Men of Gondor

Origins

Long before the Downfall of Númenor, the Númenóreans had built havens at the mouths of the Anduin, of which Pelargir was the chief, and the Faithful among them settled there in growing numbers as the shadow fell on their island. When Elendil escaped the drowning of Númenor in S.A. 3319, his sons Isildur and Anárion were carried south to these havens, and there they founded Gondor in the following year. Its capital was Osgiliath, built on both banks of the Great River with the Dome of Stars at its heart, where the chief palantír of the South was kept. Isildur raised Minas Ithil on the flank of the Mountains of Shadow and Anárion raised Minas Anor beneath Mount Mindolluin, and the two brothers ruled together under the High Kingship of their father in the North.

The realm took in the older peoples of the region: the men of the coastlands and the valleys of the White Mountains, some of them kin of the Edain and some of darker origin, who accepted Númenórean rule and slowly merged with the newcomers. The Men of Gondor were thus never purely Númenórean, and their kings were later to quarrel bitterly over exactly that question.

The Last Alliance and the early kings

Sauron, returning from the wreck of Númenor, struck first at Gondor. In S.A. 3429 he took Minas Ithil and burned the White Tree, while Isildur escaped by ship to seek his father and Anárion held Osgiliath. The Last Alliance answered; Anárion was killed by a stone from Barad-dûr in 3440, and Sauron was overthrown a year later. Isildur left the South Kingdom to Anárion's son Meneldil and rode north to his death at the Gladden Fields. From then on the kings of Gondor descended from Anárion and ruled without reference to the North, though the two realms never made war on each other.

Meneldil's successors built and fortified. Ostoher rebuilt Minas Anor as a summer seat and the first attacks of Easterlings came in his day; his son Tarostar took the name Rómendacil, East-victor, and was later killed by them. Through the seventh and eighth centuries of the Third Age the frontier was pushed east and south.

The Ship-kings and the height of Gondor

Tarannon Falastur, who came to the throne in T.A. 830, was the first of the four Ship-kings, and under him and his successors Gondor became a sea power stretching its lordship along the coasts west and south. Tarannon's own reign was shadowed by his unhappy marriage to Berúthiel, and he died childless. His nephew Eärnil I rebuilt the ancient haven of Pelargir, built a great navy, and in 933 seized Umbar, the old stronghold of the King's Men, but was lost at sea three years later. Ciryandil his son died before Umbar when the Haradrim laid siege to it. His son Ciryaher waited long and then, in 1050, crushed the men of Harad, taking the name Hyarmendacil, South-victor, and reducing the Haradrim kings to vassals whose sons were kept at his court.

This was Gondor's zenith. Its bounds ran north to the Field of Celebrant, east to the Sea of Rhûn, south beyond the river Harnen, and along the coast to Umbar. Hyarmendacil's son Atanatar II Alcarin lived in unmatched splendour, and it was said that in his day precious stones were playthings for children. But he did nothing to maintain what he had inherited, and the decline of Gondor began in his ease.

The Kin-strife

Atanatar's grandson Minalcar governed as Regent from 1240 and as King Rómendacil II from 1304. He fought and defeated the Easterlings in 1248 and raised the pillars of the Argonath to mark the northern border, and he made an alliance with the Northmen of Rhovanion, who were near kin to the Edain and whose horsemen served in his armies. To learn their ways he sent his son Valacar to the court of Vidugavia, who styled himself King of Rhovanion. Valacar married Vidugavia's daughter Vidumavi, and their son Eldacar was born in the North.

When Valacar came to the throne in 1366 the great families of the south, especially the ships' captains and the lords of Pelargir and the coast, would not accept an heir of mixed blood; they feared that the Númenórean lifespan would be shortened by such marriages and that the royal line would be lessened. Eldacar's accession in 1432 brought open revolt. Castamir, a grandson of Rómendacil II's brother and Captain of Ships, led the rebellion. In 1437 Osgiliath was besieged and burned, its Dome of Stars fell, and its palantír was lost in the river. Eldacar's elder son Ornendil was captured and put to death, and Eldacar fled north to his mother's kin.

Castamir reigned for ten years, cruel and hated, caring for nothing but his fleets and planning to move the royal seat to Pelargir. In 1447 Eldacar returned with a host of Northmen and loyal men of the northern provinces, met Castamir at the Crossings of Erui, and killed him with his own hand. Castamir's sons held out in Pelargir for a year and then fled with the fleet to Umbar, where their descendants became the Corsairs of Umbar and a lasting enemy. The Kin-strife left Gondor with a mingled and, in the event, no shorter-lived royal line, but with its capital ruined and much of its fleet gone.

The Great Plague and the Wainriders

In 1634 the Corsairs raided Pelargir and killed King Minardil. Two years later a plague came out of the East on a dark wind and swept through Gondor. King Telemnar and all his children died, and so did the White Tree; the population of Osgiliath fell so far that it was left half empty, and the watch on the borders of Mordor was abandoned. Telemnar's nephew Tarondor moved the king's house permanently to Minas Anor and planted a seedling of the Tree in its court. The plague ran on into Eriador and helped to finish the Dúnedain of Cardolan. During the confusion the Ringwraiths returned quietly to Mordor.

A new enemy came in 1851: the Wainriders, a confederation of Easterlings who fought from great wagons and chariots. King Narmacil II fell in the Battle of the Plains in 1856, the Northmen of Rhovanion were enslaved or driven west, and Gondor lost everything east of the Anduin except Ithilien. His son Calimehtar won a victory on Dagorlad in 1899 with the help of a Northmen rising, but in 1944 the Wainriders returned in alliance with Khand and Harad. King Ondoher and both his sons were killed in the north, and Gondor seemed lost until Eärnil II, commanding the Southern Army, destroyed the Haradrim in South Ithilien and then fell on the celebrating Wainriders in the Battle of the Camp, driving them into the Dead Marshes.

The end of the line of kings

Ondoher's death left the succession open. Arvedui of Arthedain, husband of Ondoher's daughter, claimed the crown, but the council of Gondor, guided by the Steward Pelendur, chose Eärnil instead as a victorious general and a descendant of Anárion. Eärnil sent his son Eärnur north with a fleet in 1975 to save what could be saved, and Eärnur's army destroyed Angmar at the Battle of Fornost. But the Witch-king returned to Mordor, gathered the Nazgûl, and in 2000 besieged Minas Ithil. It fell two years later and became Minas Morgul, a place of dread; its palantír was taken by the Enemy. Minas Anor was renamed Minas Tirith, the Tower of Guard.

Eärnur succeeded his father in 2043 and was at once challenged by the Witch-king to single combat. His Steward Mardil restrained him, but when the challenge was repeated in 2050 the king rode to the gates of Minas Morgul with a small company and was never seen again. Since no one could prove he was dead and no claimant of pure descent could be found who was not tainted by the memory of the Kin-strife, the Steward ruled in the king's name until he should return. He did not return for nine hundred and sixty-nine years.

The Ruling Stewards

The Stewards were of the House of Húrin, a family of Númenórean descent from Emyn Arnen that had held the stewardship since the days of Minardil. Mardil Voronwë was the first Ruling Steward and twenty-six followed him in unbroken succession. They swore to hold rod and rule until the king came again, sat on a plain black chair at the foot of the empty throne, and bore no crown, but in every other way they were kings. Under their rule Gondor was gradually reduced. In 2475 the Orcs of Mordor, a new and larger breed, took Ithilien and ruined what was left of Osgiliath. In 2510 the Balchoth out of the East overran Calenardhon and were destroyed only by the timely arrival of Eorl and the Éothéod, whom the Steward Cirion rewarded with the whole province, thereafter called Rohan. In 2758 Corsairs raided the coasts in the year of the Long Winter, and in 2885 the Haradrim crossed the Poros. Under Túrin II the last people of Ithilien were withdrawn across the river, though secret refuges such as Henneth Annûn were kept for the Rangers who still harried the enemy there.

The last two Ruling Stewards were Ecthelion II, a wise and generous lord who took many able men into his service, among them the stranger Thorongil, and his son Denethor II, proud, far-sighted and worn down by his secret use of the palantír of Minas Anor.

The War of the Ring

Sauron opened the war against Gondor with the assault on Osgiliath in June 3018, in which Boromir and Faramir held the last bridge and then destroyed it. In March 3019 the full strength of Mordor and its allies, led by the Witch-king, crossed the river, drove Faramir's companies back from the causeway forts, and laid siege to Minas Tirith. Denethor, believing all lost, burned himself in the tombs; the Great Gate was broken. The city was saved by the charge of the Rohirrim and by the arrival of Aragorn up the Anduin in the captured ships of Umbar, and the Battle of the Pelennor Fields ended with the enemy destroyed. The captains of the West then marched to the Black Gate to draw Sauron's eye from the Ring-bearer, and on 25 March the Dark Tower fell.

Aragorn was crowned Elessar on 1 May 3019, restoring the line of the kings. Faramir remained Steward and became Prince of Ithilien, and Gondor entered the Fourth Age as the centre of a Reunited Kingdom greater than any it had known since the Ship-kings.

The Men of Gondor of high lineage kept the Númenórean look: tall, grey-eyed, dark-haired, pale-skinned and grave, and they aged slowly, though by the end of the Third Age even the royal house rarely passed a hundred and twenty years. The common people of the southern fiefs, of Lossarnach, Lebennin and the coasts, were shorter and swarthier, descended from the older peoples of the mountains, and the tall men of the Númenórean stock were becoming rare outside Minas Tirith, Dol Amroth and the great houses. Warriors of the city wore black surcoats embroidered with the White Tree and stars, high helms with wings of sea-birds, and mail of fine craft; the Rangers of Ithilien went in green and brown with bows and long spears.

Gondor was the most literate and monumental realm of Men in Middle-earth. Its cities were built in the Númenórean manner of dressed stone, with Minas Tirith rising in seven walled levels around the shoulder of Mindolluin and Osgiliath spanning the Anduin with a great bridge. Westron, the Common Speech, was Gondor's daily language and it spread from Gondor across the West, but the nobility spoke Sindarin among themselves and gave their children Sindarin names, and the kings and the lore-masters kept Quenya. The court preserved a great archive in the citadel, where Gandalf found Isildur's account of the Ring, and the Stewards were expected to be learned as well as warlike.

The realm was organised into fiefs, each under a lord: Dol Amroth under its Prince, Lossarnach, Lebennin, Lamedon, Anfalas, the Morthond vale and the coast, each sending its levy to the city in war. The White Tree in the Court of the Fountain was the symbol of the kingdom, and the Stewards ruled beneath the empty throne with a white rod. The Men of Gondor practised a reverence for the West, standing a moment in silence before meals to look toward Númenor that was and Elvenhome beyond it, and they buried their kings and Stewards in the Silent Street behind the city. In war they relied on heavy infantry, archers, and the knights of Dol Amroth, and on the sea on the fleet of Pelargir when it survived.

Gondor was founded in S.A. 3320 by Isildur and Anárion, who had been driven south by the storm that scattered the ships of the Faithful. The Númenórean settlers already living around Pelargir and the Bay of Belfalas welcomed them, and the brothers laid out Osgiliath as their capital and the twin cities of Minas Ithil and Minas Anor as their own seats. From Isildur came the seedling of the White Tree of Númenor; from Elendil the palantíri that were set in Osgiliath, Minas Ithil, Minas Anor and Orthanc. Gondor was from the first the wealthier and more populous of the two Númenórean realms in exile.

Gondor survived the Third Age with its territory shrunk to the lands west of the Anduin and its people thinned, but with its monarchy restored. Under King Elessar and his heirs the Reunited Kingdom recovered Ithilien, made peace with Harad and the East on favourable terms, rebuilt the fleet and refounded the North. Faramir's line held Ithilien as princes and Dol Amroth kept its princes, while the alliance with Rohan, renewed by Éomer, endured. The Men of Gondor thus entered the Fourth Age as the dominant power of the West.