Castamir the Usurper

Lineage

Castamir was of the royal house of Gondor, a grandson of Calimmacil, whose father Arciryas was a younger son of King Atanatar II Alcarin and brother of the kings Narmacil I and Calmacil. He was thus a cousin of King Valacar, of purely Númenórean descent, and the Captain of Ships, the commander of the great fleet that the Ship-kings had built and that was based at Pelargir. The fleet's captains and the lords of the southern coasts were the proudest of Gondor's nobility and the most jealous of their Númenórean blood.

The Kin-strife

Valacar had married Vidumavi, daughter of Vidugavia of the Northmen, while serving at her father's court, and their son Eldacar was born in Rhovanion. The high families of Gondor would not accept an heir of mixed blood, fearing that the long life of the Númenóreans would be lost and the royal dignity lessened; and when Valacar died in 1432 and Eldacar succeeded, the discontent turned into rebellion. Castamir was its leader and had the fleet and the coast behind him. In 1437 he besieged Eldacar in Osgiliath. The city was taken and burned, the Dome of Stars was destroyed and the palantír of Osgiliath lost in the river. Eldacar escaped north to his mother's people, but his elder son Ornendil was captured, and Castamir had him put to death.

The usurper's reign

Castamir was crowned in 1437 and reigned for ten years. He proved a cruel and haughty king who cared for nothing but the fleet. The execution of Ornendil and the ruin of Osgiliath had already cost him the loyalty of the north of the realm, and his plan to move the king's seat from Osgiliath to Pelargir, closer to his ships and further from the inland provinces, lost him what remained. The people of Calenardhon and Anórien and the Northmen who had settled in Gondor under Rómendacil II were ready to rise when Eldacar came back.

The Crossings of Erui

In 1447 Eldacar returned from the north with an army of Northmen and was joined by the men of Calenardhon, Anórien and Ithilien. He met Castamir at the Crossings of Erui in Lebennin, and in the battle Eldacar himself killed the usurper, avenging his son. Castamir's sons and the ships' captains withdrew to Pelargir and held it for a year, but Eldacar had no fleet with which to assault them from the water, and in 1448 they took the whole navy of Gondor and sailed south to Umbar. There they made themselves a realm of exiles at war with Gondor, and their descendants were the Corsairs of Umbar, whose raids troubled the South Kingdom for fifteen hundred years. Castamir's great-grandsons Angamaitë and Sangahyando killed King Minardil at Pelargir in 1634.

Legacy

Castamir's rebellion was the turning point of Gondor's history. It burned its capital, lost a palantír and its fleet, and created a permanent enemy on its southern flank; and the memory of the Kin-strife made the Council of Gondor unwilling in 2050 to accept any claimant of doubtful descent, so that the Stewards ruled instead. The fear that had driven him proved groundless: Eldacar's mingled line lived no shorter than his own.

Slain by Eldacar in the Battle of the Crossings of Erui in 1447.