Just want to insert my complaint about the way that shit was shot in the movies. Highly unlikely those beacons would have remained staffed and funded in the political environment of Gondor and Rohan.
Edit: I mean, I get it if it’s farming village to fortress to farming village, but paying and supplying people to sit on desolate mountain tops would not be economically viable. Maybe if there was a religion associated with it you could pull it off.
Coool… I love that for medieval England. I hope they caught some Vikings with their mail off.
My dispute is the expense of running a beacon systems through an unpopulated and unfarmable mountain range combined with the seeming diplomatic distance between Rohan and Gondor.
They definitely can be supplied, but it’s just more expensive, and might require diplomacy with whomever does inhabit that land / military support from brigands.
Byzantium was highly connected with the outside world, but Gondor seems very isolated… but I also don’t know where they are getting the food to feed Minas Tirith, because its surrounded by a plain of completed undeveloped farmland… but again, more a criticism of the movie presentation than the conceptual validity of the beacons in the context of the books which I have been as abandoned by me as the Mines of Moria. “It looks cool as fuck” is a fine motivation to put something in a movie.
I assume they were not permanently staffed and what we see in the film is a montage. Someone in his farming village saw the Gondor beacon and had to climb to the top of the hill with the local beacon and light it, then someone in the next village sees that beacon and climbs up to theirs and so on. It probably takes a few days and sending a messenger would’ve been faster.
Just want to insert my complaint about the way that shit was shot in the movies. Highly unlikely those beacons would have remained staffed and funded in the political environment of Gondor and Rohan.
Edit: I mean, I get it if it’s farming village to fortress to farming village, but paying and supplying people to sit on desolate mountain tops would not be economically viable. Maybe if there was a religion associated with it you could pull it off.
I mean, 16. century Swiss Confederacy wasn’t exactly affluent…
(Also here)
I like to think the promise was made in better times and as proof of the kings’ sincerity they paid in advance.
In England the money due for the maintenance of beacons was called Beaconagium and was levied by the sheriff of each county.
Coool… I love that for medieval England. I hope they caught some Vikings with their mail off.
My dispute is the expense of running a beacon systems through an unpopulated and unfarmable mountain range combined with the seeming diplomatic distance between Rohan and Gondor.
Yeah. Unpopulated areas can’t be taxed or supplied.
They definitely can be supplied, but it’s just more expensive, and might require diplomacy with whomever does inhabit that land / military support from brigands.
Here’s a bit on the Byzantine beacon system:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine_beacon_system
Byzantium was highly connected with the outside world, but Gondor seems very isolated… but I also don’t know where they are getting the food to feed Minas Tirith, because its surrounded by a plain of completed undeveloped farmland… but again, more a criticism of the movie presentation than the conceptual validity of the beacons in the context of the books which I have been as abandoned by me as the Mines of Moria. “It looks cool as fuck” is a fine motivation to put something in a movie.
I assume they were not permanently staffed and what we see in the film is a montage. Someone in his farming village saw the Gondor beacon and had to climb to the top of the hill with the local beacon and light it, then someone in the next village sees that beacon and climbs up to theirs and so on. It probably takes a few days and sending a messenger would’ve been faster.
If only Amazon had bought the rights to RotK, they could have spent a whole season on that.