Lord Of The Rings: 10 Things You Didn't Know About Orcs

Towards the end of his life, Tolkien started to feel uneasy about his origin story for the orcs. Although he had several ideas for how they could be created, the overriding one, was that they were former elves who had been tortured and abused. This wasn't to say all orcs were once elves - Tolkien stated that after the original creation of the orcs, they could breed amongst themselves.

Throughout his writing, he established the notion that orcs were so evil they couldn't possibly have any redeemable qualities. After the defeat of Sauron, Aragorn hunted down and killed all the remaining orcs, or drove them into hiding... essentially committing orc genocide. Originally, Tolkien had no issue with this, as he saw them as manifestations of pure evil.

But as a devout Christian, the idea that anyone was without redemption, became extremely troubling for him. As the elves were the most noble and enlightened beings in Tolkien's world, he become uneasy that a corrupted elf could not be turned back to good. Tolkien died before he could address his origin story of orcs, but his musings were shared and published by his son, Christopher.