The White Council

For seventeen hundred and fifty years the Wise knew an evil power held Dol Guldur in southern Mirkwood, and could not name it. They called it the Necromancer, guessed it was one of the Nazgul, and were wrong for nine hundred and sixty years. This is the story of the White Council that formed to solve the problem: why Saruman was chosen to lead it instead of Gandalf, why a body containing Elrond, Galadriel and Cirdan could not compel anyone to act, and what its chairman was quietly doing at the Gladden Fields for ninety years. It covers Gandalf's two solo infiltrations of Dol Guldur, the dying dwarf Thrain and the key to Erebor, the only White Council meeting Tolkien ever wrote as a scene, and the attack of 2941 on a fortress Sauron had already abandoned - a victory that turned out to matter for a reason nobody in the room understood.

Published

1 September 2026

Runtime

34 min 41 sec