Arthedain

Arthedain took the north-west of old Arnor: the land between the Brandywine and the Lune, the North Downs, the Hills of Evendim and the Tower Hills, together with the plains that ran east across the Baranduin as far as the Weather Hills. Its capital was Fornost on the North Downs, though Annúminas, the old capital, lay within its borders and slowly fell to ruin. It was the largest and most Númenórean of the three realms, and it kept two of the three palantíri of the North, the Stone of Amon Sûl and, at Elostirion, the Stone that looked only west across the Sea.

Because the descendants of Isildur survived only in Arthedain, its kings from Argeleb I onward styled themselves kings of Arnor and claimed the whole realm. Their reigns were mostly spent defending the eastern border. To the west they had the friendship of Círdan and the Elves of Lindon; to the east lay Rhudaur in the hands of Angmar's clients. Arthedain's subjects included the Hobbits of Bree and, after 1601, of the Shire, who paid a nominal allegiance and occasionally sent archers to the king's wars.

Amlaith, eldest son of Eärendur, took Arthedain as his share when his brothers divided the kingdom in 861. For five hundred years the realm was quiet. Then in 1349 Argeleb I claimed all Arnor, Rhudaur refused him, and the long war with Angmar began. Argeleb fortified the Weather Hills and died there in 1356. His son Arveleg I held the line for half a century until the great invasion of 1409 burned Amon Sûl and killed him; the young king Araphor, with the help of Círdan and Elrond, drove the enemy back from Fornost and the North Downs. Argeleb II granted the Shire to the hobbits in 1601 and reigned through the Great Plague of 1636, which struck Arthedain less hard than the lands to its south.

By the time of Araphant, the ninth king after the division, Arthedain was too weak to stand alone, and he renewed the old alliance with Gondor. His son Arvedui married Fíriel, daughter of King Ondoher, and in 1944 claimed the crown of Gondor when Ondoher's line failed; the refusal of that claim left the North without help when it needed it most. In 1974 the Witch-king took Fornost, and Arvedui drowned in the ice of Forochel the following spring. Angmar was destroyed in 1975, but Arthedain was not refounded. Its people, under Arvedui's son Aranarth, became the Rangers of the North.

North-western Eriador between the Lune and the Brandywine, including the North Downs, the Hills of Evendim and the Tower Hills, with a frontier on the Weather Hills to the east; capital Fornost Erain.