Almost 70 years after JRR Tolkein published the first in his Lord of the Rings epic fantasy trilogy – a new vision of Middle Earth has finally arrived on our screens.
And as Amazon Prime drops its highly anticipated prequel series Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power, now feels like the perfect time to look back at the queer history of the series.
Of course, as with any other hugely popular fiction series, there is a rich LGBTQ+ fanbase that has lifted the subtext of the novels to create hugely popular queer readings of Middle Earth.
The queer subtext of the series has been around since the beginning, with Scottish poet Edwin Muir heavily criticising Tolkien for his writing of men where “hardly one of them knows anything about women”.