Tar-Ancalimë

Childhood between two houses

Ancalimë was born in S.A. 873, the only child of Aldarion, heir to the sceptre of Númenor, and Erendis of the Westlands. She was four when her father sailed on the voyage that ended the marriage, and her mother took her to the white house at Emerië among the sheep-downs, where she grew up entirely among women and learned from Erendis that men were faithless and that the Sea took everything. She loved the country life, and the shepherds' name for her, Emerwen, the Shepherd Princess, stayed with her. When Aldarion became King he brought her, resentful, to Armenelos, and there she learned to enjoy power at least as much as she disliked her father.

Heir under the new law

Having no son, Tar-Aldarion changed the ancient law so that the eldest child of the King, daughter or son, should inherit. The new law also required an heir to marry, and Ancalimë, who wished neither to marry nor to lose the sceptre to her cousins, delayed as long as she could. She was wooed at Emerië by a man calling himself Mámandil, a shepherd who sang to her; he proved to be Hallacar of Hyarastorni, a descendant of Vardamir and thus of the royal house, and when she could put it off no longer she married him, around the year 1000, on the understanding that he would have nothing of her. Their son, Anárion, was born in 1003. Ancalimë treated her husband with contempt, forbade him her house, and kept her women from marrying; Hallacar answered by secretly arranging their weddings under her roof and humiliating her before them. They lived apart thereafter.

Reign

She received the sceptre from her father in 1075 and reigned as Tar-Ancalimë for two hundred and five years, the longest reign of any ruler of Númenor after Elros. She was clever and capable, but she ruled to please herself. The policies her father had built, the haven of Vinyalondë, the timber-trade with Middle-earth and the aid promised to Gil-galad, she let lapse, and the friendship of Númenor with the Elves of Lindon cooled for a generation. She resigned the sceptre in 1280 to her son Tar-Anárion and died in 1285. Anárion's two daughters, brought up in their grandmother's shadow, refused the sceptre when their turn came, so that the line passed to Tar-Súrion. The tale of Ancalimë's upbringing survives only in Unfinished Tales, where it is the last fully told part of the story of her parents.

Resigned the sceptre in S.A. 1280 and died in S.A. 1285.