"I have to sonorously remind those critics that The Lord of the Rings is the historiography of the victors, who have a clear interest in presenting the vanquished in a certain way. Had genocide taken place back then (where did those peoples vanish if it hadn’t?), then it’s doubly important to convince everybody, including oneself, that those had been orcs and trolls rather than people. Or I could ask them: how often do we find in human history rulers that would relinquish their power, for free, to some nobody from nowhere (pardon me — a Dúnadan from the North)? Yet another subject of immodest curiosity might be the actual payment Elessar Elfstone had to make to the wonderful companions he had acquired on the Paths of the Dead. I mean, summoning the powers of Absolute Evil (for a noble cause, of course) is totally commonplace, he’s neither the first nor the last; but for those powers to meekly revert back to nothingness after doing their job without asking anything in return sounds highly doubtful."