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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 17, 2025

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And the fact that she was only able to kill the Witch-king through a linguistic loophole is particularly galling.

No? I think it's both funny and clever, and in the traditional vein of "devilish contracts are foiled by word-play" stories. There's always a catch to the genie's gifts, and the gifts of Sauron are no exception. The Witch-king, by this view, may in part have surrendered to the lure of his ring through "I will be truly immortal and no-one will be able to kill me", and then the loophole smacks him in the face.

That he is taken down by a woman and a hobbit is completely in harmony with how the demons are foiled in Hindu mythology. They perform penances to gain boons from the Supreme Trinity, immortality is not possible, so they ask for elaborate conditions ("nobody can kill me except...") and think they have gained because this particular set will never come to pass.

See, for example, Ravana: he asks for immunity to all except from men, because in his arrogance and pride he doesn't think those creatures are ever going to be strong enough to fight him, and he ends up killed by Rama, the human avatar of Vishnu, with the assistance of Hanuman, the monkey-avatar of Shiva.

The most elaborate probably has to do with the avatar of Vishnu as Narasimha, the man-lion, to kill the demon-king who had received a boon with a list of accompanying conditions:

According to Hindu texts, Hiranyakashipu, the elder brother of Hiranyaksha—who was killed earlier by Vishnu's Varaha avatar—received a boon from the creator god Brahma that made him nearly invulnerable. The conditions of the boon prevented his death by man or beast, indoors or outdoors, during day or night, on earth or in the sky, and not by any weapon. Empowered by this, Hiranyakashipu persecuted Vishnu’s devotees, including his own son Prahlada. To circumvent the boon, Vishnu incarnated as Narasimha—neither man nor animal—and killed Hiranyakashipu at twilight, on a palace threshold, placing him on his lap and tearing him apart with his claws.

Eowyn being "No living man am I" is in response to Shakespeare's "Macbeth", where the condition there is 'Macbeth thinks he can be killed by no man born of woman; Macduff is born of a woman who died in childbirth/born via Caesarean section so that technically fulfils the condition'.

No? I think it's both funny and clever, and in the traditional vein of "devilish contracts are foiled by word-play" stories. There's always a catch to the genie's gifts, and the gifts of Sauron are no exception. The Witch-king, by this view, may in part have surrendered to the lure of his ring through "I will be truly immortal and no-one will be able to kill me", and then the loophole smacks him in the face.

That he is taken down by a woman and a hobbit is completely in harmony with how the demons are foiled in Hindu mythology. They perform penances to gain boons from the Supreme Trinity, immortality is not possible, so they ask for elaborate conditions ("nobody can kill me except...") and think they have gained because this particular set will never come to pass.

It's also not unknown in European tales either, beyond just Macbeth. My favorite for "complex loophole" bit is Welsh, from the fourth branch of the Mabinogi. Specifically, that Lleu Llaw Gyffes cannot be killed "during the day or night, nor indoors or outdoors, neither riding nor walking, not clothed and not naked, nor by any weapon lawfully made."

So he gets struck down at dusk, wrapped in a net, with one foot on a cauldron and one on a goat, using a spear forged for a year during the hours when everyone is supposed to be at mass.

Because, like you note, there's always a loophole to these things.