Isildur

Lineage and youth

Isildur was born in S.A. 3209, the elder son of Elendil the Tall of the line of the Lords of Andúnië, and the grandson of Amandil, leader of the Faithful. His brother Anárion was ten years younger. He grew up in the years when Ar-Pharazôn held the sceptre and Sauron ruled the King's mind, and his family lived under watch at Rómenna.

The fruit of Nimloth

When Sauron persuaded the King to fell the White Tree Nimloth, the sign of the ancient friendship of Númenor with the Eldar, Isildur went alone and in disguise to Armenelos, passed the guards set about the Tree, and took a fruit from it. He was discovered and fought his way out, and the wounds he took nearly killed him. The fruit was planted in secret, and when the seedling put out its first leaf in the spring Isildur recovered. It was the most celebrated deed of his youth, and the seedling he saved was the ancestor of every White Tree in Middle-earth.

Exile and Gondor

In 3319 Isildur and Anárion, each with his household, escaped the Downfall of Númenor in five ships and were driven by the great wave to the mouths of the Anduin. They sailed upriver and founded the South-kingdom of Gondor, with their capital at Osgiliath where their two thrones stood side by side. Isildur built Minas Ithil on the western shoulder of the Mountains of Shadow, the city later called Minas Morgul, and planted the seedling of Nimloth there before his house. Anárion built Minas Anor across the river. Isildur also brought from Númenor a great black stone and set it on the hill of Erech, and there the King of the Mountains swore allegiance to him; that oath, later broken, became the curse of the Dead of Dunharrow. His wife bore him four sons: Elendur, Aratan, Ciryon and, youngest, Valandil.

Sauron, who had also survived the Downfall, returned to Mordor and in 3429 attacked Gondor without warning. Minas Ithil was taken and the White Tree burned. Isildur escaped down the river with his wife and sons and a seedling of the Tree, and sailed north to find his father, while Anárion held Osgiliath and drove the enemy back to the mountains.

The Last Alliance

Isildur was with Elendil and Gil-galad when they formed the Last Alliance in 3430, and he left his wife and Valandil at Rivendell while the host marched. He fought at Dagorlad in 3434 and through the seven-year siege of Barad-dûr, and in 3440 he saw his brother killed by a stone from the tower. In 3441, when Sauron came forth and overthrew Gil-galad and Elendil on the slopes of Mount Doom, Isildur took up the hilt-shard of his father's broken sword Narsil and cut the One Ring from Sauron's hand. Sauron's body was destroyed and his spirit fled.

Elrond and Círdan, who alone stood with him then, urged him to carry the Ring into the fire of Mount Doom, which was close by, and destroy it. Isildur refused. He claimed the Ring as weregild for his father and brother, and the beauty of the thing had already taken him. He carried it away as an heirloom of his house.

The two years

Isildur was now High King of the Dúnedain. He stayed two years in Gondor setting the realm in order. He planted a seedling of the White Tree in Minas Anor in memory of Anárion, which afterward became the Tree of Minas Tirith, and he gave the kingship of Gondor to Anárion's son Meneldil, keeping the High Kingship for himself and his heirs in the north. He laid his father's remains in a secret tomb on the hill of Amon Anwar, the Halifirien, and made it a hallow. He wrote an account of the Ring and its inscription, describing how the letters shone when the Ring was hot from Sauron's hand, and left the scroll in the archives of Gondor, where Gandalf found it three thousand years later.

The Gladden Fields

In the autumn of T.A. 2 Isildur set out for Arnor with his three elder sons and two hundred men, taking the road north along the Anduin toward Rivendell, where his wife and Valandil waited. On the thirtieth day, near the marshes of the Gladden Fields between the river and the eaves of Greenwood, an army of Orcs from the mountains fell on them in the dusk, more than ten times their number. The Dúnedain fought in a ring of shields until it was broken. Ciryon fell, then Aratan defending him, and Elendur begged his father to save the Ring while there was still time. Isildur gave the shards of Narsil to his squire Ohtar, who escaped with them to Rivendell, and put on the Ring.

It made him invisible but it did not hide him from the Orcs' noses, and he fled for the river. As he swam the Anduin the Ring slipped from his finger, betraying him as it would later betray Gollum and seek Frodo, and when he came up into the shallows, visible again, the Orcs on the bank shot him with arrows. His body was never found; his son Elendur died with the last of the men on the field. Only three of the company survived. Of the eight heirlooms he had carried, the shards of Narsil reached Rivendell, the Elendilmir was lost with his body, and the Ring lay in the mud of the river for two and a half thousand years. In the Third Age, a note in Unfinished Tales records, Saruman searched the Gladden Fields secretly and found the Elendilmir, which was recovered from Orthanc after his fall.

Legacy

Isildur's refusal at the Cracks of Doom is the hinge on which the whole history of the Third Age turned, and the Ring was called Isildur's Bane by the Dúnedain ever after. Yet he was also the man who saved the White Tree twice, founded the line of the Kings of Arnor through Valandil, and preserved the record by which the Ring was finally identified. Aragorn, his heir in the thirty-ninth generation, carried the shards of Narsil reforged, wore the Elendilmir recovered from Orthanc, and completed at Mount Doom the deed his ancestor had refused.

Slain by Orc arrows in the Anduin at the Gladden Fields in T.A. 2 after the Ring slipped from his finger; his body was never found.