Eärnur

Lineage and youth

Eärnur was the only son of Eärnil II, the general who was chosen king of Gondor in 1945 after the death of Ondoher. He was born in 1928, in the years of the Wainrider wars, and grew up as a soldier: a man of great strength and courage, loving battle and the exercise of arms above all else and caring little for lore or for the arts of government. He never married.

The Battle of Fornost

When Arvedui of Arthedain appealed to Gondor in 1973 for help against Angmar, Eärnil sent his son with a great fleet. It was the largest force Gondor had ever sent north, so many ships that the havens of Lindon could scarcely hold them, and it carried knights and horses as well as foot-soldiers. It arrived too late. Fornost had fallen in the winter of 1974 and Arvedui had drowned in the Ice Bay in the spring, so that when Eärnur landed at the Grey Havens in 1975 there was no king to save. But there was a war to finish. Círdan gathered the Elves of Lindon and the surviving Dúnedain under Arvedui's son Aranarth, and the combined host marched east over the Lune and up the North Downs against the Witch-king, who had taken Fornost for his own.

The Witch-king came out to meet them on the plain west of Fornost, confident in his numbers, and was crushed. Gondor's main body broke his army, and Eärnur's cavalry, which had swung north around the hills, fell on the fleeing enemy and destroyed it. The Witch-king himself fled toward Carn Dûm and was chased by Eärnur, whose horse, terrified by the Nazgûl, bolted and carried him off. Glorfindel, who had brought a force from Rivendell, stopped Eärnur from pursuing further, with the prophecy that the Witch-king's doom was far off and would not come by the hand of a man. Angmar was emptied west of the mountains and never rose again. The Witch-king, however, escaped into the shadows, and Eärnur's shame at his horse's flight became the seed of his fate.

Minas Morgul

The Witch-king reappeared in Mordor in 1980, gathered the other Ringwraiths, and in 2000 laid siege to Minas Ithil, the city of Isildur across the Anduin. It fell in 2002 and became Minas Morgul, and its palantír was lost to the Enemy. Eärnur was a prince in his forties then and his father was still king. When he succeeded Eärnil in 2043 the Witch-king's first act was to send a challenge: he taunted Eärnur with his flight at Fornost and dared him to meet in single combat. The Steward Mardil persuaded the king to hold back. In 2050 the challenge came again, and this time Mardil could not restrain him. Eärnur rode with a small company of knights to the gate of Minas Morgul, entered it, and was never heard of again. It was believed in Gondor that he had been taken alive and tortured to death, but no one knew.

Legacy

Eärnur left no heir, and there was no claimant of pure blood and unquestioned descent whom the lords of Gondor would accept, for they remembered the Kin-strife. Mardil therefore ruled in the king's name, and the Stewards after him held the realm for nine hundred and sixty-nine years, waiting for a king who did not come until Aragorn in 3019. Eärnur's rashness thus ended the line of Anárion on the throne; his victory at Fornost, which secured the North from Angmar for the rest of the age, remained the greatest deed of his life.

Rode into Minas Morgul in 2050 to fight the Witch-king and never returned; presumed dead. His disappearance began the rule of the Stewards.