This insane theory says “Snow White” is a sequel to “Lord of the Rings”
This insane theory says “Snow White” is a sequel to “Lord of the Rings”
Well, here’s a theory we never saw coming: over on Cracked, writer Andres Diplotti suggests that Snow White and Lord of the Rings share more than movie magic, but a whole universe. (And we thought the Marvel Cinematic Universe was expansive!)
Here are three of the many reasons Diplotti believes Snow White and Lord of the Rings share a universe:
(We’ll admit, he raises some interesting points.)
Snow White’s dwarfs hail from Middle Earth
While Snow White’s dwarfs seem pretty standard—they’re short, unsocial, and obsessed with treasure—Diplotti explains that Tolkien took many of the names of his dwarves from a centuries-old Norse epic called the Voluspa, which has a section devoted to dwarf names and their meanings. Durin? That’s “Sleepy,” thank you very much. Dwalin, or “Dvalinn” in the “Voluspa,” is torpid, lazy, or sleepy. Oin? That would be “shy,” a.k.a. “bashful.” Well, that’s creepy!
Plus, when the dwarves discover a potential squatter, they immediately freak out:
Diplotti suggests that:
“The Barrow-downs are nearby, which are haunted by undead things. So obviously, a ghost is their first guess. But after that, they start worrying about creatures with a history of making dwarves homeless
A goblin? Goblins overran their ancestral home of Moria.
A demon? It was a demon of shadow and flame that chased them out of Moria in the first place.
A dragon? Smaug took their other ancestral home in the Lonely Mountain. In fact, those three guesses are the three Middle-earth douchebags who keep shitting on the dwarves’ parades.”
Well, okay. It does seem like the dwarves from both stories have a lot in common… and are maybe the same. We’ll give him that.
Snow White is Gondor Royalty
The opening of Tolkien’s The Silmarillion describes Snow White perfectly:
Behold the King’s daughter, fairest among maidens. Lips red as a rose, hair black as ebony, skin white as a Keith Urban concert. No wonder a handsome foreigner was smitten when he saw her. And his love didn’t go unrequited.
As Diplotti continues to explain:
If you are one of the ten people who read through The Lord Of The Rings without skipping the songs, you might remember the hymn some Elves sing to the goddess Varda. The song refers to the goddess by several names: Elbereth, Gilthoniel … and also Snow-white. She’s a full-on goddess, so naming your kid Snow White in Gondor would be like a Texan naming his kid John Wayne or Ronald Reagan. Just a way to show how devout you are.
In other words, Diplotti believes that Snow White is Aragorn and Arwen’s descendant. It kind of makes sense. Both Snow White and Arwen can communicate with animals. (Though it’s only Arwen who can communicate with Mother Nature.)
Is the Magic Mirror Sauron in disguise?
The mirror, after all, is far from dependable.
As Diplotti points out:
The glass snitch on the wall isn’t totally truthful. If it were, it would tell the Queen: “Beauty is a subjective quality. For instance, I like a fine booty and think Kim Kardashian is the shit, but my cousin is a side view mirror on a Prius, and he totally digs Lena Dunham. I can’t give your question a meaningful answer.” So maybe it’s subtly manipulating the Queen through her vanity and her insecurity. Maybe it’s the mirror itself that wants Snow White out of the way. This is a magical item with a mind and an agenda of its own.
Ooooh! Twist!
Perhaps the Magic Mirror is Sauron—a tiny sliver of Sauron that the Rings villain squirreled away as a backup plan in case the One Ring was destroyed (kind of like how Voldemort hid pieces of himself all over the place). As Rebecca Pahle notes for Mental Floss, “We know that Sauron’s MO is getting inside people’s heads and twisting their thoughts for his own gain, and that’s what he’s doing in Magic Mirror form: Engineering the destruction of Snow White, who, in this theory, is a descendant of Aragorn.”
Whoa. Heavy. And it only gets stranger from there. Diplotti goes on to suggest that Prince Charming is… you guessed it… Gandalf, who only kisses Snow White because he knows his magic will break the spell. It has nothing to do with her beauty, save that her beauty proves she’s a descendent of Gondor. Anyway, to read Diplotti’s step-by-step analysis (it’s thorough enough that even Tolkien would be impressed) click here.
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