Talk:North-South Road

Move to Royal Road

I propose to move the North-South Road page to a Royal Road page and the North South Road Discussion (i.e. talk) page to a North-South-Road talk page. Based on the entry for the Greenway in J.R.R. Tolkien's Unfinished Index in The Lord of the Rings it seems that the North-South-Road is only the name for the part of the road from Fornost Erain to the Fords of Isen. The entry cited in Hammond & Scull's The Lord of the Rings A Reader's Companion on page 31 reads "Greenway - The name given by the Bree-folk to the little-used, grass-grown North-South Road 'originally running from Isengard to Fornost' (Index)." Isengard as the end point of the North-South Road or Greenway seems to be an error, because according to The West of Middle-earth at the End of the Third Age map the main road does not run to Isengard, but to the Fords of Isen and then continues on roughly parallel to the White Mountains to Edoras and Minas Tirith and according to the narrative in the chapter The Road to Isengard of LOTR on pp. 550 (50th anniversary one-volume edition) an "ancient highway" branches off on the west side of the Fords of Isen to the north to Isengard. In addition, the name North-South Road would be odd if it refers to the whole road all the way to Minas Tirith and Osgiliath, because after the Fords of Isen it primarily runs east and only a little to the south and the Great West Road to refer all the way from Minas Tirith to Fornost would be odd, because the road west of the Frods of Isen does not longer primarily run to the west, but rather primarily to the north. The entries on The Thain's book and on the Encyclopedia of Arda seem to fully or partly shares this opinion. "Royal Road" is used twice in the narrative of Appendix ii of The Battles of the Fords of Isen in UT. Capitalized "Great Road" is used once in the narrative of Cirion and Eorl and the Friendship of Gondor and Rohan (iii) Cirion and Eorl in UT and once in Christopher Tolkien's part about the Map of Middle-earth in his introduction to UT. Uncapitalized "great road" is used once in note 6 of The Disaster of the Gladden Fields in UT and once in Cirion and Eorl and the Friendship of Gondor and Rohan (iii) Cirion and Eorl in UT. Since the name Great Road in Appendix A in the Eriador part refers also to the Great East Road and we will need a disambiguation page, I think it is best to have Great Road redirect to the disambiguation page for the Great Road where there are links to the East Road and the Royal Road and to have separate, Royal Road, Greenway (= North-South Road), Great West Road and North-way pages.

The North-South Road page (now) covers the entire road all the way to the Rammas Echor before Minas Tirith. In addition, there is already a Greenway page and the Greenway seems to be a synonym for the North-South Road. Akhôrahil (talk) 16:20, 12 December 2023 (UTC)