{"id":120365,"date":"2025-04-05T08:16:46","date_gmt":"2025-04-05T13:16:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/?p=120365"},"modified":"2025-04-05T08:16:47","modified_gmt":"2025-04-05T13:16:47","slug":"middle-earth-march-madness-time-to-place-your-championship-votes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/2025\/04\/05\/120365-middle-earth-march-madness-time-to-place-your-championship-votes\/","title":{"rendered":"Middle-earth March Madness – time to place your Championship votes!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

We come to it at last: the great battle of our age – or at least of Middle-earth March Madness 2025<\/a>: The Art of Middle-earth<\/strong>. Round Six is here – the final showdown, between the last two remaining works of art. But which piece will be crowned Grand Champion? There can be only one! Voting is open now<\/a>!<\/p>\n\n\n

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Down to the last battle<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Let’s take a look at how the Semi-finals played out:<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The Horn of Boromir vs Edoras<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Both of these paintings have proved very popular throughout the contest, winning fairly convincingly at each round. The love fans have for Peter Jackson’s movies perhaps inclines them to vote for art which reminds us of those films; and in addition, there is no denying that these are both extraordinary works. In this Final Four round, however, Matthew Stewart’s Boromir could not bring much opposition to the Golden Hall; Alan Lee’s masterpiece is through to the final, with almost three quarters of the vote. <\/p>\n\n\n

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Edoras by Alan Lee<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
L\u00fathien and Morgoth vs Gandalf at Your Service<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

In stark contrast to the other Semi-final, this was indeed a battle for the ages! Every time we checked on the latest tally, the lead had changed. Sometimes Turner Mohan led by 1%, and sometimes David Wenzel claimed back the thinnest margin. Clearly these two very different pieces have captured the imagination of voters! Finally, as the polls closed at midnight last night, the piece edging over the line – by a margin of just five votes! – was Mohan’s dark image. (This wasn’t the first narrow escape for this finalist, having survived an earlier round by a single vote. Is it the power of Morgoth or of L\u00fathien which keeps just managing to secure victory?)<\/p>\n\n\n

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L\u00fathien and Morgoth by Turner Mohan<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
And so – the Championship Round of Middle-earth March Madness 2025 is between Alan Lee’s Edoras <\/em>and Turner Mohan’s L\u00fathien and Morgoth<\/em>. Which will you choose? Voting is now open! <\/h5>\n\n\n\n

How does it work, you ask? <\/strong>Simple! Click on the button below. This will take you to the voting site, where you can view the entire bracket – including looking back at all 64 individual works in all their glory (and details of the artist), should you wish! Place your votes for Round Six: Championship!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Click here to vote!<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Staffer Madeye Gamgee shares his thoughts on the Championship Round:<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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We have our Grand Championship matchup!\u00a0We have ethereal Edoras<\/em>, gleaming through its foggy backlit haze with glowing promise despite a menacing and dark mountainous backdrop. This piece has the pedigree of one of the most renowned and active Tolkien artists of our time, the incomparable Alan Lee. It is both haunting and familiar, firmly set in The Lord of the Rings<\/em> lore when we first see the Golden Hall in The Two Towers<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And we have lesser known Turner Mohan, a fantasy illustrator from NYC who has largely worked in pencil and pen, and is beginning to work more and more in watercolors. He also dabbles in crafting medieval armor, which might explain Morgoth’s particularly imposing form in this piece. His L\u00fathien and Morgoth<\/em>\u00a0is rooted in Tolkien’s great First Age love story from The Silmarillion<\/em>, the tale of Beren and\u00a0L\u00fathien: their hopelessly herculean quest to wrest a Silmaril from Morgoth’s crown as the bride price demanded by the elf princess’s father. Just as\u00a0L\u00fathien\u00a0overcame impossible odds through her art of song, might the strength of Mohan’s muse prove similarly compelling to our voters?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let the Madness come to an end and our 2025 winner be crowned, whether in golden light or a dark iron crown. It’s up to the fans to decide!<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

You have until 6pm ET on Tuesday April 8th <\/strong>to vote in Round Six; that evening on TORn Tuesday<\/a> we’ll look back over the whole Middle-earth March Madness contest, and reveal the winner. It’s your last chance to make your vote counts – rally the troops! Vote now<\/a>!<\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We come to it at last: the great battle of our age – or at least of Middle-earth…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":120350,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[241,3357,14,197,36,7,9,35,3619,6,38,148,149,37,156,159,152,3218,3656],"tags":[2353,2754,4010,3797,3060,2462,3135,1897,221,2014,2600,2857,4325],"class_list":["post-120365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alan_lee","category-art","category-events","category-fans","category-fotr-book","category-hobbit-book","category-howe","category-lotr-books","category-march-madness","category-tolkbooks","category-rotk-book","category-hobbit","category-lotr","category-ttt-book","category-torn-announcements","category-torn-community","category-tolkien","category-tolkien-art","category-tolkiens-writing","tag-alan-lee","tag-art","tag-beren-and-luthien","tag-edoras","tag-j-r-r-tolkien","tag-march-madness","tag-middle-earth-march-madness","tag-silmarillion-2","tag-the-hobbit","tag-the-lord-of-the-rings","tag-the-shire","tag-tolkien","tag-turner-mohan"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/edoras.webp","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1tLoH-vjn","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120365"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":120366,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120365\/revisions\/120366"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/120350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}