Tea at Trianon: Lost Lands of Arda

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Friday, January 16, 2026

Lost Lands of Arda

From The Saxon Cross:

My first entry in this series detailed how Tolkien’s Middle-Earth, when correctly scaled, perfectly matches the landscape of Ice-Age Europe. Tolkien’s placement of mythic locations such as Mirkwood also matches their attested locations in ancient Europe.
My theory is that J.R.R. Tolkien meant for his Middle-Earth legendarium to be a literal mythology of ancient Europe. While the professor made vague allusions to his mythology being a telling of our ancient past, I believe he took this more seriously than he ever publicly admitted. I do not believe he meant it only as a frame story.
[...]
Keep in mind that when I talk about my map projection of Middle-Earth onto Europe, I am consistently referring to the map projection from the first article, not picking and choosing different scales to make things work.
Today, I want to expand by going into deeper detail on more locations within Tolkien’s mythology and their real-world counterparts.
I also want to examine some of the issues with the map from my first post. I will examine the issue of the Black Sea, and also explain why I believe the south of Middle-Earth looks so unlike the real Mediterranean. (Read more.)