Gondor

== History ==

The history of Gondor is described in several of Tolkien's works, with different level of detail. Within the narrative of The Lord of the Rings, the kingdom is first introduced at the Council of Elrond, with a brief summary of the Second and Third Ages. The events of the latter are elaborated in the appendices to the book, and those of the former – in the last parts of The Silmarillion. Retellings at an ample scale of some particular episodes are included into Unfinished Tales.

Foundation and the Last Alliance

The territory of future Gondor had been widely colonised by the Númenóreans from around mid-Second Age, especially by the Elf-friends loyal to the house of Elendil. When his sons Isildur and Anárion landed in Middle-earth after the drowning of Númenor, they were welcomed by the colonists and their claim of lordship was accepted, while Elendil was held to be the High King of all lands of the Dúnedain. Within the South-kingdom, the hometowns of Isildur and Anárion were Minas Ithil and Minas Anor respectively, and the capital city Osgiliath was situated between them.

Sauron, however, had survived the destruction of Númenor and secretly returned to his realm of Mordor just to the east of Gondor. Soon he launched a war against the Númenórean kingdoms, hoping to destroy them before their power was established. He captured Minas Ithil, but Isildur escaped and fled by ship to Arnor; meanwhile, Anárion was able to defend Osgiliath. Elendil and the Elven-king Gil-galad formed the Last Alliance of Elves and Men, and together with Isildur and Anárion they besieged and defeated Mordor. Sauron was overthrown, but the One Ring that Isildur took from him was not destroyed, and thus Sauron was able to regain power in the next age.

Both Elendil and Anárion had been slain in the war, so Isildur conferred rule of Gondor upon Anárion's son Meneldil and went north to accent to the kingship of Arnor, retaining suzerainty over Gondor as High King of the Dúnedain. However, Isildur and his three elder sons were ambushed and killed by Orcs, and his remaining son Valandil never attempted to reclaim his father's place in Gondor monarchy.

Golden Age

The first millennium of the Third Age was characterized for Gondor by the gradual increase of the wealth of the kingdom and a sequence of victorious wars. In the wake of Sauron's defeat, Gondor assumed responsibility for maintaining a watch over Mordor and enjoyed peace for several centuries, until the first of many Easterling invasions occurred in T.A. 490. The resulting war, which lasted well into the following century, saw Gondor conquer a great deal of territory in Rhûn north of Mordor.

Under the rule of the four "Ship-Kings", Gondor established a powerful navy and increased the territory along the coasts in both directions from the Mouths of Anduin. Especially important was the conquest in 933 of the southern port city Umbar, which had been continuously in hands of the hostile Black Númenóreans. Gondor later suffered a defeat on land from the Haradrim, who proceeded to invest the haven; but after the Gondor army had been strengthened, the submission of the kings of Harad was secured in the victory of T.A. 1050.

Gondor was now at the peak of its power: its territory was at its greater extent and it enjoyed suzerainty over several other nations, including the Haradrim and the Men of the Vales of Anduin in the north; Mordor was desolate and guarded by fortresses; the kingdom enjoyed such wealth and splendour that, according to The Lord of the Rings, "men said precious stones are pebbles in Gondor for children to play with".

Decline

Gondor began to decline during the reign of several next kings who lived in ease and luxury, doing little to maintain Gondor's strength. The first casualty of this period was the watch on Mordor, which was largely neglected. King Rómendacil II, who in his youth had been appointed as his uncle's regent, defeated a new invasion of the Easterlings in 1248 and strengthened friendly relations with the Northmen. His son Valacar was sent to their lands as an ambassador; while there, he married the daughter of one of their lords and returned to Gondor only after some years.

This marriage proved disastrous to Gondor: when it was affirmed that the heir to the throne would be Valacar's son Eldacar, who was of mixed blood, southern provinces of the realm began to rebel. After Valacar died, several members of the House of Anárion claimed the crown and a full-scale civil war, called the Kin-strife, broke out in 1432. The rebel with the largest following was Castamir, who besieged and captured Osgiliath. Eldacar managed to escape to his homeland in Rhovanion, but his elder son was captured and executed. Castamir proved a very poor ruler and earned hatred of the inner provinces; consequently, Eldacar acquired a great following when he returned after several years with the Northmen allies, slew Castamir and defeated his army. Castamir's sons, however, retreated to Umbar and declared independence.

A century later the kings of Harad raised a rebellion and defeated the Gondor army, but were soon routed and subdued; and after another hundred of years descendants of Castamir organised a devastating raid on the haven of Pelargir. The losses from the Kin-strife and southern wars were somewhat replenished by the intermingling with the Northmen, but the population of Gondor seriously decreased again with the coming of the Great Plague in T.A. 1636. The capital was moved from Osgiliath to the less affected Minas Anor, and the fortifications against the re-entry of evil into Mordor were finally abandoned, enabling the return of the Nazgûl there several centuries later. The Plague left Gondor's enemies in no better condition than the realm itself, and neither side was capable of mounting new offensives.

In 1810 the strengthened Gondor navy defeated the Corsairs of Umbar and retook the haven, but eventually it was lost to the Harad. A new threat appeared four decades later, when one of the Easterling peoples, called the Wainriders, defeated the Northmen and began to raid eastern Gondor. Although the first battles were lost to the invaders, the enemy was stemmed after half a century. The war broke out anew when the Wainriders joined together with the Haradrim in 1944, attacking respectively from the east and from the south. The Northern Army of Gondor, led by King Ondoher and joined by cavalry of the Éothéod, descendants of the Northmen, was defeated. Its survivors linked up with the victorious Southern Army commanded by a talented general Eärnil, and they destroyed the Wainriders in the Battle of the Camp once and for all.

Because of the deaths of Ondoher and both his sons in war, Gondor faced a constitutional crisis. Arvedui, heir of the King of Arthedain in the north, claimed the throne of Gondor as a descendant of Isildur and as the husband of Ondoher's daughter, but was denied by the Council of Gondor. For a year the realm was ruled by Pelendur, Steward to King Ondoher, and then the crown was given to the victorious general Eärnil, who came from the House of Anárion and had gained popularity during the war. His son Eärnur, however, became the last King: still during his father's reign, he led the forces of Gondor to the aid of Arthedain in the north and was offended there by the Witch-king of Angmar. Shortly afterwards, the Ringwraiths captured Minas Ithil and took it as their abode; the city was renamed to Minas Morgul, and Minas Anor was changed to Minas Tirith. After Eärnur became King, the Witch-king twice sent messengers tempting him to single combat. At the second challenge in 2050, Eärnur was overcome by wrath and rode with a small company of knights to Minas Morgul, where they never returned from.

Stewardship

At the loss of childless Eärnur, the rule of Gondor was left to the Stewards, due to fears of a new civil war and the absence of a more or less legitimate Heir of Anárion with enough authority and support. By this time Arnor had been destroyed and the Line of Isildur had gone into hiding, so no more claims were expected. The early Stewards enjoyed four centuries of uneasy quiet, known as the Watchful Peace, during which Gondor slowly declined and Sauron's strength grew. In 2475 the Peace was broken with a large attack of Uruk-hai on eastern borders, which, though beaten off, led to the inhabitants' migration from Ithilien and final desolation of Osgiliath. According to The Lord of the Rings, from this time onwards "there was never full peace again" in Gondor, and "its borders were under constant threat".

In T.A. 2510 the nation faced a new serious peril: an Easterling tribe, named the Balchoth, invaded northern parts of the realm with mass force. Gondor army marched to fight them, but was cut off from Minas Tirith and pushed back in the direction of the Limlight river. Messengers had already been sent to get help from the allied Éothéod in the north, and in the nick of time their cavalry arrived, turning the tide of the Battle of the Field of Celebrant. In gratitude for their aid, Steward Cirion ceded to them the province of Calenardhon, where the Éothéod established the realm of Rohan with Eorl the Young as their first king. A permanent alliance between Gondor and Rohan was established by the oaths of Eorl and Cirion.

The later Stewards had to contend with Orcs in Ithilien and with Corsairs of Umbar raiding the coasts. In 2758 Gondor faced another great invasion when five great fleets from Umbar and Harad ravaged the southern shores, and no help was expected from Rohan as the latter was assailed by the Dunlendings and Eaterlings, further weakened by the Long Winter. The invasions were beaten off only in the following year, and help was then sent to Rohan.

Gondor recovered quickly from this war, although its fortunes continued to decline. In 2885 Ithilien was invaded from the south by a large force of Haradrim, which was only repelled with the Rohirric help, and several decades later the region was further depopulated due to increased Orc attacks, with several hidden refuges built for the Rangers of Ithilien to continue to strike at the enemy. The last people of Ithilien fled over the Anduin in 2954, when Sauron officially declared himself in Mordor and Mount Doom burst into flame again. In 2980 the forces of Gondor, led by Aragorn under alias, attacked Umbar and destroyed the Corsair fleet, allowing the Stewards to devote all of their attention to the threat posed by Mordor.

War of the Ring and restoration

Several decades later, Sauron had prepared for the final conquest, and in T. A. 3018 he began the War of the Ring with a capture of Osgiliath. The city was later retaken by Gondorians and several minor conflicts were won, but next year the kingdom faced an all-out attack on its capital Minas Tirith in the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, further worsened by the invasion of the Corsairs of Umbar into Lebennin and Belfalas. The combat was won at the cost of great losses, only with the help of the Rohirrim and after the southern lands were cleansed from the enemies by the Dead Men of Dunharrow, summoned by Aragorn. The army of Gondor later engaged in the hopeless Battle of the Morannon, providing an opportunity for the One Ring to be destroyed in the Mount Doom by a hobbit Frodo Baggins.

After the second and final defeat of Sauron, the Kingship was restored, with Aragorn crowned as King Elessar of the Reunited Kingdom of Arnor and Gondor, and Faramir, last heir of the Ruling Stewards, retaining his office as the Steward to the King. The oaths between Gondor and Rohan were renewed, and several joint campaigns were fought in the east and south; all former territories of the South-kingdom were won back during the following centuries, and its power and wealth were restored. Several Tolkien's writings state that "of Eldarion son of Elessar it was foretold that he should rule a great realm, and that it should endure for a hundred generations of men after him, that is until a new age brought in again new things; and from him should come the kings of many realms in long days after".

Tolkien's perception of further history of the kingdom is illustrated by The New Shadow, an experimental story that he decided to abandon, set during the reign of Eldarion. The author imagined that because of the "quick satiety with good" of Men, "the people of Gondor in times of peace, justice and prosperity, would become discontented and restless ... even so early there was an outcrop of revolutionary plots, about a centre of secret Satanistic religion; while Gondorian boys were playing at being Orcs and going round doing damage".[10]

== Geography ==

The physical nature of Gondor is most prominently illustrated by the maps for The Lord of the Rings and Unfinished Tales made by Christopher Tolkien on the basis of his father's sketches, and can be supplemented by several geographical accounts such as The Rivers and Beacon-Hills of Gondor and Cirion and Eorl. In addition, the narrative and appendices of The Lord of the Rings describe the history and nature of particular regions and settlements in the kingdom.

Gondor was located in the west of the continent of Middle-earth, and the main part of its territory lay on the northern shores of the Bay of Belfalas and around the White Mountains. Tolkien noted that the capital Minas Tirith was situated on a latitude comparable to that of Venice, and the total area of Gondor as represented on Tolkien's maps was estimated by Karen Wynn Fonstad at 716,426 square miles (1,854,742 km2). To the north-west of the kingdom originally lay the realm of Arnor; to the north, Gondor was neighboured by the Wilderland and, after its settlement, by Rohan; to the north-east, by the land of Rhûn; to the east, by Sauron's realm of Mordor; to the south, by the deserts of Harad.

The original borders of Gondor were: rivers Gwathló and Glanduin up to the Misty Mountains; eaves of the Fangorn forest and river Entwash; marshes of Nindalf and the Mountains of Shadow; and river Poros. At the time of its noontide, the realm extended to river Limlight and south-eaves of Mirkwood; to the western shores of the inland Sea of Rhûn, north of Ered Lithui; and to river Harnen, also including the coastland around Umbar. By the beginning of the War of the Ring, the confines of land fully controlled by Gondor had retreated in the north to rivers Isen and Adorn, line of the White Mountains and the Mering Stream; in the east to Anduin; and in the south back to Poros.