Ar-Pharazôn

Lineage and rise

Pharazôn, whose Quenya name was Calion, was born in S.A. 3118, the son of Gimilkhâd, younger brother of the King Tar-Palantir, and so a descendant of Elros in the twenty-fourth generation. His father was the leader of the King's Men, the party that resented the Ban of the Valar and had turned from the Elves, and Pharazôn grew up in that faction. As a young man he was a friend of Amandil of Andúnië, though they later stood on opposite sides of everything. He made his name as a captain in the wars that the Númenóreans were then fighting on the coasts of Middle-earth, where their settlements had become tributary empires; he was open-handed with the wealth he took there, restless, proud and hugely popular, and when Gimilkhâd died in 3243 he inherited his father's following.

Usurpation

Tar-Palantir died in 3255, leaving as his heir a single daughter, Míriel. Pharazôn had just returned to Númenor, and he acted at once. He took Míriel as his wife against her will, a marriage doubly unlawful since they were first cousins and since the sceptre could not pass through marriage, and he seized the kingship, naming himself Ar-Pharazôn and his queen Ar-Zimraphel. No one resisted him. He was the greatest king in wealth and might that Númenor had ever known, and the people, who had forgotten the humility of their fathers, were content.

Sauron humbled

News came that Sauron had taken the title King of Men, was making war on the Númenórean settlements, and boasted that he would drive the Númenóreans into the sea. Ar-Pharazôn resolved to claim that title for himself. For years he gathered the greatest fleet and army the world had seen, and in 3261 he sailed and landed at Umbar. The host marched inland for seven days and camped, and no army came against them; the servants of Sauron fled at the sight of the Númenóreans. Sauron came down from Barad-dûr himself and did homage, and Ar-Pharazôn, not trusting him out of sight, brought him back to Númenor as a hostage in 3262. It was the fatal error of his reign. Within three years the prisoner had become the King's closest counsellor, and all but the Faithful listened to him gladly.

The Temple

Sauron taught the King that the Ban of the Valar was a lie and that the Darkness that Melkor served was the true lord of the world, who could give Men the endless life the Valar withheld. Ar-Pharazôn turned to the worship of Melkor. Sauron's temple was built in Armenelos, a great dome of silver that blackened in the smoke, and in it the White Tree Nimloth was burned, felled at Sauron's urging despite the King's remembrance of Tar-Palantir's prophecy; Isildur had already stolen a fruit from it. Then Men were sacrificed there, and the victims were chiefly the Faithful, accused of hatred of the King. Amandil was dismissed from the council and the Faithful gathered at Rómenna under Elendil. Ar-Pharazôn's fleets in Middle-earth turned from trade to conquest and tribute, and the Númenóreans were feared as tyrants. The King grew old, and the fear of death, on which Sauron had worked from the beginning, mastered him.

The Great Armament

At Sauron's counsel he resolved to take from the Valar by force the immortality they refused. From 3310 the whole strength of Númenor was bent to the Great Armament, and the forests of the island were felled for ships. Amandil sailed West to plead with the Valar and was never seen again; Elendil prepared the ships of the Faithful in secret. Eagles came out of the West like storm-clouds and lightning struck the Temple, and Ar-Pharazôn would not turn back. In 3319 he boarded his flagship Alcarondas and sailed west at the head of the fleet, breaking the Ban, and after thirty-nine days he came to the shores of Aman. He landed, and his host camped about the hill of Túna beneath Tirion, which stood empty before him, and in the moment before he might have turned away, pride drove him to claim the land.

The Downfall

Manwë and the Valar laid down their guardianship of Arda and called on Eru, and the world was changed. Aman and Tol Eressëa were removed from the circles of the world; the sea opened and swallowed the fleet; Númenor itself broke and sank beneath the waves, and Ar-Zimraphel, whom he had wronged, died on the slopes of the Meneltarma. Ar-Pharazôn and the mortal warriors who had set foot on the Undying Lands were buried under falling hills, and it is said that they lie imprisoned in the Caves of the Forgotten until the Last Battle and the Day of Doom. Sauron's body was destroyed in the Temple, but his spirit fled back to Mordor.

Legacy

Ar-Pharazôn was the strongest of all the Kings of Men and the one whose pride ended the age of Númenor. His conquest of Sauron without a blow was the height of Númenórean power, and his defeat was the end of the straight road between mortal lands and the West. From the ruin of his kingdom came the exile realms of Arnor and Gondor, founded by the Faithful he had persecuted, and the Black Númenóreans of Umbar who long remembered him. His name became in later ages a symbol of the peril of desiring what is beyond a mortal's portion.

Buried with his host under falling hills when the Valar laid down their guardianship in S.A. 3319, imprisoned in the Caves of the Forgotten until the Last Battle.