[Mithalwen]

I think that the answer to this depends on how you view "The Lord of the Rings" . Many people come to it as a stand alone story and from that point of view, you don't get every single related episode. Tolkien mentioned that he agreed with the criticism that it was too short! However he did have to move some of the story to the appendices. He also talked of "unexplored vistas" things referred to but not explained which give the story depth and richness and which keep so many of us going back to it time and time again - the difference between a passport photograph and one of those marvellous Renaissance pictures where there is far more to see than the main figure in the foreground.

Realistically there are only so many threads and characters a reader can keep track of in one story - on first reading at least. It is always a daunting prospect to be faced with an intricate cast list in Russian or historical novels. I know I struggled the first time I read the Lord of the Rings as a child - by the time I left Frodo and Sam in Cirith Ungol I had forgotten what was happening with the rest and gave up for a while. Can you imagine a first time reader in addition to the newly split paths of broken fellowship cutting to a new bunch of people and places whe hadn't really heard of before with no introduction... Theodred? Elfhelm? Fords ofIsen ...who? Where? What?

Aside from the confusion it would have, IMO, lessened the sense of deepening menace as the Fellowship severally get closer to the crisis if we had the insight to the situation in Rohan and Isengard that the Fords of Isen battle would have given and how could, as has been pointed out, any member of the fellowship have found out what happened? They had limited contact with anyone who was there. Gandalf obviously met Elfhelm while he was dashing back and forth and Merry tripped him up but with new threats pressing it wasn't exactly the right moment for the details to be discussed.

If you get sucked into the world of Middle Earth and end up seeing LOTR as part of its history then you can enjoy these stories as part of it. I adore Unfinished tales for this reason - because the whole world fascinates me. I don't know if they could have ever been sucessfully integrated - Tolkien was still discovering things about his creation to the end of his life - I think the battles of teh fords of Isen was among his last writings. They are great as part of the history but as parts of a specific tale then it is harder to get them to work.

If you want to include more battles then you have to change the perspective - hobbits aren't usually warlike. The films could have been more action packed perhaps if they had told it more as Aragorn's story - it would have told the story of The War of the Ring and been accurate to the "historical" information we ahve but would it still have been " The Lord of the Rings"? Hmm...