Melkor

The mightiest of the Ainur

Melkor was the greatest of the Ainur in power and knowledge, and he had a share in the gifts of all his brethren. He was a brother of Manwë in the thought of Eru Ilúvatar, and had he remained faithful he would have been the first of the Valar. But he had a fault that grew into a doom. Before the World, he went alone into the Void seeking the Flame Imperishable, the power to create life, wanting things of his own to make and rule. He never found it, because it belongs to Eru alone, and he returned to the Ainur with thoughts unlike theirs.

In the Great Music he began to weave those thoughts into the theme, seeking to increase his own glory and to draw other Ainur to his tune. Eru answered with a second and a third theme, and Melkor's discord, though it grew loud and violent, could not master them. Eru then told him that everything he attempted would in the end serve purposes he could not imagine. Melkor was ashamed, and from shame grew anger, and from anger a settled will to make himself lord of everything.

The wars of the Lamps

Melkor entered the World with the other Valar and claimed it for his own kingdom. He undid their works as fast as they were made, until Tulkas came and drove him out. He crept back over the Walls of Night while the Valar rested at the wedding feast of Tulkas and Nessa, and in the north of Middle-earth he delved Utumno, the first of his fortresses, and gathered to himself the spirits he had corrupted, among them the Balrogs and Sauron. He cast down the Lamps, broke the symmetry of the World, and forced the Valar to withdraw to Aman.

The Elves and the first chaining

When the Elves awoke at Cuiviénen, Melkor's servants were the first to find them. He sent a dark rider to hunt them, and those he captured he took to Utumno and twisted by torment into the Orcs, a deed the Elves counted his vilest. The Valar, roused by Oromë's report, assaulted Utumno in the Battle of the Powers. Tulkas wrestled Melkor down, Aulë's chain Angainor bound him, and he was brought to the Ring of Doom and condemned to three ages in the Halls of Mandos. His servants remained hidden in the pits of Angband, his second fortress, which the Valar had not fully searched.

The Darkening of Valinor

After three ages Melkor begged pardon and Manwë granted it. He appeared humbled and made himself useful, and in time he was allowed to move freely among the Elves of Tirion, where he set out to corrupt the Noldor. He taught them craft they had not asked for and whispered of the Valar's jealousy and of the wide lands of Middle-earth the Valar were keeping from them, and he fed the rivalry between Fëanor and Fingolfin until Fëanor drew a sword on his brother. Above all he lusted for Fëanor's Silmarils. When his lies were discovered he fled, found Ungoliant in Avathar, and with her came to the mound of Ezellohar during a festival. He pierced the Two Trees with his spear and Ungoliant drank their light; then he went to Formenos, slew Finwë at the door, and took the Silmarils. Fëanor named him Morgoth, the Black Enemy, in that hour, and by that name he is chiefly known.

In Lammoth Ungoliant demanded the jewels, and when he refused she bound him in her webs. His cry brought the Balrogs from Angband, and they drove her off. He set the Silmarils in an iron crown, and their light burned his hands black; he never removed them and never again left his fortress in person save once.

The Wars of Beleriand

Morgoth rebuilt Angband beneath Thangorodrim and waged war for six hundred years against the Elves and Men of Beleriand. His Orcs killed Fëanor with the Balrogs' aid in the Dagor-nuin-Giliath; he took Maedhros by treachery and hung him from a precipice; he was besieged for four centuries by the Noldor and then broke the Siege with fire in the Dagor Bragollach, unleashing Glaurung, the first dragon. When Fingolfin rode alone to his gates and challenged him, Morgoth came out, the only time he did so, and though he crushed the king with his hammer Grond he was wounded seven times and lamed for ever, and Thorondor scarred his face. Lúthien cast him into sleep before his own throne and Beren cut a Silmaril from his crown. In the Nirnaeth Arnoediad he destroyed the Union of Maedhros, and he set Húrin on a high seat to watch the ruin of his family, working through Glaurung to destroy Túrin and Nienor. By treachery and Húrin's despair he found Gondolin and by the spies of Maeglin he took it.

Throughout, his strategy was corruption as much as force. Elves and Men were set against each other; the Easterlings were bought; captives were released to spy; and Morgoth's own power was spent into the substance of Middle-earth, so that with every age he was less able to leave his fortress and more bound to it.

The War of Wrath and the Void

When Eärendil reached Valinor and the Valar marched, Morgoth's armies were broken in the War of Wrath. He loosed his winged dragons, and Ancalagon the Black was slain by Eärendil and fell on Thangorodrim. Morgoth hid in his deepest pit and begged for peace. He was bound with Angainor, his crown was beaten into a collar, the two remaining Silmarils were taken from him, and the Valar thrust him through the Door of Night into the Timeless Void beyond the walls of the World, where he remains. His lies, his Orcs and his lieutenant Sauron survived him and were the evil of the later ages.

Legacy

Every evil in Arda descends from Melkor. He bred the Orcs, the dragons, the werewolves and the trolls; he corrupted the Balrogs and Sauron; he taught Men to fear death and to worship the darkness; and the marring of the World itself, its cold and cruelty and decay, is his work. He is the model of pride that cannot make and therefore seeks to dominate and destroy, and the greatest and the most diminished of the Ainur: he began as the mightiest of them and ended bound and thrown out, unable even to change his own shape. The Elves believed a prophecy that he would one day break the Door and return, and that a last battle would follow, but that belongs to the unfinished writings and not to the published histories.

Bound with Angainor at the end of the War of Wrath, Melkor was thrust through the Door of Night into the Timeless Void beyond the World, where he remains under guard.