#Manwë

[wroniec]

Taniquetil, a close-up

Manwë & Melkor

[uvanym]

manwë and varda, inspired by der küss (klimt)

[mateiru]

Manwë and Varda as the painting "The Kiss" - Gustav Klimt

[nervmaup]

Melkor, Manwë, Mandos, Yavanna

I've heard that my Melkor looked pretty much like Janosik. Well, I can't agree but it's still a nice comlement

[violecov]

Manwë Sulimo, Lord of the winds. (baby).

Edit: The original drawing has been found and I have been sent the link!! Here you guys have.

[thelien-art]

Melkor, Manwë & Varda; Most Powerful of the Valar 

Might also be my favorite Valar just need to add Nienna too design HC below↓

Melkor: This is obviously post Silmaril heist as he is already burnt and has white hair, which I HC him getting after fleeing Valinor, as he is said he took a foul form before being trapped in his body, yet when meeting the Edain, he has a fair form, which I explain by the importance of colour.

Colour is important for our welfare as it influences our moods, stimulates our brains, and decides how we experience the world, I find it exciting for Melkor, as a manipulator, to use colour to manipulate, which especially is seen in Angband, and also use it on his body, so when he gets stuck in a physical body, I interpret that as him being unable to fully shed a body, unable to roam simply as a power, and getting his crayons ability to use colour taken from him as punishment, so when the Ainur says he is trapped in a body, all elvers just assume that they mean only one body, and when asking into it the Ainur more or less confirm this as they have problems seeing the difference between being stuck in a body you can change, and being stuck in a body you CAN´T change.

And as always I like to think Melkor created a lot of pressure metal/gemstones, and as is canon in Morgoth´s ring, gold holds the biggest part of him after he poured himself into the world, so gold he shall be clad in😌

Manwë: I take great inspiration from the wedge-tailed and Golden eagle, as well as biblical angels, and peacocks for his clothes. I like the idea of his hair being a part of the sky, just like with Varda giving the "Lords of all Wind" a different sweet respect. He and Melkor, when first making bodies, took forms that looked alike, which he kept, so he looked closest to what Melkor looked like before his downfall.

I give him bronze as it has a warmer told, and I while I don´t doubt he can be cold, I always read him as someone who´s trying to cater to everyone even if it doesn't always go like he wants it to.

Varda: Rearely do I think she goes down to the Eldar, which also means she has a tendency to blend the light of the stars into her body a bit more than what might be safe for those who are not of the Ainur, making her almost transparent with inner light at times, and although she quickly corrects it when she accidentally does it the Eldar says that the reason it hurts looking at her is because of her beauty, much to her own amusement. And then, of course, the underside of her hair is the same night sky you can see closest to the door of night and the gates of morning where it is at its clearest.

I give Varda silver as that was one of the things Melkor couldn´t put his power in, including water, and a little headcanon of mine is she might have had a hand in the star metal being untainted...

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[gelenka-daria]

there’s been this persistent little phenomenon, this tendency people have to take melkor, the most powerful of the ainur, the architect of darkness, and gently pat him on the head like he’s some misunderstood genius who just needed a little patience and a warm beverage. it’s kind of fascinating, honestly. they look at the guy who spent multiple ages wrecking creation with obsessive precision and go, “oh, poor thing. he felt fear. he was hurt.” like fear is something only the unjustly persecuted experience and not, you know, a natural consequence of trying to wrestle the universe into submission and slowly realizing it won’t budge.

there’s this dramatic streak in how people frame him, a sense that the real tragedy was not the wars, not the ruin, not the grief etched into every hill of beleriand, but the fact that melkor was made to feel small. that his “individuality” wasn’t celebrated. but melkor’s individuality wasn’t a quirky refusal to follow rules. it was an all-consuming need to dominate, to possess, to unmake. he didn’t want a seat at the table—he wanted to flip the table, melt it down, forge it into a throne and sit on it alone.

and the idea that the other valar somehow “crushed” him? that they collectively failed him? no. if anyone was failed, it was the song he was meant to be a part of, it was the valar themselves, it was the children of Ilúvatar.

it was manwë.

because manwë never stopped trying. he never stopped believing in melkor, even when every sign told him not to. even when the darkness had already begun to bloom, when melkor’s pride had metastasized into cruelty, manwë still held out his hand. he hoped. he forgave. he gave melkor freedom again when everyone else expected and advised him not to. and melkor took that chance and immediately used it to devastate the light of the world and still manwë grieved. he never hardened, never turned bitter. he remained open, even when he had every reason to close himself off. and that’s the real heartbreak of their story—not the punishment, not the fear, not some illusion of an undeserved, cold crown. it’s that manwë never stopped seeing the brother he once loved, and melkor never looked back.

now, the fear part. let’s actually talk about that, because it’s important. melkor is the only valar who “knew fear,” yes, but not because he was targeted or excluded. it’s because fear, real fear, requires something to lose. it comes from the knowledge that you’re vulnerable, that you can’t control everything, that things exist outside of your will and might never bend to it. melkor wanted everything. he wanted to shape the world after his own imagination. but deep down he knew he couldn’t. he wasn’t eru. he couldn’t create life. he couldn’t bring forth new flame, only twist existing fire. and that gnawed at him.

he feared eru, the one thing he could never reach or rival. he feared tulkas, who bested him, he feared the music of the ainur itself, which moved with beauty he couldn’t comprehend or redirect. he feared the dissipation of his own essence as he poured it into arda, trying to control every piece of it and slowly draining himself in the process, his wasting away a making of his own hands. and maybe, maybe most of all, he feared the idea that he might be wrong. that harmony and love might actually be more powerful than control. that the others, in their peaceful submission to the music, had something he never would.

the rest of the valar didn’t know fear because they didn’t need to. they were anchored. not docile, but aligned. they trusted the music. they didn’t feel the same hunger because they were whole in ways melkor refused to be. and in cutting himself off from that wholeness, melkor made himself not just alone, but hollow. and fear fills hollow things and festers in isolation.

this doesn’t mean melkor wasn’t a tragedy. of course he was. but not the kind people try to make him into. his tragedy wasn’t that he was cast out. it was that he cast himself out, again and again. it was that he took the incredible, singular potential he was given and used it to consume rather than create. the world was full of beauty waiting for him to shape it with his gifts, and he chose to break it instead, because if he couldn’t own it, he didn’t want it to exist.

and yet—and this is where tolkien breaks from the usual storybook pattern—there’s still a thread of hope. tolkien doesn’t write villains as lost forever. he said himself that he didn’t believe any being created by eru could be irredeemable. evil, in his world, is not a rival force, it’s a distortion. and what is distorted can, at least in theory, be healed.

when arda is remade, when the second music plays, we’re told that all will know their parts and sing them aright. and there’s no fine print saying “except melkor.” no cosmic asterisk. the athrabeth tells us that arda won’t just be destroyed and replaced, it’ll be healed. made whole. and that implies that even the deepest wounds, melkor among them, have a future that isn’t just silence or fire.

maybe, in that distant dawn, when the music rises again, melkor will choose differently. not because he’s been forced, not because anyone finally broke him into submission, but because he sees. because he understands. because he no longer fears the music, but wants to be part of it. maybe then, the voice that once screamed against the harmony will join it instead, and the song will be greater for it. maybe, after everything, he’ll find his way home, not as a king, not as a god, but as a brother.

and yeah. maybe that’s when he’ll get his hugs. but they won’t be for what he suffered. they’ll be for what he became.

[anattmar]

🐥

[ylieke]

[verecunda]

This came to me in a vision.

[olenris]

Quick sketch <3

My headcanon on Manwë and Melkor's appearance.

Before they were enemies, they were brothers, so I chose a sky theme for their design. Manwë looks like a sunrise and clouds, and Melkor looks like the northern lights.

Should I make another art of them?

[wroniec]

Brothers

[thranduilofsmirkwood]

[mateiru]

Manwë and Varda from The Silmarillion

[whosthatsilmcharacter]

(All art used with EXPRESS permission from the artist)

P.P.S. sorry I haven't posted in a while. It's been a rough week 😅

[crownedwithstars]

The idea that only Ulmo or Nienna care about Middle-earth and do anything to help Eruhini is a strange misconception because Tolkien pretty clearly shows that at least Manwë is watching very closely what's going on and sometimes even interferes? It's just that the Valar mostly seem to work through the elements they represent, which if you think about it is pretty neat.

Like there are various instances where the wind acts up suddenly, causing storms or rising in just the right moment (as in ROTK, clearing the air for the Rohirrim and speeding Aragorn's journey as he sails for Minas Tirith)

And even more obviously, the Eagles. Tolkien specifically says that the Eagles are Manwë's advocates in Middle-earth, providing miraculous aid when all else fails. Without the Eagles, Beren and Lúthien's quest would have failed and Huor would not have got to Gondolin (which then would have prevented Eärendil's success or even meant he was never born). They give crucial aid to Gandalf more than once. The Eagles also help Fingon to save Maedhros, because Manwë "would not wholly abandon the Noldor". Tolkien recognises that the Eagles are "deus ex machina", and in this case, the meaning is quite literal.

Then there are the Istari, envoys of the Valar: while there is proof of only Gandalf's success, even just the efforts of one of the Wizards was enough to bring down Sauron.

As for Ulmo, you could argue that he is responsible for the whole Eärendil and Elwing arc - and that it was a job between him and Manwë. It's Manwë's Eagles that bring Huor to Gondolin, and Ulmo later sends Huor's son Tuor into the hidden city. Tuor and Eärendil both get sea-longing in their hearts. During the flight of the survivors of Gondolin, Eagles are again present and bring up the body of Glorfindel, making you wonder whether they would have interfered more in the Balrog fight if Glorfindel had not stepped up to protect the refugees - and Eärendil, the fated saviour of Middle-earth. Also, Ulmo rescues Elwing when she casts herself into the sea, turning her into a bird so that she can fly to find Eärendil. Water and air and birds keep showing up in the stories of Eärendil and Elwing and if that's not proof of Manwë and Ulmo's plotting, I don't know what is. I mean, it's even said in the first pages of the Silmarillion that they are fast friends and closely allied from the beginning! Eärendil becoming a star also in a weird way even combines the elements of Ulmo, Manwë, and Varda: bearing the Silmaril, Eärendil sails an immortal ship in the sea of heaven and stars, forever as a sign of hope to the Children of Ilúvatar.

What about the other Valar? If we keep in mind that they chiefly work through the elements they represent, their abilities to interfere are limited (and this is a self-imposed limitation clearly). Yavanna's creation of the Ents proves to be a pretty great one in The Two Towers, although you can argue to what degree she is influencing the events. More obviously In Shelob's lair, Sam calls for Varda, and the light of the phial of Galadriel comes alive in his hand and smites the great spider, helping Sam to defeat the monster. Also, during Sam and Frodo's desperate march through the hellscape that is Mordor, Sam yearns for a little bit of light and water to hearten him - and lo and behold, he gets these exact things as if Varda and Ulmo personally delivered.

In other words, the Valar are a lot more active in Middle-earth than they get credit for, and they work in subtle and indirect ways because only then can they make sure they don't accidentally kill a lot of the Children.