Why Manwë Never Answered | Tolkien Explained

Manwë could see almost everything that happened in Middle-earth from his throne on Taniquetil. He saw the fall of Gondolin. He saw the armies of Mordor on the Pelennor Fields. And for the most part, he did nothing. The easy answer is that his silence was wisdom, a policy of restraint born from the catastrophic memory of the War of Wrath, when defeating Morgoth cost the Valar an entire continent. That answer is true. But it is not the whole truth. Manwë made one decision early in the history of Arda that poisoned everything that followed. He pardoned Melkor. He could not comprehend evil deeply enough to recognize that the repentance was false, and that single act of misplaced mercy released the architect of three Ages of suffering back into the world. Every tragedy that follows in the First Age, the death of the Two Trees, the Kinslaying, the long six-hundred-year war that killed entire generations of Elves and Men while Valinor remained silent, traces back to that moment. Was his restraint in the centuries that followed genuine wisdom, or was some of it shame? A king trying to contain a disaster of his own making by staying out of the way?