Rings of Power (Andrew Richardson)
Realization: Ben Rothstein/Prime
Do you know why a sword floats and a stone doesn’t? Me neither!
This is it Anarion, a new character Rings of Power Season 3. He’s Elendil’s youngest son and Isildur’s brother, which is funny because A) I don’t remember ever hearing about him in the first two seasons, and B) he seems older than Isildur. He is, however, an actual character from Tolkien’s lore, so at least they’re not making characters left and right – or at least not all the time.
What I can’t figure out about this picture is the sword. How does Anarion carry this blade? He appears to be standing with his arms at his side. The oath is not covered or tied to his back. It appears to be balanced on his neck, at the top of his spine. Don’t lean over the shoulder either. I’ve never seen a sword behave this way. If he moved it in one direction or the other, surely his hand would be on the handle.
It’s like someone used an AI prompt to have Anarion standing there holding a sword over his shoulder and the AI generation failed and left the arm and hand out of the picture, leaving the sword sort of . . . it floats there, arguably better than six or seven fingers, but still not great.
Not sure what else it could be. Perhaps it has a tail, and the tail holds the sword by the edge just outside the frame. Maybe someone threw a sword at him from behind and it’s about to crash into that neck (that dirty coward Kemen most likely).
Any idea what could be going on with this strange, floating blade? Is it a magical sword that floats right behind your neck wherever you go, making all kinds of social situations deeply awkward in the process? A sort of odd twist on the infamous Sword of Damocles, which hangs there waiting to decapitate poor Anarian if he ever challenges the widespread Númenorean belief that the Sea is always right. (And he is, okay, he knows calculus and stuff).
Play puzzles and games at Forbes
There may be a storm in Galadriel, but Anarion has a magical sword swinging behind his neck. Ten points House Hufflepuff.
If you have a theory, let me know Twitter, Instagramor Facebook. I am too i’m back on youtube this week so check out my channel for updates.
