Board Thread:General Mod Discussion/@comment-30303386-20170417200211/@comment-28794147-20170419033946

Also, Minas Tirith is basically a Constantinople that didn't fall. I always saw Germans as Rhovanion.

But you know what? Tolkien never actually based any of his Middle-earth nations off of irl ones. Sure, maybe he compared them to each other, but he didn't flat out base them off them. Which is why it's stupid to compare them.

Who's the elven factions? Or do those simply not exist?

Dwarves?

The only things Tolkien used when comparing his world to irl is with geography and climate. The Shire was like England and Ireland in those respects, and Gondor was similar to Italy. The Bay of Belaflas screams Mediterranian to me. It has deserts to the south and east, and pretty decent lands on the north.

Which leads me to my long list of problems with Dorwinion's loaction. It is basically located where southern Russia is, which isn't mild at all. It has temperature extremes a lot. Dorwinion should be an cold place with lots of communists runnning around. I think Tolkien just sort of threw it in there as an after thought, honestly, not really caring where it went.

I have many more problems with Dorwinion, but I'll stop there.