About this encyclopedia
Legendarium is an unofficial reference work on J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium. Its promise: every statement is sourced, and every statement tells you which layer of the canon it comes from.
The canon sigla
Tolkien's world exists in layers: what he published himself, what was edited posthumously, what survives only in drafts — and what adaptations invented. Without that distinction one mixes what he released with what later hands shaped from the papers, and with what exists only on screen or in a game. We mark the layer on statements and entries with the same four sigla — explained here, and everywhere else with a tooltip that links back to this page.
K1published in Tolkien's lifetime
K1 covers statements grounded in works Tolkien released in his lifetime: above all The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and their appendices, plus shorter pieces he published himself. When a claim is marked K1, you can treat it as part of the published legendarium, not as an editor's later arrangement or a working draft.
Examples The Hobbit · The Lord of the Rings · Appendices · shorter pieces he published
K2posthumously edited
K2 marks material drawn from the papers but published after Tolkien's death under editorial responsibility — chiefly The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales. The words and inventions are his; which version appears, how gaps are filled and how chapters are ordered often reflect Christopher Tolkien's choices. Reliable as a source of Tolkien's thought, not as a single frozen 'final' text he signed off.
Examples The Silmarillion · Unfinished Tales
K3HoMe draft
K3 is for the History of Middle-earth volumes and similar draft layers: successive states of the legend, experiments and abandoned paths. They show how the world grew and where ideas began; they are not a default authority when a later published or posthumously edited text says otherwise. We use K3 so you can see development without mistaking a draft for settled fact.
Examples The History of Middle-earth I–XII
K4adaptation
K4 covers inventions of adaptations: films, series, radio plays and games. We may describe them so readers can find what they saw on screen, but we do not present them as part of Tolkien's legendarium. K4 keeps that wall visible — the same story may have a K1 name and a K4 design that only exists in an adaptation.
Examples Films · series · radio plays · games
The reliability sigla
The canon sigla answer one question: how firmly does something belong to the legendarium? For adaptations that are still being made, a second question matters just as much — how well is it attested in our world? A casting rumour and a studio announcement are both K4, and they are not worth the same. So a second family of sigla marks that, in squares rather than diamonds, so the two never blur. Rumours are never published as news; they are only ever kept in the labelled section of a dossier.
Officially confirmed (studio/estate/publisher)
The studio, the Tolkien Estate or the publisher has said it themselves — a press release, a credit, a dated announcement. This is the only level that may carry a claim on its own.
Reported by reputable media
Reported by a publication with a track record and named sourcing. Good enough to record, not good enough to state as fact — the wording keeps the distance.
Rumour / single source
A single source, an unnamed one, or a claim nobody has confirmed. Kept because a dossier that stays silent about what everyone is discussing is not complete — but never published as news, and never phrased as if it were settled.
Method
- All prose is our own writing — facts are cited to work and chapter, never copied.
- Entries are data first: one master register feeds articles, search and (soon) timelines and maps.
- Drafts are human-reviewed before they appear on the public site (you may see DRAFT banners on the dev preview).
- Article prose is © legendarium.page (short quotations with a source link welcome); structured data is released under CC BY-SA.
The read-aloud versions
Many pages can be read aloud. The voices are synthetic — that is stated at every player, because you should know it before you listen. The second part matters more to us: these versions are not final. We keep working on them and renew them as the technology allows — the pronunciation of Quenya and Sindarin names, stress and pacing, numbers and dates.
What you hear today is the best state we could reach, not the goal. If you notice a mispronounced passage, that is a particularly useful hint:write us.
Corrections: write us — accepted fixes are credited.
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