Thread:High King Ithilion/@comment-26429944-20160511153635/@comment-25101690-20160512090355

Let me illustrate the situation in the real world: All human races are related, no matter if you prefer the biblic creation theory or the scientific theory of abiogenesis and evolution. Even all animals are related (according to scientific theory but not to the biblic theory). But this relationship is so distant, going millions of years back, that it simply doesn't really matter.

On Middle Earth this is of course a little bit different since at the creation of each race, multiple forefathers were awoken for each race. As far as I know, we don't know how many. It could be that this is not the case for humans, that all humans have the same predecessor. It could also be that all Edain have the same predecessor.

For elves we don't know the exact number of awoken elves either, but we can guess that each of the 3 big branches of the elvish genealogy hail from one awoken elven forefather. For the dwarves we know the number is 7, but dwarves still feel deeply affiliated to dwarves from other tribes, even though they are technically not related at all.

In conclusion we can say that bloodlines don't really matter. The only thing that matters is what the people believe in.