Arathorn II

Lineage

Arathorn was born in T.A. 2873, the son of Arador, fourteenth Chieftain of the Dúnedain of the North, and the heir in direct line of Arvedui, Isildur and Elendil. By his day the Chieftains had led their people for nearly a thousand years without a kingdom, guarding Eriador from Orcs, Trolls and worse, and being fostered in boyhood at Rivendell, where the heirlooms of the House of Isildur were kept by Elrond. Arathorn was a grim and stern man, as the Rangers had become, and one of the hardiest of them.

Marriage

In 2929, when he was in his mid-fifties, Arathorn asked for the hand of Gilraen, the daughter of Dírhael and Ivorwen, both of them descendants of Aranarth and so of the royal line. Dírhael refused at first. His daughter was twenty-two, younger than the women of the Dúnedain were accustomed to marry, and he had foresight, and feared that Arathorn would not live long. Ivorwen, who also had the gift, answered that the need was the greater reason for haste: if the two married, hope might be born for their people, but if they waited it would not come at all. So the marriage was made within the year.

Chieftain and death

Arathorn's father Arador was taken and killed by hill-trolls in the Coldfells north of Rivendell in 2930, and Arathorn became Chieftain. On the first day of March 2931 Gilraen bore him a son, Aragorn. Arathorn did not see the boy grow. In 2933, riding against Orcs with Elladan and Elrohir, he was struck through the eye by an arrow and killed. He was sixty, which for a man of Númenórean blood was a very short life, and Dírhael's foreboding was fulfilled.

His widow took the child to Rivendell, where Elrond received him as a foster-son and hid his name, and the two-year-old Aragorn became the sixteenth and last Chieftain of the Dúnedain. It was the hope that Ivorwen had foreseen: sixty-eight years after Arathorn's death his son was crowned King of the Reunited Kingdom.

Slain by an Orc-arrow through the eye in T.A. 2933 while riding against Orcs with the sons of Elrond.