Dragons - How did they come to be?

[davem]

Originally Posted by Aganzir

The dragons were some kind of fell spirits, maiar corrupted by Melkor I'd think. He didn't create them (as they already existed), only contributed to them having the kind of bodies they had (whether this means that he made them bodies or told them to choose a dragon-like appearance). Thus they weren't dependent on him, and eg. Smaug lived long after Melkor was thrust out the Doors of Night.

Which may well be the case - it does fit with Tolkien's general comments on the nature of creation & the way evil works in M-e.

At the same time, Tolkien developed his ideas over his lifetime, altered them, played with them & explored the implications - particularly in writing, & none of that stuff can be called 'final'. A great deal of stuff in HoM-e - particularly the later writings on the nature of Orcs, of evil, & the nature of creation - was in conflict with other stuff & often contradicted it. If you read HoM-e what you find is a very great deal of stuff by JRR Tolkien about the history & inhabitants of his created world. What you don't find is a single, coherent explanation of the nature of Dragons or anything else. Too many Tolkien 'experts' take the same approach to HoM-e that Ned Flanders does with the Bible ("I've done everything the Bible says - even the stuff that contradicts the other stuff!") - they take everything in HoM-e as incontrovertible FACT - even the Incontrovertible FACTS that contradict the other incontrovertible FACTS.

Your theory fits, as I say, but whether its the one Tolkien would have given if you'd asked him 'Professor Tolkien, how, in your world, did dragons come to be?' - its impossible to say & certainly the answer would depend on when you'd asked him. You might have got a very different answer in the 1920's to the one you'd have got in the 1960's.

Personally, I feel that the biggest mistake Tolkien made was getting side-tracked into this ultimately futile attempt to create a logically consistent philosophy/science for his secondary world - it could only (as CT pointed out) lead to the complete unravelling of that world, because too much of the earlier stuff could not sustain being forced into such strict constraints.

And yet, as I said, much of the stuff in HoM-e which is used to support these complex theories on the nature of Dragons (& anything else) was Tolkien thinking on paper, & was certainly not meant by him to be seen in the nature of 'official' statements. For one thing this stuff - like his later theorising on the 'true' nature of Orcs has to be rejected on account of the simple fact that it conflicts with what we know of Orcs in LotR - simply will not fit with what we have in the 'canonical' fiction (by which I mean TH, LotR, TS & CoH).

HoM-e is not 'canonical' in that sense - what it is is a collection of writings from a period of 60 odd years, & the intent behind it was to explore the evolving creation of JRRT & the struggle he had to bring it to a final, coherent form. Its certainly not something Tolkien himself would have published in that form. Its not definitive/finished in any sense, & any conclusions drawn from it, any theories (however well they work, or clever they are) are not necessarily what Tolkien himself would have come up with.

Personally I think that the best explanation for dragons Tolkien ever gave was in OFS:

The dragon had the trade-mark Of Faerie written plain upon him. In whatever world he had his being it was an Other-world. Fantasy, the making or glimpsing of Other-worlds, was the heart of the desire of Faerie.

Faerie has its own rules - & one of the major ones is 'There are no rules'. We have no idea what Tolkien's final, definitive, incontrovertible explanation for Dragons was - & neither. probably, did he.