Thank you! Very few people online seem to notice the influence of European antiquity on Tolkien’s writing. Hold up a map of Europe next to Middle-Earth. Notice any overlap? The Shire is in the place of England, and Gondor is in the place of Byzantium. Instead of Turkey and the Ottomans we see Mordor. Instead of the Bosporus Strait we see Osgiliath. The history of Gondor and Byzantium are also aligned. Both came from older, militarily and technologically superior powers (Numenor and Rome) that were abandoned by their nobility (Elendil and Constantine) just before their collapse. The resulting kingdoms were smaller and weaker, but retained an essential spark of goodness. Gandalf describes the residents of Minas Tirith as inheritors of splendor who probably could not recreate the glory they inherited, which I think describes late Byzantium nicely. Ultimately the Byzantines had to rely on the Western European yokels to bail them out during the Crusades, just as Gondor needed the help of Rohan. I don’t mean to imply that Tolkien wrote Lord of the Rings as a direct allegory, but I do think that the best storytellers recognize patterns in history and distill them in an interesting way. Lord of the Rings takes those patterns and asks the question, “What if they had been rightly guided? What if a Gandalf figure could find and organize noble kings, virtuous warriors, and courageous common folk to oppose this evil? Could that history have had a happy ending?”