Tar-Aldarion

Lineage and youth

Anardil was born in S.A. 700, the only son of Tar-Meneldur, fifth King of Númenor, and of Almarian, daughter of Vëantur, the Captain of the King's Ships. From his grandfather he took the love of the Sea that his father, a scholar of the stars, never shared. In 725 Vëantur carried him on his first voyage east, to the Grey Havens of Lindon, and the boy came home already resolved on the life that would rule him. He was called Aldarion, Son of the Trees, because he loved trees and planted them wherever he could, though he planted them chiefly to fell them for timber, and his forestry in the Forostar and the Hyarrostar became a policy of state. Of all the descendants of Elros he was among the most gifted: tall, strong, tireless, a shipwright and a leader whom men followed gladly.

The Guild of Venturers

While still a young man Aldarion founded the Guild of Venturers, the Uinendili, a brotherhood of mariners who took Uinen as their patron. He built a great ship, Eämbar, to be their guildhouse and moored it at Rómenna so that it was neither on land nor at sea and outside the King's authority. From there he led voyage after voyage to Middle-earth, exploring its coasts, cutting timber in its forests, and coming to know Gil-galad and Círdan, who taught him and honoured him. In the mouths of the river Gwathló, on the coast of Enedwaith, he built the haven of Vinyalondë, the New Haven, to be a base for the timber-trade and, though he did not yet say so, for the defence of the west against a shadow he had begun to sense in the east. Tar-Meneldur disapproved of all of it: the King feared the Sea and disliked his son's long absences, and the two were often estranged.

Erendis

Around 800 Aldarion met Erendis, a young woman of the Westlands whom his mother had brought to court, and they fell in love. Their courtship lasted decades. Erendis would not bind herself to a man who was always at sea; Aldarion could not stay ashore; and each of his returns was followed by a longer departure. A gift he brought her, a white jewel of the Elves of Lindon that she wore on her brow, gave her the name Elestirnë. Twice the marriage seemed lost; each time Almarian and the Eldar of Tol Eressëa worked to bring the two together, and in 858 they were betrothed and in 870 married with great ceremony at Armenelos. Their daughter Ancalimë was born in 873.

It did not last. In 877 Aldarion sailed again, meaning to be gone two years, and was gone five. When he came back in 882 his wife had left Armenelos for her house at Emerië in the sheep-country, taking the child. He rode there and found only a locked door of the heart, and their final meeting ended the marriage in everything but name. Erendis never forgave him, and she raised their daughter to think as she did.

The King

That same year Gil-galad wrote to Tar-Meneldur that a shadow was stirring in the east of Middle-earth, that servants of Morgoth had returned, and that the Elves of Lindon would need the help of Númenor. Meneldur, who now saw that his son had understood the world better than he, resigned the sceptre in 883, and Aldarion became King as Tar-Aldarion. He reigned for a hundred and ninety-two years. He rebuilt Vinyalondë, which the Sea had half destroyed, made the timber-trade and the fleet instruments of policy, and sent aid and counsel to Gil-galad, so that the friendship between Númenor and the Elves of Middle-earth reached its height. He is the first Númenórean recorded to have guessed at the rising of Sauron, though he never knew the enemy's name.

His daughter he loved, though she had been taught to resent him, and having no son he altered the law of succession: henceforth the sceptre would pass to the eldest child of the King, whether son or daughter. Under this law Ancalimë became the first Ruling Queen, and the law endured to the end of Númenor. She surrendered nothing of her mother's coldness, and after his death she let his havens decay and his alliances lapse.

Death and legacy

Tar-Aldarion gave up the sceptre in 1075 and died in 1098, having lived to see Erendis, who had refused to come to him, die in the sea. His reign was the beginning of Númenor's presence in Middle-earth: the havens he built grew into the settlements that later kings turned into an empire, and the ships he taught his people to build became the fleets of Tar-Minastir that saved Lindon from Sauron in 1700. His marriage is one of the most fully told stories of the Second Age, a study of two people who each destroyed what they loved, and it survives only in Unfinished Tales, where the narrative breaks off before his reign.

Resigned the sceptre to Ancalimë in S.A. 1075 and died in S.A. 1098.