Valandil

Birth in Imladris

Valandil was the fourth and youngest son of Isildur, grandson of Elendil, and was born in S.A. 3430 in Rivendell, where Isildur's wife had been sent for safety when the Last Alliance of Elves and Men was gathering. He was named for Valandil of Andúnië, the first of the Lords of Andúnië and an ancestor of the line of Elendil. The war that followed took his father and grandfather away for seven years, and Valandil spent his infancy and early childhood in Elrond's house while Sauron was besieged in Barad-dûr.

The Disaster of the Gladden Fields

He never saw his father again. When the war ended and Isildur came north in T.A. 2 to take up the kingship of Arnor, meaning to rest at Rivendell where his wife and youngest son waited, he was ambushed by Orcs at the Gladden Fields and killed with his three elder sons, Elendur, Aratan and Ciryon. Of the company, only three men survived. One of them, Isildur's squire Ohtar, had been sent away before the end with the shards of Narsil, and he carried them to Rivendell in T.A. 3 and laid them in the keeping of the child who was now Isildur's heir. Unfinished Tales records that Isildur had set out with his sons precisely because he wished Valandil, still a boy, to be spared the war and the road, and so the youngest son inherited everything through the loss of everyone else.

King of Arnor

Valandil was too young to rule, and the North Kingdom was governed on his behalf until he came of age. He took up the kingship in T.A. 10 and reigned from Annúminas beside Lake Evendim for two hundred and thirty-nine years. His reign was a quiet one; Sauron was overthrown, Angmar did not yet exist, and the Dúnedain of the North were still numerous, although the losses of the war had been heavier for Arnor than for Gondor. He never claimed the rule of Gondor, which his cousin Meneldil held as an independent king from T.A. 2 onward, and the North Kingdom maintained without pressing it that the High Kingship of all the Dúnedain remained with Isildur's line. That unresolved claim lay dormant for nearly two thousand years before Arvedui revived it and, three thousand years after Valandil, Aragorn made it good.

Valandil kept the heirlooms of his house: the shards of Narsil, the Ring of Barahir, the Sceptre of Annúminas, and the Elendilmir, the Star of Elendil, of which a new one was made for him since the original had been lost with Isildur in the Anduin. He died in T.A. 249 and was succeeded by his son Eldacar. From him the kings of Arnor and of Arthedain, and after them the Chieftains of the Dúnedain of the North, descended in unbroken line to Aragorn, who was the thirty-ninth heir of Isildur through Valandil.

Died in T.A. 249 after a long and peaceful reign; succeeded by his son Eldacar.