No Mercy Given: What Aragorn Did to the Orcs After the War with Sauron — A Chilling Truth
Aragorn had a choice — but he didn’t take it.
After the forces of Light triumphed over Sauron, Middle-earth was supposed to breathe a sigh of relief. Evil was defeated, the Ring destroyed, the king returned — time to live happily ever after. But not all inhabitants of Tolkien’s world were granted a second chance.
The orcs — those very creatures used as cannon fodder for millennia — became a people no one wanted to remember. If anyone thinks Aragorn was a merciful ruler, they should look closer at what he did to the orcs.
Orcs certainly weren’t perfect neighbours: aggressive, cruel, and vicious. Yet they had their own history, language, craftsmen, forges, even a written script. They were not mindless monsters as they are often portrayed.
Yes, Morgoth created them as a mockery of the elves. Yes, Sauron used them. But were ordinary orcs truly to blame for their masters’ schemes? Perhaps with the men of the East and South, who were allies of Sauron, Aragorn negotiated and imposed forced peace, giving them a chance at life. But for the orcs, there was no mercy. No amnesty, no exile. Only total annihilation.
After Sauron’s fall, Aragorn’s army began the hunt. Orcs were slaughtered without mercy, their settlements burned, and survivors driven into rocky caves to slowly perish. Elessar, the king of the new age, never once considered them as a rational people capable of change. To him, they were inherently corrupted beings, doomed to vanish with the Darkness.
In drafts of The New Shadow, Tolkien later wrote that years after, orcs were only remembered as scary tales told to children. Not a single one remained. Aragorn’s policy was not just ruthless — it was final.
