Welcome to the Silmaril Awards! These awards celebrate the best characters in fantasy fiction. That’s right–the awards are not for books, but for the characters themselves.
What are the Silmaril Awards?
Started in 2016, these awards are a four week online celebration of all that’s best in fantasy literature. There are several categories given every year. And, if you couldn’t tell from the name, they are based on the Lord of the Rings series by Tolkien, the master fantasy storyteller himself.
A different character from the Lord of the Rings books will host each category. For example, for the Most Magnificent Dragon award, which I’m hosting here, guess which character from LOTR will host the award? That’s right. Smaug. For this reason, you can’t nominate a character from the LOTR series.
The awards the winners will receive are silmarils, the otherworldly gems featured in Tolkien’s book, The Silmarillion. Though there were a limited number of these gems in his world, in ours we have found a great many more!
How do the Silmaril Awards Work?
You will nominate a character on the websites of each of the presenters/hosts. Anyone can submit a nomination, and you can second (and third and fourth, etc.) any number of nominations besides your own. The person you nominate must just be from a fantasy book and can’t have been nominated before, as these are lifetime awards.
The nomination period will last a week. After this, the five characters receiving the most nominations will make it onto the ballot and you’ll have one week to vote. After the votes are tallied, the winners will be announced, one per day, over the final two weeks of the awards.
Schedule
The dates for this year’s awards are:
- Nominations: Sept 7-11
- Voting: Sept 14-18
- Awards Ceremonies: Sept 21-Oct. 2
Rules for the Silmaril Awards
1. You cannot nominate characters from Tolkien’s works. The creators of these awards saw that Tolkien’s characters are the gold standard by which we measure these categories, and they’re the official presenters of the awards. In other words: they’re doubly ineligible.
2. These awards are for fantasy characters only; no science fiction characters are eligible. That said, we will consider characters from some science-y books if there’s enough magic-y/fantastical stuff that it can be deemed science fantasy of some stripe. The primary example is characters from Marissa Meyer’s Lunar Chronicles, which we’ve decided does involve enough magic that it’s basically science fantasy.
3. When you nominate your character, please mention which book they are from. Much as we all wish we had infinite reading time, most of us are mere mortals who can only devote so much time to devouring the entire contents of any library we can access. (And those of us who aren’t mere mortals are still pretty busy.)
4. You may nominate as many characters as you wish and “second” as many characters as you want, but you cannot second your own nominations. The top five MOST seconded characters will go on to the final voting round. (Also, as a request . . . please don’t say “I second all characters from [insert book/series here].” That makes it more difficult for the hosts, who now have to make sure they don’t miss any characters from that media. Instead, we encourage you to consider which character from that book or series best fits the category and throw your support behind that one.)
5. If you are an author, please refrain from nominating your own characters. You are welcome to encourage your fans to nominate them, however, and you are more than welcome to nominate others’ characters.
6. Characters who have won in a particular category in a previous year are ineligible to be nominated for the same award again. The Silmarils are Lifetime Awards. For a list of the previous winners in each category, please check out our Hall of Fame. Note: as of 2023, characters from The Chronicles of Narnia have been recognized with Lifetime Silmarils by the Silmaril Awards Council and therefore cannot be nominated again.
7. Please remember that these are Fantasy BOOK Awards. Therefore, a movie character is only eligible for nomination if they were in a book first!
8. Most importantly, have fun! We are celebrating our favorite characters and being a little silly in the process. And even if your personal favorite character doesn’t win or doesn’t reach voting, someone else’s did . . . and there’s always next year.
The Most Magnificent Dragon Award
Alright, you humans! It’s time to see if you can find a dragon as fierce and magnificent as me, the illustrious and terrifying Smaug. Ready? Nominate your dragon by leaving a comment below.
How to Nominate Characters for Other Awards
Visit these websites to nominate characters for each of the other awards!
Silver Tongue (This one will is an Instagram account)
