Aragorn II

Lineage and birth

Aragorn was born on the first day of March in T.A. 2931, the only child of Arathorn II, fifteenth Chieftain of the Dúnedain of the North, and Gilraen, a daughter of that same people. Through his father he was the heir in unbroken male line of Isildur, of Elendil, and of the kings of Númenor, and through them of Elros and Lúthien. His people were by then a scattered remnant: the North Kingdom of Arnor had fallen almost a thousand years before, and the heirs of the kings had become chieftains of a wandering folk who guarded Eriador in secret and were thanked by no one. His father was killed by an Orc-arrow in 2933, when Aragorn was two years old.

Estel in Rivendell

Gilraen took the child to Rivendell, where Elrond received him as a foster-son and gave him the name Estel, meaning hope. His true name and lineage were concealed, since Sauron was known to be seeking the heirs of Isildur, and the boy grew up believing himself simply a Dúnadan of Elrond's household. He hunted and rode with Elladan and Elrohir, was taught by Elrond himself, and learned the lore and languages of the Elves so well that he was afterwards accounted the most learned man of his age.

In 2951, when Estel was twenty and had returned from some deed of valour with Elrond's sons, Elrond told him who he was. He gave him the ring of Barahir and the shards of Narsil, the sword that had cut the Ring from Sauron's hand, but kept back the Sceptre of Annúminas, saying that Aragorn had yet to earn it. The next day, walking in the woods of Rivendell, Aragorn saw Arwen Undómiel for the first time and, thinking he beheld Lúthien out of the old tales, called her by that name. She had been long in Lothlórien with her mother's kin, and he had never met her. He loved her from that hour. Elrond, who saw it, warned him that he was setting his heart on a grief that had once already fallen on the House of Elrond, and that Arwen's choice of a mortal fate would be a heavy one; and Gilraen told her son that his aim was set very high. Aragorn answered neither, and went out into the wild.

The wandering years

For nearly thirty years Aragorn laboured against Sauron in every land where the Enemy's hand reached. He took up the leadership of the Dúnedain as their sixteenth Chieftain and rode with them against the Orcs and Trolls of the North. In 2956 he met Gandalf and the two became close friends, and it was at the wizard's urging that he went further afield. Under the name Thorongil, the Eagle of the Star, he served Thengel of Rohan and then Ecthelion II, Steward of Gondor, from about 2957 to 2980. He never revealed his lineage, but Ecthelion trusted him above all his other captains, and he counselled the Steward to heed Gandalf and beware Saruman. His greatest deed in Gondor was the raid of 2980, when he led a small fleet down to Umbar, burned a great part of the Corsairs' ships and killed the Captain of the Haven in single combat on the quays. He then left Gondor without returning to the city, and crossed the Anduin to journey alone in the East and the far South, where he learned the hearts of Men both good and evil and saw lands no other Dúnadan had seen. Denethor II, the Steward's son, was believed to have guessed who Thorongil was and to have resented him ever after.

Coming back westward in 2980, worn by his travels, Aragorn entered Lothlórien and found Arwen there. He was now a man in his full strength, and Galadriel had clothed him in silver and white with a green stone at his breast, so that he seemed a lord of the Elves. On Midsummer's eve on Cerin Amroth the two plighted their troth, and Arwen chose the fate of Lúthien. Elrond, told of it, laid down his terms: his daughter would not marry any man less than the King of both Gondor and Arnor, for only so great a destiny could justify so great a loss. Aragorn accepted the condition and went back to his labours in the wild for nearly forty more years. His mother died in 3007, after telling him that she had given hope to the Dúnedain and kept none for herself.

The hunt for Gollum

In 3001 Gandalf began to suspect what Bilbo's ring truly was, and he asked Aragorn's help in tracking the creature Gollum, who alone could tell where the ring had come from. Aragorn searched for years, through Mirkwood, Rhovanion and the borders of Mordor, and at last, in February 3017, he caught Gollum in the Dead Marshes and drove him on foot and by a leash across nine hundred miles of wilderness to the halls of Thranduil, where Gandalf questioned him. That interrogation confirmed that Bilbo's ring was the One Ring.

Strider

Gandalf then charged Aragorn and his Rangers to watch the Shire and the roads about it, and Aragorn was in Bree when Frodo came there on 29 September 3018 with Samwise, Merry and Pippin, with the Nine Riders behind them. Known in Bree as Strider, a weather-stained, long-legged, distrusted stranger, he had to win the hobbits' confidence without proof beyond his own words and a letter from Gandalf that Barliman Butterbur had forgotten to send. He led them by hidden ways through the Midgewater Marshes to Weathertop, where on the night of 6 October five of the Nazgûl attacked and the Witch-king stabbed Frodo with a Morgul-knife. Aragorn drove the Riders back with fire and kept Frodo alive with athelas for twelve days across the Trollshaws, until Glorfindel met them and the Riders were swept away at the Ford of Bruinen.

The Fellowship

At the Council of Elrond on 25 October Aragorn declared himself before Boromir and the assembled peoples, and the shards of Narsil were reforged in Rivendell and named Andúril, Flame of the West. He set out with the Fellowship on 25 December as its guide and, after Gandalf fell on the bridge of Moria on 15 January 3019, as its leader. He brought the Company to Lothlórien, led them down the Anduin, and at Amon Hen on 26 February faced the choice he had dreaded: to follow Frodo into Mordor or to go to Minas Tirith. Boromir's death and the capture of Merry and Pippin took the choice from him. Leaving Frodo to his road, he ran with Legolas and Gimli forty-five leagues in less than four days across the plains of Rohan after the Uruk-hai, a feat for which Éomer named him Wingfoot. In Fangorn they found not the hobbits but Gandalf returned, and rode with him to Edoras.

Rohan and the Paths of the Dead

Aragorn fought at Helm's Deep on the night of 3 to 4 March, and after the fall of Isengard he was met on the road by Halbarad and thirty Rangers of the North, with Elladan and Elrohir, bringing a message from Elrond and a furled standard from Arwen. That night he did the deed he had long weighed: he took the palantír of Orthanc, wrested it by right and by strength of will from Sauron's control, and showed the Enemy the sword of Elendil. It cost him dearly, but it drew Sauron's blow early and unprepared. Elrond's message had reminded him of the Paths of the Dead, and on 8 March he rode from Dunharrow with the Grey Company through the Paths of the Dead beneath the White Mountains. At the Stone of Erech he summoned the Dead Men of Dunharrow to fulfil the oath they had broken to Isildur. With that terrible host behind him he crossed Lebennin in four days and fell on the Corsair fleet at Pelargir on 13 March. The Dead took the ships; Aragorn released them from their oath, manned the fleet with the men of the southern fiefs, and sailed up Anduin.

The Pelennor and the Black Gate

On 15 March, when the Rohirrim had spent their first charge and Théoden lay dead, the black ships came up the river and the enemy rejoiced, until the standard of Arwen broke out on the leading ship: the White Tree, the Seven Stars and the crown of Elendil. Aragorn came ashore with the Star of Elendil on his brow and Andúril in his hand, and the Battle of the Pelennor Fields was won. Halbarad fell there, bearing the standard. That night Aragorn refused to enter the city as a claimant and pitched his tent outside the walls; but he went in unheralded to the Houses of Healing and, as the old rhyme of Gondor had foretold of the returning king, healed Faramir, Éowyn and Merry of the Black Breath with his hands and with athelas. The people of Minas Tirith named him Elessar, the Elfstone, for the green gem he wore.

With Gandalf, Éomer and Imrahil he then chose the only strategy that could serve the Ring-bearer: to march on Mordor with seven thousand men and draw Sauron's eye and armies onto himself. On 25 March, before the Black Gate, he rejected the terms of the Mouth of Sauron and led the Host of the West in a hopeless battle on two hills of slag until the Ring went into the fire and the Dark Tower fell.

King Elessar

On 1 May 3019 Aragorn was crowned before the gates of Minas Tirith. Faramir brought the crown, Frodo bore it, and Gandalf set it on his head, and he entered the city as king for the first time in his life. He took the name Elessar and the house-name Telcontar, Strider, in memory of his wanderings. He confirmed Faramir as Steward and made him Prince of Ithilien, gave Beregond to Faramir's service, freed the slaves of Mordor and gave them the lands of Nurn, granted the Drúadan Forest to the Wild Men, and made peace with the Easterlings and the Haradrim. On 25 June he found a sapling of the White Tree on the slopes of Mindolluin with Gandalf, and planted it in the court of the fountain. At Midsummer Elrond came to Minas Tirith with Arwen, and on the day of Midsummer the King wedded her in the city of the kings.

His reign lasted a hundred and twenty years, and the Reunited Kingdom stretched from the Grey Havens to the southern coasts. He rebuilt Annúminas beside Lake Evendim and dwelt there at times, forbade any Man to enter the Shire and made it a free land under his protection, renewed the Oath of Eorl with Éomer, and made war on the remnants of Sauron's servants in the East and South when they stirred. He honoured his old friends: he rode to the Brandywine Bridge to greet the hobbits in Fo.A. 15, gave Sam the Star of the Dúnedain, and in his last years took Merry and Pippin into his household.

Death and legacy

In Fo.A. 120, at the age of two hundred and ten, Aragorn judged that his time was full and chose, as the ancient kings of Númenor had done, to lay down his life before he fell into dotage. Arwen begged him to stay a little longer, and he answered that the choice was hers to bear, as it had been hers to make, and that beyond the circles of the world there was more than memory. He gave the crown and sceptre to their son Eldarion, and died in the House of the Kings in the Silent Street on the first of March, the day of his birth. Arwen left Minas Tirith, went back to Lórien, and died there the following spring. Legolas and Gimli, it was said, sailed into the West after his death.

Aragorn was the last of the Númenórean kings in the old measure of life and the first of the new. In him the lines of Elendil, sundered for three thousand years, were joined, and the Elder Days and the mortal world met for the last time in his marriage. His long patience, his refusal of the Ring, and his willingness to be a servant and a stranger for sixty years before he was a king are as much his legend as the battles he won.

Laid down his life by choice in the House of the Kings in Minas Tirith on 1 March Fo.A. 120, aged two hundred and ten, and was succeeded by his son Eldarion.