Board Thread:Suggestions forum/@comment-26274215-20160801135724/@comment-26088681-20160802004052

Well, you didn't get what I said, or maybe I explained it wrong. By what I said, I mean that this is not a mere copy of folks, countries or civilizations. Minas Tirith might be a representation or a symbol of Constantinople or of a Byzantine city, I agree on that point. But, even though it is a symbol, is it Constantinople? Is it a Byzantine city? Are Dunlendings simple copies of celts, are the hillmen another name for the Germanic tribes? Obviously not. I'm not English so I may be a little confuse and don't know how to express it, but I want to point out that there is a difference between what I would call a representation and a copy. A representation, as I see it, stands for a reference, for instance, as you said, Gondor and Arnor been the Eastern and Western Roman Empires. But it doesn't mean that Gondor and Arnor share the same culture with the Roman Empires and are exclusively inspired from those. On the contrary, those are utterly different - their politic governance, their ideologies, etc... Tolkien did not copied folks from real life, he recreated them. I don't know if I made it very clear. Again, Númenor is obviously a reference to Atlantis, but does it mean that everything coming from Númenor is inspired from the Atlantean civilization? I hope not. You can find several common points between Númenor and Atlantis, but you can only find them if you are versed in both two cultures. I'm pretty sure that when you read the books, not everybody comes to think that Arnor and Gondor have similarities with Roman Empires. Though his suggestion was good, his faction is only based on one civilization: Perse. Gondor might be a reference to Byzance, however its history in general, onomastics, language, civilization, governance, etc... is not only based on Byzance.