I have watched the first three episodes of the second season of Rings of Power; Darwin has some comments with which I pretty much agree. I plan to talk more about the general problems that are still seen in these episodes, particularly with how the series has so far handled what is often called polyphonic narrative, after I've seen a few more episodes. (Short version now: while polyphonic narrative, with its interwoven storylines, is a tried and true method of epic storytelling, the series doesn't correctly handle the structural problems that have to be solved to do such narrative well, in part because it doesn't handle correctly some more basic structural problems of plotting.) But I want to talk a little bit about its mishandling of the (sometimes important) politics in the story.
In this season, we have
(1) Sauron trying to be ruler over the Orcs sometime after the defeat of Morgoth, and failing.
(2) Various elven lords and kings interacting with Gil-Galad as High King of the Noldor.
(3) The development of a succession crisis in Numenor, as Tar-Palantir dies.
(4) There is rising complication between King Durin III and his son Durin IV in Khazad-Dum.
Of these, none of these are handled very plausibly, although (3) manages to have something like the right general structure and (4) manages to have some sort actual logic to its events.
Let's take a very simple three-tier model of monarchy, one that nonetheless covers a lot of political behavior in various kinds of monarchy. Suppose we have a king with a bunch of middle-rulers, like nobles or warlords, ruling a people. The basic form of monarchy is easy to develop; you just need a bunch of people in power and then chose a principal ruler from among them. It is also not highly centralized -- that requires very specific kinds of resource-intensive features that most traditional monarchies don't have, or at least don't have reason to use for centralization. In principle this model should fit fairly well all four of the above, with (1), as a brutal tyranny with actually magical means of centralization, being the most deviant; in Tolkien's actual work, all four exhibit the three-tier model fairly well, because they are all modeled on pre-feudal and feudal political structures that the model already fit. In Rings of Power, the model fits none of them.
In this season we see Sauron attempting to sway the Orcs to his rule. He does this by soapboxing and having Adar, one of the Orc-fathers, crown him in front of a small group of Orcs. This doesn't make much sense, and would certainly not be how someone like Sauron would have handled the matter. Sauron is not some random person; he was one of Morgoth's most trusted and feared lieutenants, so the Orcs should already have a reason not to cross him. And trying to persuade a bunch of random Orcs by speeches doesn't make any sense. What Sauron actually needs to do is focus on people like Adar -- the Orcs who are already respected and have a following, and thus who are essentially functioning like nobles or warlords in Orc society -- and obtain their support by bribery and display of power, which would first have to be done on an individual level. If he does this, he has no need to convince anyone else. He does not have to be made king by anyone; he can just set himself up as king. There will likely be servants of Morgoth who will flock to him based on reputation alone, or who can be easily overawed. And power flows to the powerful; he can just draw power, based on his already existing reputation and resources, by manipulating the middle tier, the 'nobles', and then playing them off each other. The kind of situation that requires a monarch to appeal directly to the people is when there is a dispute between king and nobles; reasonably intelligent kings with popular support can virtually always outmaneuver the political scheming of the middle tier. But building a kingdom just requires middle-tier support; co-opt by any means people like Adar, however reluctant they may be, then use the squabbles and contentions among such people to solidify power, then deal ruthlessly with dissenters. It makes no sense for Sauron to be crowned by Adar -- such ceremonies are required for regular succession or symbolic deference to a higher power, neither of which is relevant here, and even if Sauron had such a ceremony he would, like Napoleon, not want it to be structured as if his crown depended on anything other than his own power.
Gil-Galad is High King; in Tolkien, he receives this position after the fall of Gondolin and the death of Turgon, being the last male member of the House of Finarfin. As High King he is foremost king among a bunch of other kings; he is actually directly the Lord of Lindon. Other kings are lords of other places; some of them (like Celebrimbor) hold power over those places by Gil-Galad's gift, as his control over territory, and thus his ability to give land to others under particular conditions, expands, but others (like Cirdan) have held power longer than Gil-Galad. As such, most of his authority is diffuse and entirely indirect; he receives a certain amount of deference due to the eminence of the House of Finarfin, he is personally respected as an excellent leader, and as High King he is the war-leader of all the Elves, able to call up military support from other Elven kings as needed. But this is all. None of the other kings are directly under his authority unless they have put themselves directly under his authority. Galadriel, for instance, is not Gil-Galad's subordinate; she is a queen in her own right, with occasional obligations to the High King arising from custom and agreement. Likewise, Celebrimbor, as Lord of Eregion, also from a royal house, is ruler of Eregion; he has received the right to rule the land from Gil-Galad, and thus has specific obligations to the High King based on that gift, but he is the one who rules it.
So things are in Tolkien, and it all makes sense -- Gil-Galad is High King among all the kings of the Noldor in somewhat like the way King Arthur is High King among all the kings of Britain. The other kings are his allies, and in general allies with special obligations of military deference to him, but not his direct subordinates. None of this is visible in Rings of Power, which seems to take 'High King' to mean that Gil-Galad is sole ruler of all the Elves. Galadriel's title is given as 'Commander of the Northern Armies'; it is a purely military title, and Gil-Galad treats her as a subordinate under his command, who can be directly ordered as Gil-Galad pleases. This seems to be the case with Celebrimbor, as well. At one point in this season, Celebrimbor sends a deceptive message to Gil-Galad to prevent him from interfering with Celebrimbor's work. Tolkien's Gil-Galad, of course, would have had no authority directly to interfere with Celebrimbor's own work in Celebrimbor's own city in the land Celebrimbor himself rules. What is more, he would likely have had no ability to do it -- Celebrimbor's city of Ost-in-Edhil in Eregion is a major economic power, governed for centuries by what is effectively a guild of some of the most talented smiths in the world, controlling the trade with the great Dwarven city of Khazad-Dum and its nearly equally talented smiths. Rivers of wealth are running through Celebrimbor's hands, and he is politically well-entrenched, so he cannot be simply ordered around. The show's condensation of time, however, weakens him considerably, since his stronghold seems to be relatively recent and the show shows very few economic connections between major powers at all, so that trade with relatively close Khazad-Dum (also absurdly new) seems to be little more than an occasional sputter. And Celebrimbor himself, again, both is treated as a subordinate by Gil-Galad and treats himself as such. In reality, a king like Gil-Galad cannot directly rule territory as large or people as diverse as he does; most of his authority arises from the fact that he is the monarch, among a number of other monarchs, who has the responsibility for guaranteeing unified defense, and some from particular feudal-ish land grants. His direct rule is over Lindon. This is why Tolkien's Gil-Galad is only able to keep Annatar out of Lindon, and not out of other Elven kingdoms, even an Elven kingdom like Eregion that is effectively a vassal state. The show has to build up elaborate (and generally unconvincing) explanations for something like this, when in reality it should just follow from the political structure. \
Numenor is at first appearance the most promising monarchy in the show. We have seen glimpses, brief but clear, of all three tiers of Numenorean society. We don't see a lot of details about how it works, but it is very clear that the monarchs of Numenor rule through the nobles, and have to maneuver around that fact. The increasing political problems of Numenor, while portrayed in a manner that is oddly both very stylized and very clumsy, are at least the general kind of political problems that one could expect of a monarchy like we've seen. In particular, Numenor displays one notoriously dangerous pathology of the simple three-tier model, the situation in which the king, instead of policing the nobles and keeping the nobles' treatment of the people within boundaries, loses touch with the concerns of the people, thus giving the nobles the opportunity to unite with the people against the king. This is indeed a circumstance known to breed either civil war or coup, depending on how strong the perpetrators are. We have seen Pharazon both rabble-rouse among the people and conspire among the nobles; nothing that we've seen him do has been very impressive, but these kinds of actions are indeed how you lay the groundwork for a successful coup when the king's role as advocate or defender of the people against the middle tier has decayed, as is Pharazon's maneuvering to make sure that Miriel is away on military expedition when her father dies, thus giving him an opportunity to begin manipulating the situation. (Although I suspect the latter, unlike the former, is entirely accidental on the part of the writers.)
Yet in many ways, this just highlights ways in which Numenor's political workings don't make sense. Nothing about Numenor does -- its wealth, its isolationist foreign policy, its anti-Elvish bigotry -- but when we look at the details of how the politics seems to work, the details are often lacking at crucial points. No nation with a succession as fragile as the Numenor we have seen in the show should be as unified as Numenor is. Tar-Palantir was essentially removed from power by the nobles in his own reign; as his daughter, Miriel was then apparently appointed by the nobles as Queen Regent. But we are also told that Pharazon, who is her cousin, was also considered, meaning that they had, at least in theory, the ability to decide whom they wanted. This means that this version of Numenor should really be governed by a council of nobles -- which we never see, and which, if it even exists, played no direct role in Miriel's recent major military decision -- and seems also to mean that succession by direct line is at most a custom that is not regarded as strictly mandatory. But the monarch of Numenor seems even weaker than this; treasonous conspiracies against the Crown operate freely in public places and the Queen Regent can even be publicly assaulted without repercussions. The coronation of Miriel, which should be a closely and carefully managed affair in which nobles affirm their allegiance to their Queen, is a complete mess in which random people are allowed to speak, policy issues are debated in a free-for-all argument, and the crowd is allowed to chant their support for another potential claimant to the throne. That the monarchs of Numenor have provable divine sanction is given a very loose, vague nod in the form of the visit of the Eagle of Manwe, although (presumably because of the limits of their licensing) this is never explained beyond being a 'good omen'; but we see nothing of the religious power of the kings, and the coronation unexpectedly turns out not to have any features that would identify it as a religious ceremony, which formal coronations usually are. (It's also usually the case that monarchs do not require a coronation in order to rule -- that's the whole point of the famous phrase, "The king is dead, long live the king." The purpose of the coronation is not usually to become king but rather to have one's kingship acclaimed, and in particular to force the middle tier to obligate themselves to the king in public. This is not absolutely universal, but, again, states in which it isn't true tend to be states with elected kings and/or serious succession problems, neither of which exist here.)
Thus Numenor has something of the abstract shape of a monarchy, but it does not recognizably function as its shape would suggest; its apparent structure does not fit the actual functioning that we see. In Tolkien, of course, it is very different. Tolkien's Numenor is based loosely on ancient empires (it was originally conceived as literally the ancestor of the political systems of Ancient Egypt, Sumeria, and the like, which were degenerate imitations of the Numenorean splendor); the Numenorean monarchs are priest-kings of a vast economic, and eventually military, empire; the middle tier is kept firmly middle tier, having power insofar as they are necessary for the organization of the kingdom but definitely subordinate to the king; to take the throne, Pharazon has to compel Tar-Miriel to marry him (with Tolkien wavering over time about whether this was by manipulative persuasion or by force) because she is recognized as the legitimate ruler regardless of how much support he has.
What we see of the monarchy of Khazad-Dum is mostly family drama of the Royal House. Beyond some councillors, we see very little of a middle tier. Durin III's decisions do not seem to require much in the way of consultation or consent from nobles. He arbitrarily and without any further process strips the younger Durin of his status of Prince. It's not entirely unheard of for a king to be able to do that, but it's notably unusual. When Durin IV is stripped of his rank, he turns out to have no noble supporters -- which would again be unusual -- he's basically cast down to the lowest rung of society, not even having a recognizable ci-devant status. Thus what we see of the Dwarven kingdom makes it look like the Dwarven king is an absolute monarch of a kingdom with no significant middle tier such as a mighty kingdom would certainly require. This gives him a weirdly paradoxical flavor as both an unbelievably powerful ruler and nothing but the Mayor of Dwarf Town.
We do not get a lot of the inner workings of Dwarven society in Tolkien -- the Dwarves sometimes seem actively hostile to anyone nosing about their affairs -- but we still get a more balanced picture. One of the serious deviations of the show from the books is the absurdity of having a father-son relationship between two Dwarves named Durin. The Dwarves of Khazad-Dum have an odd system in which occasionally -- we don't know what triggers it -- a prince is taken to be the reincarnation of Durin I. The name Durin is reserved for Durin. For obvious reasons, the show's Durin IV cannot possibly be the reincarnation of Durin III. Thus, despite not knowing the details, it would make sense for Tolkien's Durin III to wield at least a lot of soft power, because he is the third incarnation of Durin, and thus what we would normally think of as a religious figure, whereas the Durins of the show seem just to be named after the first Durin. There are different kings, although the king of Khazad-Dum seems to have a special eminence due to the connection to Durin. Again, despite not knowing much about the details, we see clear signs of a strong middle tier in Dwarvish society; the Dwarves are very clannish, and this seems to be the foundation of their version of the middle tier -- most of the Dwarves who journey with Thorin Oakenshield in The Hobbit seem to be the equivalent of down-on-their-luck Dwarven nobility. The relationship between Thorin and Dain, as well as between Dain and Balin when Balin becomes Lord of Moria, while not expounded upon seems to suggest that they have a system of allegiances at least loosely like that of the Elves. We get nothing like any of this in the show.
It's not surprising that Tolkien's monarchies are more plausible than those of Rings of Power, anymore than it's surprising that Tolkien's descriptions of how ancient kingdoms and militaries work are more plausible than Peter Jackson's depictions of them in the movies. But that's an interesting comparison, because while Jackson sacrifices a lot of historical and legendary plausibility to bring the War of the Ring to the screen, the vast majority of his choices make sense in movie-context. There is a coherence to them, in terms of visual spectacle, mood, and theme; you can question some of the judgments made, but you never have doubt that there was a genuine attempt to think them through. Even egregiously implausible examples, like the Elves showing up at Helm's Deep or Gandalf's beat-down of Denethor or Theoden's inexplicable inability to handle convoy operations properly or some of the truly awful decisions in how the Battle of the Five Armies is handled in the Hobbit movies, are very carefully prepared and have explanations, however weak. You don't ever get this sense with Rings of Power, which consistently seems slapdash and arbitrary. It is all very shoddy. Figures who are immensely powerful in one scene seem weirdly powerless in another, political decisions come out of nowhere, power relations seem contradictory, and far from it being justifiable in cinematic terms, the visuals and cinematic mood almost never do so, and someteimes even cut against what we are supposedly seeing. Thus we get scenes like the famously powerful and cunning Sauron reaching his complete nadir as a Dark Lord, murdered without much fanfare in a dark cave after impotently begging a bunch of Orcs to recognize him as king.
Even bad judgment calls can get a sort of aesthetic nobility from showing signs of serious thinking-through; on the screen, looking like it could work is just as good as actually being able to work; consistency can make even absurdities seem plausible. But we have none of this deliberation, care for appearances, or consistency here, despite the fact that the story they are telling is one that is filled with politics that needs it. I almost at one point considered saying that the societies we see are less like societies and more like their depiction in role-playing and video games, and this is in some sense true -- as far as the politics go, what we are getting here is often more like D&D or Dragon Age than Tolkien. But it's also not true, because no Dungeon Master or video game developer would be so careless with politics in a story that is entirely about power.
