Q: Could Ondoher Have Lived to Be 200?
ANSWER: The lives of the kings of Arnor and Gondor are an interesting area of study. We didn’t have much information about their lifespans until The Peoples of Middle-earth, volume XII of The History of Middle-earth, was published in 1996. Up until that time it was anyone’s guess how long the various generations lived according to J.R.R. Tolkien’s thought. But given that these life dates were dropped from the appendices to save space we don’t know if Tolkien would have revised them further upon publication, as he did to so much other material. Hence, any speculation or analysis done in this area should be prefaced with a cautionary word about Tolkien’s cessation of development in the data. It’s really too raw to be considered as canonical as data that survived into final publication; even data that was revised with the Second Edition would have been more canonical than the pre-publication information we find in The Peoples of Middle-earth.
Given the above, early in 2017 a reader expressed an interest in something that also used to spark my imagination. Here is the full question as submitted:
When Earnil II became king of Gondor his age was considerably shorter [than] what one would have expected from a king. Ondoher was killed in battle but his father lived to be 200. It is plausible that Ondoher could have lived to be 200 or 198 but a 40 year drop is a huge number. What do you think caused this? Was it tied into Gondor rejecting Arvedui who through Friel had the better claim to the throne?
There are a few cases of shortened lifespans in the same generations among Tolkien’s genealogies. In other words, there is usually a “longest lived of his/her generation” and a “shortest lived of his/her generation” somewhere in the family trees. By implication we can see that the descendants of Amlaith’s younger brothers didn’t enjoy the “blessed lives” of Amlaith’s line.
One could read into this a sort of Divine Grace for the Rightful King. Now, while that is a historical concept found in many religions it is NOT a “medieval concept”. If Tolkien was implying such a thing at all it was something of his own construction. Over the years I have waffled over (but mostly favored) the idea of a Divine Grace extended to the rightful heirs of Elros Tar-Minyatur. When you compare the lifespans of the Heirs of Isildur with the lifespans of the Heirs of Anarion, it’s obvious that the Northern Line tended to live longer (or vice versa: See Bart’s comment below). But Tolkien doesn’t really explain WHY that should be so.
It seems patently unfair to the southern kings (who did not usurp their heritage) to grant them shorter lives just because they’re not descendants of Isildur (NOTE: See the comments, where Bart says the Southern Line lived longer on average). One could argue from an epidemiological perspective that it was more dangerous to be a Gondorian king than to be an Arnorian king for the first few centuries. But after Third Age Year 861 the northern realm was divided into three smaller kingdoms that often fought with each other, as well as with Angmar. So the epidemiological point of view should even out. And the decline of the younger branches of the House of Isildur would seem to be evidence of that.
In which case, we have to ask if Tolkien was thinking in terms of “average lifespans”. Earnil II came from a younger line of the royal family. Would he have had access to Gondor’s best health care prior to his ascension to the throne? Well, at this point people begin to look at the health care afforded to the soldiers. Was the Gondorian army, even 1900 years into the Third Age, given better medical care than the general populace? The historical precedent for such a thing is the Roman Army, whose soldiers practiced better sanitation and received better health care than the general population (although that perception is skewed by the fact that Rome’s millions of slaves would have received worse health care than anyone who could afford to pay for it).
We can’t rationalize a comparison between Gondor’s army and Rome’s army. Tolkien just didn’t provide enough data for such a comparison. Still, I think he intentionally varied the lifespans just to make the genealogies a little more interesting. In which case, Earnil II may have been a random, statistical edge case.
We really don’t have enough information to extrapolate much about how long the Numenoreans of both realms were expected to live, especially given that descendants of Elros (of whom there may have been many in the general population by T.A. 1980) supposedly had longer lifespans than the other Numenoreans. I would expect the Numenorean populations of Arnor and Gondor to live longer than the Numenorean populations of the various enclaves of Kings Men (who became the Black Numenoreans in the Third Age). We have evidence of one long-lived Black Numenorean (the Mouth of Sauron, although he was NOT a 3,000-year-old sorcerer as some believe) at the end of the Third Age. He, too, could have been a statistical outlier among his people.
ON EDIT: This article may need some revision but I won’t be able to do it any time soon. Sorry.
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The Southern Line lived longer on average than the northern line.
It’s been a long time since I looked at all that data. I will have to take your word for it. I have added a couple of notes to the article.
I think more of the Northern Line dies in battle than the Southern.
The dates of birth can be considered non-canonical, however, dates of death/dates of coronation are from LoTR Appendix A. While the birthdates could have been subject to revision, after putting all this data into a spreadsheet, the dates of birth do seem appropriate. The long reigns of those who died in bed would be out of proportion had overall lifespans been shorter.
Maybe I’m misreading the original question, but does the “40-year drop” refer to Eärnil II’s age when he died (160, based on that non-canonical source), or is the question literally about Ondoher’s lifespan?
Eärnil II’s lifespan is definitely an outlier compared to his predecessors, but I don’t think reduced lifespan would be due to mingling of bloodlines. King Telumehtar was his great-great-grandfather – he’s of the same generation as Ondoher’s offspring. The generations would be out of sync had there been an average 40-year decline in his branch’s overall longevity. And while there might have been some sort of divine penalty for Gondor’s denial of Arvedui’s claim to the throne, the text gives far more credit to Pelendur, Steward of Ondoher, along with the Council of Gondor. The text paints Eärnil in a very noble and heroic light. I think Eärnil’s shorter lifespan could be attributed to his long, hard career as a field commander, but that’s purely speculation.
If the question is literally about Ondoher’s lifespan…. First off, he died in battle. There’s no way to know how long he’d have lived in more peaceful times. 200, like his father, would have been unexceptional, even in that era. My spreadsheet shows that the average lifespan of Gondor’s Kings in the second millennium of the Third Age (Hyarmendacil I – Eärnur) was 205 years. In the first 1,000, average age was 255.
In Arnor, the picture was a bit different: From Valandil to Eärendur (first millennium) the average Royal lifespan was 244 years, Amlaith to Arvedui (second millennium) 183 years, and third millennium (Aranarth – Aragorn II/Elessar) 148 years.
Again, those lifespans are not canonical. JRRT might have adjusted the average or specific lifespans upon reflection. However, as the timeline was already fixed, there wasn’t much room for variation. Considering the typical length of a reign, If lifespans had been much shorter, we’d likely have seen more skip-generation coronations (as we’ll see in the UK upon Elizabeth II’s passing).