Did any Black Numenoreans Fight Against Arnor?

Q: Did any Black Numenoreans Fight Against Arnor?

ANSWER: This question brought someone to Middle-earth at Xenite around the same time it was asked in a Tolkien fan site on December 22. I cannot give any better answer than that asker received at LoTR Plaza, which is to say there are no texts that mention any connection between the Black Numenoreans and the Fall of Arnor. However, if you are writing fan fiction or designing campaigns for role-playing games and you want to place some Black Numenoreans in the Witch-king’s service, I may be able to help you construct a logical argument that may placate many if not all Tolkien purists.

The Black Numenoreans are closely associated with the history of Umbar. Christopher Tolkien published The First map in The Treason of Isengard, and Umbar is a place-name that occurs on that map. Christopher dates the map to sometime between December 1937 and 1943, when Christopher used the first map to draw a much cleaner map for The Lord of the Rings.

From being a place-name, Umbar progressed to being the source of a great fleet of enemies who attack Gondor during the War of the Ring (Cf. The War of the Ring, Part Three: Minas Tirith). At this stage (somewhere in the timeframe of 1944-7) Umbar is only the haven of the Corsairs, who may once have been friends or subjects of Gondor (the texts changed over time). Umbar is not mentioned in “The Drowning of Anadune”, which Christopher Tolkien dates to the period of 1945-6 (Cf. Sauron Defeated, Part Three: The Drowning of Anadune). Thus we can infer that Umbar was a relatively late addition to the Numenor story, which originated in 1936 (in Christopher’s estimation — Cf. The Lost Road and Other Writings, Part One: The Fall of Numenor, Chapter I, “The Early History of the Legend”).

“The Lost Road” was the time travel story that Tolkien wrote around 1936. It introduced the character of Elendil and served to bring the legend of Numenor into “the main mythology” (as Christopher puts it in The Lost Road and Other Writings). Elendil’s role as a survivor of Numenor was first enumerated in the second version of “The Fall of Numenor”, and it appears that Tolkien used “The Fall of Numenor” as the source for many of his early references to Numenor and Elendil as he wrote The Lord of the Rings. There are thus several pieces of the Black Numenorean puzzle which all predate the actual introduction of the Black Numenoreans into the narratives and history of Middle-earth.

First, Tolkien devised the legend of Numenor and of the survivors led by Elendil (Circa 1936-8).

Second, he introduced Elendil’s friendship with Gil-galad and their war against Sauron as a developing background theme for the main LoTR narrative (Circa 1937-42).

Third, he added Umbar to the landscape of Middle-earth (Circa. 1938-42).

Fourth, Tolkien introduced Umbar as the home of the corsairs (once historically connected to Gondor) who attack the coasts during the War of the Rings (Circa. 1946-7).

Finally, Tolkien introduced the Lieutenant of Baraddur (later called the Mouth of Sauron) at about the same time (Circa. 1946-7) as the corsairs.

Here is what Christopher has to say about the character in The War of the Ring:

No more is said in the draft of the history of the Lieutenant of Baraddur,¹ the nameless Mouth of Sauron, than that ‘It is told that he was a living man, who being-captured as a youth became a servant of the Dark Tower, and because of his cunning grew high in the Lord’s favour …’ In the fair copy this was repeated, but was changed subsequently to: ‘But it is said that he was a renegade, son of a house of wise and noble men in Gondor, who becoming enamoured of evil knowledge entered the service of the Dark Tower, and because of his cunning [and the fertile cruelty of his mind] [and servility] he grew ever higher in the Lord’s favour …’ (these phrases being thus bracketed in the original). In RK (p. 164) the Mouth of Sauron ‘came of the race of those that are named the Black Numenoreans’.²
NOTES.
1. First written ‘the Lieutenant of Morgul’, but this may very probably have been no more than a slip.
2. A few other minor points may be mentioned together. The Morgul Pass (RK p. 161) is called ‘the Pass of Kirith Ungol’ in the fair copy, and the Pass of Cirith Gorgor (RK p. 162) is ‘the Pass of Gorgoroth’ in both texts, changed to ‘the Pass of Kirith-Gorgor’ in the fair copy. In the draft text Damrod of Henneth Annun reappears again, with Mablung, as a leader of the scouts in Ithilien (RK p. 162); the host can see from their camp on the last night the red lights in the Towers of the Teeth; and in Gandalf’s concluding words to the Mouth of Sauron (RK p. 167) he retains the words he used in the original outline (p. 362): ‘Begone! But let fear eat your heart: for if you so much as set a thorn in the flesh of your prisoner you shall rue it through all ages.’

The Black Numenoreans eventually connected all these points but they were a very late addition to the historical narrative. In fact, the footnote referring to the Black Numenoreans (found in “Appendix A” of The Lord of the Rings) does not even appear in The Peoples of Middle-earth, the volume of The History of Middle-earth that deals with the material J.R.R. Tolkien had developed for the appendices. We can thus infer that the story of the Black Numenoreans was devised AFTER the drafts for the appendices had been written and probably during the period of final compression, when Tolkien was literally rewriting entire passages on the galley proofs of the three volumes of The Lord of the Rings.

The Mouth of Sauron thus may indeed have only become a Black Numenorean at the same time that Umbar became a Black Numenorean haven. In The Peoples of Middle-earth Tolkien only refers to the “King’s Folk”, who were the Numenoreans loyal to the Kings of Numenor. In an early entry for the “Tale of Years”, Appendix B, Tolkien writes (of the Second Age):

2000-3000. The Numenoreans now make permanent
dwellings on the shores of Middle-earth, seeking wealth and dominion; they build many havens and fortresses. The Elf-friends go chiefly to the North-west, but their strongest place is at Pelargir above the Mouths of Anduin. The King’s Folk establish lordships in Umbar¹² and Harad and in many other places on the coasts of the Great Lands.

In the referenced note, Christopher writes: “12. This is the first reference to the establishment of a Numenorean settlement at Umbar before the landing of Ar-Pharazon (see p. 156, $41).” Thus, the element of the King’s Folk/Kings’ Men was only just emerging as Tolkien developed the appendices.

In transforming the Lieutenant of Baradur into the Black Numenorean Mouth of Sauron Tolkien added a little background information about the Black Numenoreans: they were the descendants of the Kings’ Men of Numenor, and they survived in Middle-earth through to the end of the Third Age. He gave them a fortress in Umbar but in writing “Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age” he suggested there were other havens (at the end of the Second Age) where Kings’ Men had survived in Middle-earth. The “Tale of Years” makes it clear that Umbar was only the northernmost haven of the Black Numenoreans/Kings’ Men.

The age of the Mouth of Sauron has been a matter of debate among Tolkien readers but the idea that he survived from the Second Age to the end of the Third Age is completely absurd. He represents a late (with respect to development of The Lord of the Rings) concept in Tolkien’s Middle-earth mythology that combines elements going back almost 20 years.

So if you are wondering how this helps you justify including Black Numenoreans among the followers of the Witch-king of Angmar, think about where the Nazgul might have turned for servants who were loyal to Sauron while building up the armies they used against Arnor and Gondor. Black Numenoreans would be a good source of officers and informants for the Nazgul. They would be less likely to stand out among the Faithful Dunedain of Arnor and Gondor and they could move freely between Black Numenorean havens in the south and the Dunadan realms of the north. Your fan fiction readers and role-playing gamers should appreciate the subtlety of such use of the Black Numenoreans. If, however, they want to argue that there could not be any Black Numenoreans in Angmar, about the best you can do is invoke the Uzi Rule^* and point that since J.R.R. Tolkien never wrote there were no Black Numenoreans in Angmar it is perfectly plausible to say they were there.

* The Uzi Rule is often invoked by people who use the absence of denial to “prove” that J.R.R. Tolkien really supported their beliefs or interpretations of his works. Some of the most outrageous claims have been supported only by the assertion that “J.R.R. Tolkien never said it didn’t happen” or some variation thereof. To illustrate the Uzi Rule, you can argue that all the Orcs in The Lord of the Rings carried Uzi sub-machine guns because Tolkien never said they did not.

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