Q: What Was the Star of the Dúnedain?
ANSWER: In The Lord of the Rings, the entry for Shire year 1436 in Appendix B, “The Tale of Years”, says:
King Elessar rides north. and dwells for a while by Lake Evendim. He comes to the Brandywine Bridge, and there greets his friends. He gives the Star of the Dúnedain to Master Samwise, and Elanor is made a maid of honour to Queen Arwen.
Many readers have asked what the Star of the Dúnedain may be. Is it a sign of a knightly order, for example, such as the British monarchy bestows upon worthy recipients from time to time? Is it an actual device or emblem?
Christopher Tolkien originally expressed ignorance of what his father intended (in Unfinished Tales of Numenor and Middle-earth) but in The War of the Ring, Volume VIII of The History of Middle-earth Christopher added this note to a passage describing the Rangers of Eriador:
8. In The Tale of Years (LR Appendix B) the entry for the year 1436 in the Shire Reckoning states that the King Elessar, coming to the Brandywine Bridge, gave the Star of the Dunedain to Master Samwise. In my note 33 to The Disaster of the Gladden Fields in Unfinished Tales (pp. 284 – 5) I said that I was unable to say what this was. This is a convenient place to mention that after the publication of Unfinished Tales two correspondents, Major Stephen M. Lott and Mrs. Joy Mercer, independently suggested to me that the Star of the Dunedain was very probably the same as the silver brooch shaped like a rayed star that was worn by the Rangers in the present passage (RK p. 51); Mrs. Mercer also referred to the star worn by Aragorn when he served in Gondor, as described in Appendix A (I.iv, The Stewards): ‘Thorongil men called him in Gondor, the Eagle of the Star, for he was swift and keen-eyed, and wore a silver star upon his cloak.’ These suggestions are clearly correct.
The published version of the passage to which Christopher’s correspondents referred may be found in “The Passing of the Grey Company” in The Return of the King:
A little apart the Rangers sat, silent, in an ordered company, armed with spear and bow and sword. They were clad in cloaks of dark grey, and their hoods were cast now over helm and head. Their horses were strong and of proud bearing, but rough-haired; and one stood there without a rider, Aragorn’s own horse that they had brought from the North; Roheryn was his name. There was no gleam of stone or gold, nor any fair thing in all their gear and harness: nor did their riders bear any badge or token, save only that each cloak was pinned upon the left shoulder by a brooch of silver shaped like a rayed star.
It has long seemed to me that the many-rayed star worn by the Rangers was the badge of their royal authority. In my essay “Of Thegns and Kings and Rangers and Things” I wrote:
So if Aragorn’s people lived in the Angle, they could hardly have been wandering all over Eriador. The true wanderers were the Rangers themselves, and it would seem reasonable that the Rangers were only a small corps of special officers or soldiers charged with patrolling Eriador, specifically with policing the highways. The Dúnedain could not maintain a court and prison system, but they could ensure that local justice received their support. Furthermore, by maintaining the Rangers, the Dúnedain continued to assert a royal claim to all of Eriador.
That is, Aranarth seems to have realized that if he simply abandoned Eriador, his descendants would never have the legal authority to re-establish the Kingdom of Arnor. But if at least some of the services of the Kingdom of Arnor were maintained by the Dúnedain, then they would have the legal authority to re-establish their realm. The local populations, protected by the Dúnedain, would have no reason to oppose the restoration of royal authority. It may even be that Aranarth consulted with Tharbad, the Shire, and Bree (and any other surviving communities) and shared his plan with them. And then, a thousand years later, people had simply forgotten the whole deal, except for the Dúnedain.
As a special corps of officers charged with patrolling Eriador, the Rangers would represent the rightful King. But without a court system, they could not really enforce the King’s Law. Unlike the Rangers of medieval England, therefore, they would not be protecting the King’s Land, but instead were protecting the legacy of the kingdom. All of Eriador’s inhabitants were therefore, perhaps, free to settle where they would. Tradition, ties to family and friends, and economics kept the Hobbits and Bree-folk from spreading too far.
The Star of Elendil and the Sceptre of Annúminas were the two tokens of royal authority that Elrond withheld from Aragorn when he revealed Aragorn’s ancestry to him. Both heirlooms were bound up with Elendil’s legacy, rather than Isildur’s. That is, Isildur had inherited these artifacts from Elendil, and as their entitled recipient Aragorn was inheriting all of Elendil’s regal authority (in both Arnor and Gondor).
The badge worn by the Rangers may thus designate them as a special royal corps, perhaps something like a bodyguard in some people’s estimation, but more likely (in my opinion) as a body of officers bearing the King’s authority. This royal designation would have afforded the bearers of these badges special authority. In fact, in the entry for Shire year 1434, Tolkien writes: “Peregrin becomes the Took and Thain. King Elessar makes the Thain, the Master. and the Mayor Counsellors of the North-kingdom. Master Samwise is elected Mayor for the second time.” It is notable that only Samwise receives the Star of the Dúnedain, but in his capacity of Mayor it is Sam who oversees the Shire’s police forces: the Shirriffs and the Bounders. I believe that Tolkien meant Aragorn’s “gift” to actually be a formal vestiture of police authority in the Mayor of the Shire, so that the Shirriffs and the Bounders in effect became “Officers of the Realm” through the authority of the Mayoralty.
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