘true’. Every part of the story is a lie, but "a lie breathed through silver".