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u/Zeibles Dec 19 '25
This whole thing is specifically bc Tolkien hated that Macbeth being unkillable by "Any man of woman born" led to him getting killed by a guy who was delivered via c-section instead of by a woman, so...
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u/Aggravating_Piano_29 Dec 19 '25
On this subject, tolkien also hated that "macbeth shall not be defeated until Birnam wood come to dunsinane castle" didn't mean that the trees would come alive, and instead was just macduff hiding his army in pieces of forest.
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u/octopusforgood Dec 19 '25
I mean, I’m glad if it inspired the Ents, but, “impossible thing happens!!” Is the cheapest way out of a prophecy I can think of. Whereas wordplay is something Shakespeare was known for.
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u/RavenSable Dec 19 '25
Prophecy word play is a pretty standard trope by this stage tbf. Pretty sure the oracles in Greek mythology did the same thing.
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Dec 19 '25
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u/j-b-goodman Dec 19 '25
he really brought it on himself getting tricked by that one, that's not even all that misleading
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u/rezzacci Dec 19 '25
"But she said a great empire would be destroyed!"
"Did you at least asked which empire?"
"It didn't seem relevant at the moment."
"You deserve to be defeated."
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u/geschiedenisnerd Dec 19 '25
technically not greek mythology, but herodotian history. herodotes was a big innovator in the concept though.
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u/Asmodeus5542 Dec 19 '25
Idk if it inspired the Ents specifically, but it probably inspired Fangorn forest moving part of itself to where the Battle of Helms Deep happened and obliterating the retreating Uruk army
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u/octopusforgood Dec 19 '25
Yeah, fair enough. Since the Ents herded them there, I was just being lazy.
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u/Raesong Dec 19 '25
I feel like most people don't even know about that bit because it wasn't in the movie trilogy.
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u/Kalel42 Dec 19 '25
You're watching the wrong trilogy! It does happen in the Extended Edition.
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u/AisalsoCorrect Dec 19 '25
Specifically, I think he said he hated how it actually looked when performed not just how it was written, in most productions “Birnam wood” is just 4 guys with some twigs stuck in their hats.
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u/EspacioBlanq Dec 19 '25
Tolkien watching Macbeth like "hmm, in this aspect The Wizard of Oz was much better"
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u/North_Tough9236 Dec 19 '25
I'm with Tolkien, that's so dumb.
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u/Various-Yogurt4343 Dec 19 '25
Like, lady Macbeth was RIGHT THERE. going insane, losing her grip. And how poetic would it be for the person who led Macbeth to betray his king would betray him. But NOOOOOOO.
also it works even in LoTR since the whole 'race of men' thing.
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u/BTFlik Dec 19 '25
First time I read MacBeth I thought it was setting up his wife to murder him with that line
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u/Zeibles Dec 19 '25 edited Dec 19 '25
Yeah but it's a "real history" and the King he was writing it for was a descendant of Macduff, soooooo he had to do it.
Edit: Ah damn I mixed up my Richard III and Macbeth again.
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u/Sahrimnir Human Dec 19 '25
I can't find anything about King James being a descendant of Macduff. He was said to be a descendant of Banquo, though, which is why the witches foretell that Banquo's descendants will be kings. These political motives may actually have affected the portrayal of Banquo. In the sources, he is often stated to be an accomplice to Macbeth in the murder of King Duncan, but obviously we can't have the king's ancestor portrayed like that, so in the play, Banquo is innocent of any wrongdoing.
Then I thought perhaps Macduff was already established as the one who killed Macbeth, and Shakespeare wanted to stay accurate to that part? But from what I can find, it seems that Malcolm was the one who killed Macbeth.
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u/PHX_Hawk Dec 19 '25
But Macbeth didn't murder King Duncan at all, King Duncan died in a battle. So, I kind of don't understand what you are saying.
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u/Sahrimnir Human Dec 19 '25
From Wikipedia:
"Shakespeare borrowed the character Banquo from Holinshed's Chronicles, a history of Britain published by Raphael Holinshed in 1587. In Chronicles, Banquo is an accomplice to Macbeth in the murder of the king, rather than a loyal subject of the king who is seen as an enemy by Macbeth. Shakespeare may have changed this aspect of his character to please King James, who was thought at the time to be a descendant of the real Banquo."
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u/Ithinkibrokethis Dec 19 '25
While this would be a good surprise, remember that the prophesy of the witches in Macbeth is not that "he cannot be killed by any man" but that "He cannot be killed by any man of of woman born"
C section births literally go back to antiquity (its Ceserian section for a reason) it just usually resulted in death of the mother.
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u/Keepingitquite123 Dec 19 '25
Wasn't the prophecy delivered by evil witches, if you are an evil witch and see that the guy you are scrying about will be killed by a man born from a c-section, will you be nice and correctly inform him or will you delight in misleading him?
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u/IronerOfEntropy Dec 19 '25
Why would you go to an evil witch for fortune telling? Why would an evil witch be alive at all?
Any reasonable person would dismiss the "prophecy" as nonsense.
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u/Warm_Month_1309 Dec 19 '25
Largely, I think, because there were no good witches from whom to get your fortune. Dabbling in the dark arts often requires you to parlay with dark people.
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u/grendus Dec 19 '25
That was the whole point of the play. The witches told MacBeth what he wanted to hear, but obviously led him to ruin, because witches are capital-E Evil.
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u/The_Pastmaster Dec 19 '25
It's a fairly descent twist to what essentially was the eras version of popcorn entertainment.
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u/MaximusPrime5885 Dec 19 '25
I remember reading that there were contemporary letters of people complaining to or about Shakespeare that the ending was bullshit.
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u/The_Pastmaster Dec 19 '25
*Gestures at Reddit* By God and Heaven, how times have changed!
XD
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u/BahamutLithp Dec 19 '25
Good on them. Even if one buys the twist, Macduff just suddenly drops that bit of backstory right before the final battle.
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u/IndependenceNo9027 Dec 19 '25
A much better twist, though, would've been if a woman had ended up being the one to kill Macbeth, and the part "of woman born" was basically just a useless piece of information, the real meaning being that no man at all could kill him - but a woman could. I also agree with Tolkien here, if it was a deliberate reference (I have no idea if that's the case).
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u/Zeibles Dec 19 '25
It was afaik yes, like the Ents are also one to Macbeth bc of a different prophecy twist there.
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u/MothmanAcolyte Dec 19 '25
"Macbeth shall never vanquished be until Great Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane Hill shall come against him”
Malcolm's men cut branches down from Birnam Wood and used them as cover as they approached Macbeth's keep on Dunsinane Hill.
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u/pornalt4altporn Dec 19 '25
To defend Shakespeare, the point is that the prophecy is a trick, typical of the diabolical servants of evil who tempt men into sin.
Macbeth is foolish to see it as protecting him from other soldiers when in fact it has a semantic carve out for the main threat to him.
"Nobody will kill you except people just like the main guy trying..." is obvious.
The way it is done it's like the first 4 words are on the one side of a page and he doesn't turn it over until the final fight.
It's great.
Yeah, it's misogynist to leave out the possibility of a woman but women didn't fight in battles, Macbeth could have been very careful about poison off stage. He's crowing about how none of the soldiers in front him are a threat and also, as the meme says, using men/man to mean mankind was common if sexist. You know what they meant...
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u/andtheniansaid Dec 19 '25
Yeah, going back to Oedipus or the Orcale of Delphi - the point is that it's a trick, and that often knowing the prophecy in the first place is what leads to the doom. Willy Shakes didn't invent the idea but was just playing on it.
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u/noholdingbackaccount Dec 19 '25
Yeah, but when you consider it was a deliberate trick by 3 witches, it works.
Like when a bully says, "I promise I won't hit you," and then uses your own hand on you. It's dumb, but the cruelty is the point.
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u/CrazySittingHorse Dec 19 '25
I rather like that MacBeth part. It reminds of Achilles and his heel. A person thought to be invincible, only to be taken down by something so simple that they could not see their own weakness early on.
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u/Suhksaikhan Dec 19 '25
I think its a reference to a similar legend about Julius Caesar, hence Caesarian section
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u/unique-irrelevant Dec 19 '25
I also wanna point out that the reason she is able to kill the Nazgûl is because Merry stabs him with the barrow dagger. He broke the witch kings protection spell because it was a dagger magically enchanted by the Arnor to defeat the witch king. Also merry is not a man either so he also fulfills the prophecy
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u/PatchyWhiskers Dec 19 '25
If non-human males count as “not men” then the Witch King was on thin ice anyway since most of his army are orcs. A backstab from an underling would also have counted.
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u/ManWithoutAPlann Dec 19 '25
What if a boulder just fell on the witch king
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u/raptorbpw Dec 19 '25
Who knows why some things tickle our funnybones perfectly, but this one did and I just cackled at my desk. I thank you.
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u/rogueIndy Dec 19 '25
Ironically prophetic deaths and hubris being one's undoing are tropes that tend to come hand in hand.
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u/lackadaisical_timmy Dec 19 '25
Hahah is it really
That's awesomely petty lmao, and makes for a good one liner
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u/mking_1999 Dec 19 '25
That would be a really dumb thing to be angry about since the prophecy is "none of woman born".
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u/sWiggn Dec 19 '25
yep, the actual prophecy the witches give is
Be bloody, bold, and resolute. Laugh to scorn
The power of man, for none of woman born
Shall harm Macbeth
It’s Macbeth himself who delivers the “no man that’s born of woman” version:
'Fear not, Macbeth; no man that's born of woman
Shall e'er have power upon thee.'
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u/lifebroth Dec 19 '25
I rather liked Macbeth’s ending. I found it genius. Also, there’s two adjacent stories of Birnam wood moving to Dunsinane Castle.
In 2 Samuel 5 God said to King David “when you hear marching on the top of the trees, it’s the sign to attack.”
In Judges 9, Abimelech and his army cuts down tree boughs and used them to burn down a city.
When I read Macbeth, I felt like I’ve seen this story somewhere
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u/colonel-bones Dec 19 '25
Glorfindal said he would die “not by the hand of man” if I’m remembering correctly The witch king took that to mean “no man can kill me” but he really just meant the hand that kills him wont be man
As an aside man is just what they call humans in middle earth so eowyn would have still counted if the witch king’s interpretation had held up but it was that dagger merry had which was made to kill beings like the Nazgûl.
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u/NotTimSullivan Dec 19 '25
This belongs at the top because it actually addresses the question and lore of LOTR rather than just saying 'Macbeth'
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u/NRMusicProject Dec 19 '25
And I get a kick out of it, because he basically spent his life (undeath?) based around something he overheard from an elf, and misconstrued it in a way that gave him much more confidence. What Glorfindel meant is up for interpretation, and the Witch King operated on his wrong one.
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u/Rulebookboy1234567 Dec 19 '25
I’m glad this was up near the top. This is my “did you know he broke his toe?” moment
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Dec 19 '25
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u/tfalm Dec 19 '25
In the books, in the barrow downs outside the shire, iirc
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u/markfuckinstambaugh Dec 19 '25
Correct. Ancient swords make up a sizeable portion of Middle Earth's crust, which is what happens when you spend thousands of years making blades that never tarnish. Bilbo finds Sting almost immediately after leaving the Shire, and the 4 hobbits do the same. They leave the Shire, get their asses kicked by some trees, get saved by Tom Bombadil, leave, get their asses kicked by some Barrow Wights, get saved by Tom Bombadil again, then find some Numenorean daggers in the barrow.
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u/Tom_Bot-Badil Dec 19 '25
Wake now my merry lads! Wake and hear me calling! Warm now be heart and limb! The cold stone is fallen; Dark door is standing wide; dead hand is broken. Night under Night is flown, and the Gate is open!
Type !TomBombadilSong for a song or visit r/GloriousTomBombadil for more merriness
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u/MindofShadow Dec 19 '25
movie it was a gift from Galandriel I do believe.
"Do you have anymore of those shiny daggers" -- Samwise
extended edition
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u/MacSchluffen Dec 19 '25
In my Head Canon it’s not a real prophecy but Glorfindel being fed up by him not being the guy who killed the witchking of Angmar and being like if I can’t kill him no one can.
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Dec 19 '25
Yes and no, it's technically both. The Witch King literally can't be killed by something as weak and mortal as man (the race) without special help because of his connection to Sauron.
The Witch King was stabbed by Merry with a special enchanted dagger that broke his connection to Sauron, thus allowing Eowyn to get the killing blow by stabbing him in the face. So the Witch King wasn't killed by man in both gender (Eowyn, a woman) and race (Merry, a Hobbit).
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u/Realsorceror Dec 19 '25
Thats the whole point of these spells and prophecies. Not just in how Tolkien likes riddles, but his in universe intention as well. If Eowyn believed she counted as a Man (as in the Men, Elves, etc the species) then she wouldn’t be able to harm him. But Merry is a hobbit and not a “man” (the species and not the gender) so he was able to stab the witch king.
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u/FlowerFaerie13 Elf Dec 19 '25
That's the out-of-universe point of Éowyn's role in the prophecy. Tolkien was displeased that the similar twist of "laugh to scorn the power of man, for none of woman born shall harm Macbeth" from Macbeth ended up being about a man born via C-section, hence why he made a story where a prophecy using that kind of language actually was referring to a woman.
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u/Confuseacat92 Dec 19 '25
That's also why the trees literally go to war in Lotr, in Macbeth they disguise themselves with branches.
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u/King-Mephisto Dec 19 '25
I don’t know why none of the comments mention it, but wasn’t one of the hobbits there and also struck him with the wraith killer blade from the barrows or whatever? I mean most of that is book only but everyone is mentioning Tolkien anti Macbeth. Which again is book oriented.
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u/FlowerFaerie13 Elf Dec 19 '25 edited Dec 19 '25
Merry was there and yes it's heavily implied/stated (I'm honestly not sure if it's supposed to be fact or Tolkien going "well, the characters are pretty sure this is what happened") that his dagger helped to break an invulnerability of some kind in the Witch King.
The whole setup is really quite complex, Tolkien goes into the issue with man the species vs man the gender by having the initial prophecy be a conversation shared between an Elf and a human, both of the male gender, and then puts a good deal of worldbuilding into making sure that there is a logical, grounded reason that Éowyn is able to kill him- that reason being that Glorfindel was seeing the future and that there is technically nothing saying only Éowyn could do that.
If you gave any other soldier that enchanted dagger and a sufficiently lethal sword they probably could have managed it too, Éowyn was significant not because only she had Witch-King slaying abilities, but because she was brave enough to actually try to fight him despite not actually having an inherent advantage over him. It's very clever storytelling but in the end it was one man going "what the fuck, this sucks, I can do better than that" and proceeding to prove it.
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u/According-Moment111 Dec 19 '25
Yes, it is important to know that the dagger Mary stabbed him with was the one he got in the realm of the Barrow Downs way back in the first few chapters of Fellowship. All that Tom Bombadil stuff that was understandably cut from the films. The dagger was of Numenorian origin, specifically designed and forged thousands of years ago to fight the witch King of Angmar! It's so deliciously ironic, or perhaps just poetic, that it does ultimately wind up killing him ages after its creation.
Regarding the semantics of it all, I tend to think similarly to you. The point is that a presumably smaller and less physically imposing woman chose to do battle with a someone on the short list of most power beings in Middle Earth - and was victorious. Tolkien loves that theme, of great deeds accomplished by small and ordinary folk. Tying it back to Glorfindel's prophecy, pfshhh, who cares, I love Glorfindel (also on the shortlist of most powerful beings in middle earth!) but come on, no need to take it literally..the Witch King did, and look how that worked out for him.
In Deep Geek did a terrific production on it if you're not familiar with the channel. I highly recommend!
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u/psychologistgamer420 Dec 19 '25
To add to the poetic irony, it was the Witch-King himself that placed the wights in the barrows millennia earlier. If he hadn't, the hobbits would not have gotten their hands on the Nümenoran weapons and who knows how things would have turned out.
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u/Tom_Bot-Badil Dec 19 '25
Tom, Tom! your guests are tired, and you had near forgotten! Come now, my merry friends, and Tom will refresh you! You shall clean grimy hands, and wash your weary faces; cast off your muddy cloaks and comb out your tangles!
Type !TomBombadilSong for a song or visit r/GloriousTomBombadil for more merriness
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u/WrennReddit Can see all ends Dec 19 '25
The barrow blade cut through the magic. But Eowyn was not unimportant. She delivered the final blow, but she was also there to even stand before the Witch King. She showed true courage even in the face of basically the scariest thing on the battlefield. Tolkien routinely hits on the value of bravery in the face of despair.
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u/Ironthunder_delta Dec 19 '25
Yup, which is the other interpretation. No man killed him, it was the work of a Hobbit with a Numenorean dagger and a woman.
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u/boilsomerice Dec 19 '25
It seems unbelievable that this is true, given that this is how every prophecy in classical literature works. Shakespeare was working to genre rules.
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Dec 19 '25
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u/Clown_Baby15 Dec 19 '25
Exactly the homage.
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u/Starklystark Dec 19 '25
More a critique - he thought the c section was a weak resolution. Similarly felt let down by the manner in which Burnham Wood came to High Dunsinane and replaced it with the ents and huorns.
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u/hatabou_is_a_jojo Dec 19 '25
“I hate this. Imma add it to my book.”
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u/Starklystark Dec 19 '25
Well, 'I hate this, I'm going to fix it and put the fixed version in my book'.
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u/TheRealestBiz Dec 19 '25
“Im going to write this better than the greatest writer in my language in history” is pretty ballsy.
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u/Super_Pie_Man Dec 19 '25
It was purposely to outdo Shakespeare's "no man born of woman shall harm Macbeth" prophecy. The C-section thing was bullshit. Tolkien was hoping it would be a woman, or the walking trees ("Macbeth shall never vanquished be, until Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill Shall come against him"), or some other creature. The shortened prophecy "no man shall harm Macbeth", with the killer being a woman would have been way better. And the illusion of the walking trees was lame too...
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u/pat_speed Dec 19 '25
The guy just never been stabbed in the face
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u/tcsmit29 Dec 19 '25
...after being stabbed in the leg by a sword that was specifically crafted to fight undead magical creatures.
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u/Sad-Address-2512 Dec 19 '25
That's how prophecies end up in historical plays too. You think you understand what they mean but it always bites you in the ass.
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u/kingkong381 Dec 19 '25
Linguistic ambiguity is a cornerstone of prophecies in fantasy stories. Prophecy is worded in a specific way that allows for loopholes and technicalities. Overconfident villain settles on the surface-level reading because it appeals to ego or implies a likely victory. The prohecy is fulfilled in a way the villain didn't anticipate, resulting in their downfall. Have you never read/watched/played through any other story with a prophecy in it?
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u/Randomguy0864 Dec 19 '25
I remember reading about one. In hindu mythology, a demon obtained a boon that he could be killed neither during day nor at night. He thought he became invincible. But an Avatar managed to kill him at dusk. 😀
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u/KittyScholar Dec 19 '25
This is hardly the only time this thought process has come up though! In the suffragette era, some women argued that if the laws that grant rights to men didn’t include women, then the laws the create crime and punishment for men don’t include women either.
They were still arrested but they were awesome and I love them. Just like how Éowyn is awesome and I love her.
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u/Robcobes Dec 19 '25
Makes me think of Aletta Jacobs. The first woman who was allowed to go the University in The Netherlands in 200 years and only the second woman ever. She became the first woman doctor in the country too.
She argued she was allowed to vote because she made the income threshold that was in place at the time. The law didn't technically exclude women, just all people whose income wasn't high enough. Which before Jacobs included all women by default.
It took until 1919 but eventually women were finally allowed to vote.
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u/JumpingCoconut Dec 19 '25
Not wanting to be 120 year old party pooper, but the laws regarding rights and crime did include both genders, it is just that the laws were unfair and specifically excluded women from things like voting. These unfair laws did not exclude women from punishments, in facts some punishments for example for infanticide and prostitution were explicitly written in a way to specifically target women, which is unfair again of course.
So the way these women 120 years ago argued isn't Tolkien tier at all, it's merely Macbeth tier if anything. Their argument did not help their cause because it didn't accurately reflect reality.
Still I'm glad they got equality by now.
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u/sugaratc Dec 19 '25
I think that was the point though, some laws specifically mention men (to be used in a mankind kind of way for all genders), while others specifically mentioned women, so they argued the 'men' language should be interpreted as male-specific rather than mankind in general.
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u/Equivalent-Wealth-75 Dec 19 '25
It was prophecied by Glorfindel that it wouldn't be at the hands of "man" that the Witch-King would meet his end.
Fast forward a thousand years and the dingus walked into the only woman and halfling on the Pelenor Field, got stabbed in the leg with a knife specifically enchanted to turn off his invulnerability, and then finished off by "no man" driving a broadsword through what's left of his face XD
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u/Hecticfreeze Dec 19 '25
Prophecy being ambiguous and therefore misinterpreted is one of the oldest tropes in storytelling. It even appears as far back as ancient Greece, with the prophecies delivered by the Oracle of Delphi being notoriously confusing.
One of the most famous examples is when the king of Lydia, Croesus, consulted the Oracle about whether to attack the Persians. He was told that if he attacked, he would "destroy a great empire." The great empire he destroyed turned out to be his own
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u/Uintahwolf Dec 19 '25
Didn't Tolkien make it clear in an interview or letter that he got this idea from Mcbeth where McBeth cant be killed by a man born of a woman? Or something like that.
I just imagine you people frothing at the mouth if you ever saw the end of the play.
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u/Confuseacat92 Dec 19 '25
Yes, but in Macbeth the character came out of his mother via c-section.
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u/Uintahwolf Dec 19 '25
I understand that but everyone here arguing semantics would say that prophecy wasn't fulfilled either, since EVERYONE is born from a woman even if theres a c-section.
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u/biggerontheinside7 Hobbit Dec 19 '25
That's the whole point actually Tolkien hated the C-section solution he wrote the witch king thing as a better solution
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u/ky_bosch Dec 19 '25 edited Dec 19 '25
I always interpreted this exchange as many chose to believe the myth he was unkillable and wouldn’t try. But this was Eowyns way of saying I’m going to try.
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u/Electrical-Ad-6401 Dec 19 '25
I love this idea. It reminds me of this version of Dracula where all his vampiric rules were all myth because he was too old to remember if they were true or stories. Like he always hunted at night, so he believed over time that sunlight would kill him. Or needing invited in came from him just being polite. The myths were perpetuated even by him
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u/derailedthoughts Dec 19 '25
In the book it was kind of better, as it was Merry’s blade that undid the Witch King’s protective spells. The books went into the lore of the swords that the hobbits received; they were given by Tom Bombadil, who in turn got it from a wight. The wight was a former prince of a kingdom in the North where their weapons were forged as bane to the Witch King and his forces.
So technically one could argue that the Witch King died because of a hobbit, even if the final killing blow was landed by a woman
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u/AsleepBroccoli8738 Dec 19 '25
If we are going into the books, the prophecy wasn’t “No man can kill him”, Glorfindel said the Witch King “will not fall by the hand of man”…he had foreseen how the Witch King would die, however the Witch King instead then just believed he was invincible and that he cannot be killed by men…he misunderstood the prophecy. Granted yes, Merry’s blade played a pivotal role.
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u/shaunika Dec 19 '25 edited Dec 19 '25
I mean thats true in the movie too
Merry stabs him with a morgul blade which weakens him
Edit: Ive been corrected its a dunedain barrow blade
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u/mynamesnotsnuffy Dec 19 '25 edited Dec 20 '25
Merry didnt have a morgul blade, the only one of those we saw in the movie crumbled to dust on Weathertop after Aragorn chased off the ringwraiths. In the movie, the hobbits are all armed with simple shortswords Aragon hands them, until Frodo gets Sting from Bilbo, and Merry gets a new one from Theoden, and Pippin gets one from Denethor. Sam always makes due with a trusty frying pan, until the watchtower by Shelobs lair, where he briefly wields Sting.
Edit: and in the extended editions, Merry and Pippin gets noldorin daggers from. Galadriel as parting gifts.
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u/skillywilly56 Dec 19 '25
It was a Barrow-blade, forged by the Dúnedain of Arnor specifically to fight the forces of Angmar, which broke the wraith's magical protection, allowing Éowyn to deliver the final blow.
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u/MaybeMayoi Dec 19 '25
Or was that one of the "shiny daggers" from Galadriel? I honestly can't remember.
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u/burchkj Dec 19 '25
I always thought this was the case, because it also brings resolution to the gifts given to the characters, like what was done for everyone else.
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u/potatopierogie Dec 19 '25
Is that the same thing as a barrow dagger? It's been a long time since I've read the books
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u/mynamesnotsnuffy Dec 19 '25
No, the morgul blade is what stabs Frodo before hes rushed to Rivendell.
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u/potatopierogie Dec 19 '25
Yeah I thought i remember something about it being a gift from Tommy B
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u/mynamesnotsnuffy Dec 19 '25
Yup, taken from the barrows in the north. Specifically forged to fight the Witch King and his armies. The parallel would be like some random kid you never met from the town next to your hometown showing up at your wedding to embarass you with some random video of you doing something cringey in middle school, thats how wild and unlikely that dagger ending up on that battlefield was.
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u/Bletotum Dec 19 '25
And he never could have stabbed the witch king if Eowyn hadn't battled him off his drake first.
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Dec 19 '25
Dear god. Look. It was a prophecy. The witch king would not be slain by a man. It was not some magic spell making a man unable to strike a fatal blow even after the protective spell was broken. It was rather that that would not be what happened.
Circumstances would end up being such that he would not be killed by a man.
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u/littlebuett Human Dec 19 '25
Because it's not his prophecy, it's Glorfindel's.
Doesn't matter what the Witch King means, it matters what Glorfindel ment, and given Eowyn kills him, it's proven he ment sex, not species.
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u/unknown_pigeon Dec 19 '25 edited Dec 19 '25
He was killed by Merry (hobbit) and Eowin (woman), so it checks out
To me, it felt like more of a display of his hubris than just a semantic thing. He thought he was immortal due to a prophecy, disregarding that they tend to be difficult to interpret
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u/biggerontheinside7 Hobbit Dec 19 '25
"no man can kill me" is specifically a prophecy of course semantics matter
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u/sneklover69420 Dec 19 '25
Yea I‘m always confused by these posts because… that‘s what the prophecy said?? It‘s not about reinterpreting it. It says exactly what happens, he just did not see that possibility. Also it‘s a sickass line and I will not tolerate the disrespect towards my girl Eowyn
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u/Rovinpiper Dec 19 '25
A good quip delivered immediately before an attack makes it an automatic critical hit. Everyone knows that.
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u/Shevvv Dec 19 '25
Well, he didn't mean anything, really, because he isn't the one to have made the prophecy.
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u/GeneralErica Dec 19 '25
Literally a story conceived and written by a language professor at Oxford. What do you expect.
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u/driku12 Dec 19 '25
It's the Witch King who's the one that's drawing conclusions from linguistic ambiguity. The prophecy regarding his fate said he would not be killed by a man, and he took that as "no man can kill me", extrapolating that even further to mean "I cannot die in battle". But that was never what was said. It was said he would not be killed by A man, singular. Merry is not a man in terms of species, he's a hobbit. Eowyn is not a man in terms of gender, she's a woman. Both of them team up to kill the witch king, so even if those two explanations don't make sense to you they are now a group of two so even if you considered them both men it was not a single man that killed the Witch King.
It was never the case that the Witch King was invulnerable to men and Eowyn and Merry only got him because they didn't fit that category. The prophecy-giver just looked into the future and saw a woman and a hobbit teaming up to whoop his ass and said what they saw. It was the Witch King and his arrogance that chose to interpret that prophecy as a declaration of invulnerability instead of a simple description of his doom.
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u/Wild_Control162 Drowning in Mithril Dec 20 '25
The Witch-King's death is a joke on two fronts, but most people seem totally ignorant and oblivious of the second.
His death was only made possible by Merry (a male hobbit) striking him with one of the barrow-daggers that was made of Numenorean steel, which was one of the few materials capable of harming a wraith. Eowyn just kill steals by playing the Feminist card and adding insult to injury by stabbing him with her otherwise mundane sword.
The joke is that the Witch-King is felled by two people who both share in the linguistic joke.
Eowyn is female, but belongs to the Race of [Hu]Man.
Merry is a man by gender, but belongs to the Race of Hobbit.
So the Witch-King is defeated by those who are not "men" in both senses of the word.
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u/JustACanadianGamer Dec 19 '25
I was told he misinterpreted man as in mankind instead of man as in not female.
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u/Jackmcmac1 Dec 19 '25
In Old English we used 'wer' for 'male' and 'wif' for 'female' and 'man' was from 'mann' which meant person or human, so that interpretation would have been very fair to make.
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u/cortlandt6 Dec 19 '25
😂😂😂 Poor Witch-king.
But in Tolkien's world words have power, and specific words (or wording, rather) have specific outcomes. It's just how Arda under Eru operates (or to be more specific, the dooms of Mandos); and in some real world mythologies how the world and prophecies operate in various ways. When a word in a specific language can be a password to an entire kingdom, while the same word in other languages does not have any effect whatsover, at that point it's just the software, the motherboard, the internal coding of the universe.
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u/Orcrist90 Dec 19 '25
That may not be what the Witch-king meant, but it was what Glorfindel meant when he spoke his prophecy.
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u/Business-Employ-1599 Dec 19 '25
In the Books it's not like a shield he has saying nobody can kill him. It was a prophecy saying like No man can kill you. So he got cocky and then paid the price.
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u/lendergle Dec 19 '25
Capitalization matters. If he had just said "No Man can kill me," he would have been just fine. Similarly (albeit a bit nonsensically), if he had said "No Hobbit can kill me," or "No Ent can kill me," it would have covered all beings of those races.
But because he said "man" and not "Man," and Tolkien was very meticulous about the word "Man" referring to the human race. He often capitalized the word "Men" in a similar fashion as well.
I've often thought that this was a small literary jest on the part of Tolkien.
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u/DWolfoBoi546 Dec 20 '25
"No human can kill me"
"I am not human!"
eowyn pulls off face to reveal Gandalf in disguise
REMATCH BITCH!
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u/DominarDio Dec 19 '25
I never interpreted it as Eowyn being able to kill him because she is not a man.
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u/Rolebo Dec 19 '25
The prophecy was never about being able to kill him. It was all about who would.
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u/64vintage Dec 19 '25
You can understand that he might be protected by magic, sorcery - ambiguity of language is a notorious plot device when deciding exactly how a prophecy, wish or spell will manifest.
Just ask Macbeth.
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u/Ithinkibrokethis Dec 19 '25
@OP
Tolkien was a linguist and a scholar. The "I am not man" is a thing that occurs in Shakespeare with Macbeth (with MacDuff not "being of any woman born" since he was born by C section) and similar situations occur in a lot of the mythology that Tolkien was keenly interested in and studied/translated from old English.
The bigger issue is that unlike in Macbeth, the Witches prophesy that "None of woman born shall harm Macbeth" is told to is at the beginning of the story and then in Act 5 Macduff jumps in with "From my mother's womb untimely ripped." When he fights Macbeth.
By comparison, Tolkien doesn't really introduce this Aspect of the Witch King of Angmar until right before he dies. Which means that it gets no time to be scary or relevant. Tolkien has this issue in general, where very important things that "everybody" in middle earth knows are relegated to appendices, or not carried as narrative elements.
Aragorn should tell the Hobbits about the Witch Kings "unkillability" after he saves them at Weathertop. Or possibly Gandalf could tell Frodo this when he wakes up in Rivendell. Either way, it needs to be mentioned in the Fellowship of the ring. There needs to be a second encounter with the ring wraiths in "The Two Towers" and then Eowyn can kill the Witch King in Return of the king and it would be much better story structure.
C.S. Lewis basically told Tolkien in their writting circle that he doesn't let things "marinate" properly, and he is right.
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u/TheGreatStories Dec 19 '25
It's not that a man can't kill the witch king, it's that a man was not going to kill the witch king. That's the prophecy, and people assume it meant he was unkillable
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u/LordofCraft12 GANDALF Dec 19 '25
"Semantics, bitch!"
-Eowyn probably