Dol Amroth

On a headland of the coast of Belfalas, looking south over the bay, stood the walled city of Dol Amroth with the castle of its Princes above the harbour. It was the chief place of the fief of Belfalas and the seat of a house that ranked next after the Stewards in Gondor. The Princes bore on a blue field a silver ship with a swan's prow, and their household knights rode under it in the war of 3019. It was said in Gondor that the line had Elvish blood, and the legend told that Imrazôr the Númenórean had married the Elf-maiden Mithrellas of Lórien, one of the companions of Nimrodel, who bore him Galador, first Prince, and then vanished. Whatever the truth, the Princes and their people had a grace and a fair speech that the Rohirrim noticed, and Legolas saw the Elvish strain in Imrahil's face.

Near the city, at the mouth of the Morthond, lay the old haven of Edhellond, from which Elves had once sailed west, and the hill took its name from Amroth, the king of Lórien, who drowned in the bay in T.A. 1981 leaping from his ship in a storm to seek Nimrodel.

The lordship of Belfalas was granted to the ancestors of the Princes by Elendil himself, and the house endured through every age of the kingdom. In the years before the War of the Ring the Prince Adrahil's daughter Finduilas married Denethor II and became the mother of Boromir and Faramir; she died young in the shadow of Minas Tirith. Her brother Imrahil became Prince, and in March 3019 he brought seven hundred armed men and a company of mounted knights to the defence of Minas Tirith. He rescued Faramir from the Pelennor, fought at the Gate, discovered that Éowyn still lived on the field, and after the battle governed the city while Aragorn withheld his claim. He rode with the Host of the West to the Black Gate. His daughter Lothíriel married Éomer of Rohan, and his son Elphir succeeded him.

Dol Amroth stood on the coast of Belfalas at the western side of the bay, near the mouths of the Morthond and Ringló, south-west of Lebennin and some hundred and fifty miles from Minas Tirith by road.