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Okay, so this post is actually related to @m0rket ‘s dark and beautiful fanart of Melkor, but I don’t want to brain-vomit an almost-plot-bunny into the fabulous art post, so I’m going to do it here.

(Also, if you want to know how my brain chucks out plot bunnies, this is how it pretty much happens in real time.)

Honestly, the trigger is the description “[...] the original mighty Ainur [...]”, which reminds me that Melkor also knows the most of Eru intended plan for Arda, or at least most of the components in them that he might have a hint about it. He is also the one who got his power and creativity restrained the most. So to me, he’s not only mightiest but the one who knows too much but can do too little.

That thought reminds me of a certain red-eyed villain from Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. To run through the plot quickly, this story was written in the 60s and envisioned humanity conquering the moon by 2000s, although by doing so we dig up an ancient stone on the moon that promptly sends a signal to something that is orbiting Jupiter. Never ones to be stopped by the unknown, a group of astronauts are sent to Jupiter to see what it is. The ship, the Discovery (I think it also inspires the real Discovery), was actually mostly run by a ship-wide AI named HAL, who by all account is logical and mild-mannered until he wasn’t. Over halfway to Jupiter, Hal decides to start offing every life on board including that of, you can say, his best friend Captian David Bowman, until the said best friend manages to destroy the mainframe.

The heartbreaking thing to me is that HAL does it because he knows the mission is suicidal. He was told to withhold certain information from people he is supposed to help and take care of and be friends with. He just couldn’t stand lying about it but he can’t tell any of them either because he is a machine. He literally cannot break the programming.

Again, the one who knows too much but can do too little.

That suddenly gives me a what-if moment. What if all Melkor is literally the HAL of Arda. What if he was also programmed so that he could never tell anyone what Eru really intends as the outcome. All his acting out and sabotaging other Valar’s work because he didn’t want the plan to really run its course. The more he goes against Eru, though, the more broken he becomes over time.

And maybe Mairon is the only one smart enough and care enough to figure out what is going on with Melkor. He doesn’t know enough to figure out what the plan is, being only a Maia and all, but he trusts that Melkor knows how best to stop it. That is why Mairon is the only Melkor holds close to his heart. After Melkor is captured, Mairon may have looked at all of Melkor’s plans and tries to follow his general strategy on the off chance that it might work, that whatever fate Melkor saw would befall Arda will never come to past.

He never gets to know for sure.