EverBeyondReach (Jordan)
New Member
I realize this question may seem silly, or quaint as Tolkien's great influence on the fantasy Genre is well documented, and this may just be me understanding that reality profoundly for the first time, but anyways:
What are/Are there literary predecessors to Sauron/Morgoth as the Dark Lord/ all-encompassing Evil Overlords, or is that trope mostly solidified by Tolkien?
Just curious as I am having trouble thinking of too many predecessors for that archetype, Like Lucifer is clearly a big inspiration for Morgoth, but Christian mythology doesn't usually have him commanding armies unless it is talking about Revelation or something. Dracula kind of has the mix of spiritual evil/physical presence and tactical mind right, but he commands far fewer troops than what I'm thinking of. I guess it feels very strange to me as someone who encountered LotR/Star Wars and Harry Potter by the time I was 7 that the Evil Dark lord would be such a modern concept, especially now whereas someone who plays video games and reads some other fantasy I feel like I see Dark lords, demon kings and other varieties quite often.
It also has me thinking about the problem of Orcs, and how much people taking Sauron as a base model with lots of killable minions exacerbates the tensions between the narrative desire to have pure evil creatures in fantasy settings and the other desire to have other fantasy races (including orcs) to exhibit the same ranges of people and expression as human cultures.
What are/Are there literary predecessors to Sauron/Morgoth as the Dark Lord/ all-encompassing Evil Overlords, or is that trope mostly solidified by Tolkien?
Just curious as I am having trouble thinking of too many predecessors for that archetype, Like Lucifer is clearly a big inspiration for Morgoth, but Christian mythology doesn't usually have him commanding armies unless it is talking about Revelation or something. Dracula kind of has the mix of spiritual evil/physical presence and tactical mind right, but he commands far fewer troops than what I'm thinking of. I guess it feels very strange to me as someone who encountered LotR/Star Wars and Harry Potter by the time I was 7 that the Evil Dark lord would be such a modern concept, especially now whereas someone who plays video games and reads some other fantasy I feel like I see Dark lords, demon kings and other varieties quite often.
It also has me thinking about the problem of Orcs, and how much people taking Sauron as a base model with lots of killable minions exacerbates the tensions between the narrative desire to have pure evil creatures in fantasy settings and the other desire to have other fantasy races (including orcs) to exhibit the same ranges of people and expression as human cultures.