

Sauron taught Celebrimbor and the Elven smiths of Eregion the skills required to make the infamous jewelry, with an ulterior motive… They’re designed to carry “the strength and will to govern each race” but – perhaps inevitably – there’s a catch. SA 1500: Nineteen Rings of Power are forged – three for the Elves, seven for the Dwarf Lords, and nine for mortal Men. Spectacular views of volcanic wastelands come as standard.

SA 1000: Sauron begins construction on a Barad-dûr (AKA the Dark Tower), a purpose-built fortress in what will later be rebranded as the land of Mordor (where the shadows lie). SA 500: It turns out you can’t keep a good minion down as Morgoth’s former sidekick, Sauron, makes his Middle-earth comeback. SA 32: The human kingdom of Númenor (home of the long-living Númenóreans or Dúnedain) is founded by the Edain ("fathers of Men") on an island raised from the Great Sea (which lies to the west of Middle-earth) by the Valar. SA 1: The Elven port city of the Grey Havens is founded. Skip ahead if you don't want potential spoilers! The Rings of Power takes place in this time period – though the timeline for the show has been shortened considerably. So join us on a trip through thousands of years of Middle-earth history. In our The Lord of the Rings timeline (which is more than a match for the Star Wars and Star Trek timelines when it comes to complexity), we’ve focused on the events that are most pivotal to the movies and books – so don’t expect a complex explanation of the Silmarils. The same goes for Jackson's trilogies – we're sticking with the books, not the movies. For this piece, therefore, we have decided to go with the original text, as working out when the show takes place would be nearly impossible. That's because the show condenses events massively, meaning that Tolkien's do not line up with what happens on screen. For the Second Age, in which The Rings of Power takes place, we have kept to the dates from the book and not added what happens in the TV series. We've got the important stuff from The Hobbit, The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King, which all take place in the Third Age, along with the appendices and The Silmarillion below.
