<= 7 balrogs

[PowerDiver]

I read an article about changes Peter Jackson made in the movies that the article thought were improvements, one of which was changing the balrog in Moria from man-sized to enormous. I could not remember one way or the other, but I started searching on balrogs.

I came across comments from random fanatics who appear to know the stories behind the stories, and I was surprised that JRRT's views of balrogs changed drastically over time. Apparently originally there were at least many hundreds but the lesser balrogs might have been somewhat comparable to orcs in power [I cannot remember where I read that]. Over time, JRRT kept thinking they should be rarer and more powerful.

According to https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Balrogs the son said of the number of balrogs

In the margin my father wrote: 'There should not be supposed more than say 3 or at most 7 ever existed.'

The wiki says that predated the publication of The Silmarillion.

If you are interested in random people commenting about it, the post that got me looking was

https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheSilmarillion/permalink/10160548487951704

[Nick]

Yes, this is mentioned in books 10 and 11 of History of Middle Earth. The battle of Unnumbered Tears is said to have "balrogs a thousand" in the version he was writing in the 1950s, and the note about no more than 3 or 7 was very late (so late 60s or early 70s). That was very characteristic of his late writings, where his ideas had evolved and he went back and tried to reconcile that with what he had written - without much success, frankly. And all this was before The Silmarillion, because that was published after his death.

I guess I'm a random fanatic