Five Ways ‘LotR: The Rings of Power’ is Different From the Books

Amazon’s The Rings of Power is coming soon, but if you expect it to follow the books closely, you might be disappointed.

The Rings of Power promises to bring a new era of Tolkien’s world to the screen. It’s been a long-anticipated show, but also a divisive one so far. Any adaptation will of course make changes to the source material. Both The Lord of the Rings and Hobbit trilogies made major changes. The Rings of Power promises to be no different. We’ve got some ideas of changes that will be made, so let us take a look at five of the biggest.

5. The Beardless Lady

Dwarven princess Disa (played by Sophia Nomvete) via Amazon

This is overall a pretty small change, but it’s one people have been kind of upset about. Above we’ve got a picture of the Dwarven Princess Disa. The set and costume look great. But what people have latched onto is the lack of a beard.  Traditionally in Tolkien Dwarven women have been said to have beards. Tolkien himself said this at one point, though at other times he was silent on the matter. Most of the time Dwarven women have been shown with beards in media, but not always.

Honestly, Disa’s lack of beard is a pretty minor thing. It does not materially affect the plot or story. Nor does it mean that the show is changing the lore on Dwarven women being bearded. Maybe Disa simply shaves. Maybe it was a fad amount of Second Age Dwarven women, after all, beards on humans have gone in and out of style in real life. I can also see how putting a woman of color into a fake beard would have some negative connotations. Overall it’s not a big deal to me.

4. The Harfoots

LOTR: The Rings of Power teaser
credit prime video

The promo things we’ve seen for The Rings of Power make it clear that the Harfoots have a big role to play in the story. It’s even possible they are tangled up with the rise of Sauron. This pretty much goes against the books. While they are mentioned it’s clear the Harfoots did have any involvement with major events. Still, with so little known about the time period, it’s “possible” there are untold Harfoot stories. Likely they were included simply for the fact that people expect Hobbits in a Lord of the Rings story.

3. The Durin Change

Prince Durin IV (played by Owain Arthur via Amazon

How about another Dwarf change! The show will feature Both Durin III, the king of Khazad-dûm, and his son Durin IV. This is a fairly big change to Dwarven lore. The Dwarves believe the Durins are all reincarnations of the original Durin, though they can be unclear on how this works. The key thing here is as reincarnations they are not a direct father-to-son lineage and two cannot be around at the same time. The show is clearly changing that and just making the Durin’s a royal family.

2. Warrior Galadriel

Galadriel (played by Morfydd Clark) via Amazon

Lady Galadriel is set to be one of the major characters of The Rings of Power. Everything we’ve seen suggests she is going to be a pretty badass warrior woman. This doesn’t 100% reflect her portrayal in the text. Galadriel is obviously one of the most powerful beings in the story, and wise, but we don’t get a lot of her leading armies, or dressing in armor to go swing swords around. In many ways, this was more of Elrond’s role. Still, we don’t really know much about what she was doing in this period. It’s totally possible she was doing all these things. Ultimately if the Rings of Power makes this change from the books, I think it’s a good one.

1. The Biggest Way The Rings Of Power is Different From the Books Will Be a Compressed TimelineHello Numenor

The biggest change and the most worrying one is the timeline. The source material for The Rings of Power covers roughly 2000, or more depending on what the show ends up covering, years. That’s a long time. The creators have chosen to condense this history down into a single human lifetime. That kind of change is going to lead to some major story changes. Events that took place hundreds of years apart, will take place days after each other. It makes sense that they would do this. It’s the only way to really tell a coherent story and have the same non-Elven characters stay around, but it will have a massive impact.

Let us know what you think of these changes, down in the comments! 

Author: Abe Apfel

Abe is that rare thing, an Austin local born and raised here. Though he keeps on moving around, DC, Japan, ETC., he always seems to find his way back eventually. Abe has decades of experience with a wide range of tabletop and RPG games, from historicals, to Star Wars to D&D and 40K. He has been contributing to BOLS since almost the start, back when he worked at and then owned a local gaming store. He used to be big into the competitive Warhammer tournament scene but age has mellowed him and he now appreciates a good casual match. He currently covers 40K tactics and lore, as well as all things Star Wars, with occasional dabbling in other topics. Abe remains in mourning over the loss of WFB to this day.