This is one of the strangest stories I’ve written in a while. Considering over the past few weeks I’ve written about killing a thousand cows in The Witcher 3 and a livestream of a regular Walmart store, that’s saying something. Amazon’s flagship fantasy show, The Rings of Power, is being sued by an author who claims that the writers stole ideas from his book.
So far, so good, right? It would be mighty scummy if a Rings of Power writer had lifted the plot of the show’s first season – which is only loosely based on Tolkien – from an existing fantasy novel. Maybe it was that entirely non-Tolkien sequence with the Balrog creating Mithril? Maybe it was the Amazon-invented Harfoot storyline, bad accents and all? It turns out that it’s none of them, because the fantasy novel in question is Tolkien fanfiction, set after the events of The Lord of the Rings and imaginatively titled The Fellowship of the King. See what he did there?
The author, who goes by the name Demetrious Polychron, filed a $250 million lawsuit against Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Amazon Studio execs, and J. R. R. Tolkien’s estate, accusing them of copyright infringement. Polychron alleges that the series takes ideas from The Fellowship of the King: The War of the Rings. I won’t detail every accusation, but some particularly amusing ones follow.
The names Theo and Marigold appear in both show and book. The first appearance of Durin’s wife Disa apparently copies from his line, “Durin and his beautiful Queen Myrkinamid.” Adar, the corrupted Elf, allegedly copies from Polychron’s plot wherein Glorfindel falls from grace and serves Morgoth. In The Rings of Power, Galadriel becomes a warrior and takes up Finrod’s sword, which Polychron alleges copies from page 157 of his book, where she “led her people into the thick of attacking orcs”.
This, among many others, is where Polychron’s allegations descend into their most ridiculous. He didn’t come up with the idea of Galadriel the warrior, and neither did any Amazon writer. J. R. R. Tolkien did in The Silmarillion. The same goes for Polychron’s Elanor, whom he claims The Rings of Power based the character of Harfoot Eleanor Brandyfoot on. The show’s Harfoot is likely a reference to Samwise Gamgee’s daughter, a little nudge for fans who like that sort of thing.
On the other hand, Polychron’s Elanor is literally Samwise Gamgee’s daughter, as the story follows her adventures in Middle-earth. He did not create these characters, Tolkien did. The most egregious example in the filing is when Polychron alleges that “Gandalf displays the power of my wizard Alatar” (emphasis mine). Despite only appearing in Unfinished Tales, Alatar is still Tolkien’s wizard, as is everything he wrote and published. Writing more about him doesn’t make him yours.
Polychron is suing based on a property he doesn’t own and hasn’t paid for the rights to use. Amazon has paid for the rights to Tolkien’s work. In fact, Polychron’s only basis for the lawsuit is that he kept pestering the Tolkien Estate to read his fanfiction, culminating in dropping off a manuscript at Tolkien’s grandson’s home in 2019, hoping he would leave a review of his book. He got no response, but now believes the manuscript was read and plagiarised.
For those of you still unclear, writing fanfiction isn’t illegal, but selling it is. Why do you think E. L. James changed the characters’ names from Edward and Bella before publishing 50 Shades of Grey? Tolkien’s characters and stories are all protected by strict copyright, and profiting off that is therefore illegal.
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Polychron’s fanfiction seems to be standard fare. It uses characters you know and writes a story of what happened after The Lord of the Rings. Most kids who read the books did the same. There’s all your usual fanfiction trappings, niche characters like Alatar make appearances and Galadriel has an affair with Anarion, but Polychron decided to sell The Fellowship of the King, and that was his big mistake. The big mistake before the $250 million lawsuit, that is. The first book in his seven-part fan fiction saga had three reviews on Goodreads before the lawsuit came to light. One of which, that he wrote himself, gives it five stars. The other two are both one-star reviews. The first says, “Mate, you’re gonna get sued.” The second uses more words to say the same.
I suspect the lawsuit is an idea to go viral and get clout, which presumably in Polychron’s mind would result in more sales for his fan fiction series. I think the opposite will happen. He’s asking to be counter-sued by the Tolkien Estate for copyright infringement himself, to make an example of him and prevent fanfiction writers from trying to profit off its property in future.
If there’s a lesson to be learned from all this, it’s that it’s fine to keep your fanfiction on AO3. Preferable, in fact.