Q: Why Didn’t Sauron Know that Aragorn Existed?
ANSWER: I received the following question in July 2020:
Could Sauron have discovered from Saruman that Isildur’s heirs (up to and including Aragorn) were protected in their childhood at Rivendell? Until quite late on Saruman, Gandalf and Elrond were clearly all in communication, and there would have been no reason for this information to be withheld from the then head of the White Council. Once he went rogue, Saruman would surely have considered this a useful snippet to pass on to his new boss.
I don’t know if Tolkien wrote anywhere that Saruman knew who Aragorn was. It does seem reasonable that – as head of the White Council – Saruman would have known about the Heirs of Elendil. But Saruman doesn’t seem to have recognized Aragorn when they met at Isengard.
When Aragorn told his friends that he had looked into the Orthanc stone, he said that Sauron was surprised to learn that the Heirs of Isildur lived:”…To know that I lived and walked the earth was a blow to his heart, I deem; for he knew it not till now. The eyes in Orthanc did not see through the armour of Théoden; but Sauron has not forgotten Isildur and the sword of Elendil…”
So it’s reasonable to wonder if Sauron should have gleaned the information from Saruman. But I think the story provides enough information to explain why Saruman didn’t reveal everything he knew to Sauron even though he didn’t seem to recognize Aragorn.
First and foremost, Saruman was plotting for himself. He wanted the One Ring. He betrayed Sauron on at least one occasion: the Isengard Orcs seized Merry and Pippin and took them away north, defying the Mordor Orcs. Hence, Saruman was clearly not fully under Sauron’s control. Saruman was under Sauron’s influence, but we don’t know to what extent that influence dominated Saruman’s actions.
Gandalf speculated that Saruman was ensnared when he used the Palantir to explore Mordor and perhaps observe Sauron in the Barad-dur. But Gandalf is only a character in the story. He doesn’t know everything (a point that Tolkien himself made about Treebeard in Letter No. 153: “…Treebeard is a character in my story, not me; and though he has a great memory and some earthy wisdom, he is not one of the Wise, and there is quite a lot he does not know or understand…” Even though Gandalf was one of the Wise, he still didn’t know everything – and Tolkien makes that obvious via scenes where Gandalf is surprised, stops to make deductions, and otherwise indicates he is ignorant of other characters’ thoughts and motivations.
But there is at least one other reason why Sauron should not have known about Aragorn: everyone in the northern world who knew the Heirs of Isildur survived had worked to keep that knowledge a secret from the Enemy. If Saruman knew who Aragorn was, he could have kept that information to himself for selfish reasons.
It might be that Tolkien felt Saruman saw an advantage in withholding as much knowledge as possible from Sauron. However, Sauron would only have learned about things he wanted to know – at most. That is, if Sauron never thought to ask about Isildur’s Line, Saruman had no reason to tell him anything. The subject probably never came up between them.
After all, Arnor had fallen more than 1,000 years before. It seems doubtful anyone was publishing regular accounts of the Heirs of Isildur every year.
Sauron did think about the Line of Isildur in the last century of the Third Age. The “Tale of Aragorn and Arwen” says that after his father was slain, young Aragorn was taken to Rivendell and named “Estel”:
Then Aragorn, being now the Heir of Isildur, was taken with his mother to dwell in the house of Elrond; and Elrond took the place of his father and came to love him as a son of his own. But he was called Estel, that is “Hope”, and his true name and lineage were kept secret at the bidding of Elrond; for the Wise then knew that the Enemy was seeking to discover the Heir of Isildur, if any remained upon earth.
So regardless of how much Sauron might have known about Isildur’s Line prior to the death of Arathorn II, knowledge of Arathorn’s son and heir was quickly hidden.
I get the impression from the story that Aragorn rarely revealed his true identity in public. He trusted Frodo with knowledge of his name in Bree, and that must have been a very risky disclosure. He had no idea that Gandalf had already revealed his identity in the letter he left with Butterburr. The next time Aragorn declared himself openly to anyone outside an Elven land, he was in Rohan and the war had for all intents and purposes already begun.
‘First tell me whom you serve,’ said Aragorn. ‘Are you friend or foe of Sauron, the Dark Lord of Mordor?’
‘I serve only the Lord of the Mark, Théoden King son of Thengel,’ answered Éomer.
‘We do not serve the Power of the Black Land far away, but neither are we yet at open war with him; and if you are fleeing from him, then you had best leave this land. There is trouble now on all our borders, and we are threatened; but we desire only to be free, and to live as we have lived, keeping our own, and serving no foreign lord, good or evil. We welcomed guests kindly in the better days, but in these times the unbidden stranger finds us swift and hard. Come! Who are you? Whom do you serve? At whose command do you hunt Orcs in our land?’
‘I serve no man,’ said Aragorn; ‘but the servants of Sauron I pursue into whatever land they may go. There are few among mortal Men who know more of Orcs; and I do not hunt them in this fashion out of choice. The Orcs whom we pursued took captive two of my friends. In such need a man that has no horse will go on foot, and he will not ask for leave to follow the trail. Nor will he count the heads of the enemy save with a sword. I am not weaponless.’
Aragorn threw back his cloak. The elven-sheath glittered as he grasped it, and the bright blade of Andúril shone like a sudden flame as he swept it out. ‘Elendil!’ he cried. ‘I am Aragorn son of Arathorn and am called Elessar, the Elfstone, Dúnadan, the heir of Isildur Elendil’s son of Gondor. Here is the Sword that was Broken and is forged again! Will you aid me or thwart me? Choose swiftly!’
Even Saruman didn’t know where Aragorn was – so if he had wanted to betray him, he wouldn’t have known what to tell Sauron at this point. Aragorn was just a man who had been traveling with the Hobbits the Orcs captured.
Declaring his true name openly in front of so many witnesses put Aragorn on an irrevocable path. He had to go forward as who he was, not as some wandering Ranger. It was for a moment just like this that Elrond had kept his identity secret. Maybe Elrond didn’t see a reason to arrange a meeting between Saruman and young Aragorn. Maybe there was never an opportunity. For all we know, Aragorn and Saruman only met the one time – and neither of them addressed the other.
And on that point I think it’s safe to infer that even if Sauron had scanned Saruman’s deepest thoughts for knowledge of the Heir of Isildur, he probably would have found nothing. Saruman wasn’t very concerned with events in Eriador.
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Have you read our other Tolkien and Middle-earth Questions and Answers articles?
When Aragorn said, “Yes, Master Gimli, he saw me, but in other guise than you see me here” what guise do you think that was? As a King? As the heir of Elendil revealed in his true majesty?
I have always wondered about that other guise, but I have never settled on any specific idea. It’s an intriguing mystery.
In the absence of anything to the contrary from Tolkien, I’d go along with the idea that Aragorn somehow appeared to Sauron in the Palantir as the heir of Elendil and Isildur. He told Legolas and Gimli that he had shown him the reforged Narsil, with the comment that Sauron would not have forgotten the sword. If Sauron had thought that Aragorn was some random man who had got hold of a Palantir, albeit one tough enough to seize control of the Stone, it seems unlikely that this alone would have struck him as “tidings of doubt and danger” to ponder, as he did while Frodo and Sam were closing in. But he had been around long enough to realise that a true heir of Elendil was just the man to stiffen Gondor’s (and other free nations’) resolve, plus he had to consider the possibility that Aragorn had got hold of the One Ring.
I wondered about that, too. As best as I could make out, Aragorn had been wearing arms and badges of Rohan ever since he set out for the Hornburg, so this may have meant he first changed to clothing and badges of the Rangers, or even of royalty of Arnor perhaps brought by Halbarad, in order to directly challenge Sauron. Surely by doing so, and displaying Andúril, he discombobulated Sauron who by now was reasonably sure the house of Isildur was effectively extinct, which was the purpose. It would appear that by the time he reported his actions at Dol Baran, he had changed back to arms of the Rohirrim, hence his statement.
I don’t think this meant Aragorn changed his apparent garments in some illusory fashion for the palantír, like false backgrounds for Zoom meetings (I had fun seeming to appear in a waterfront park at twilight, or in a Maxfield Parrish landscape painting, for virtual meetings of my civic club!).The essay in Unfinished Tales on the Palantíri seems to rule out that possibility, as it asserts only persons and things that actually exist can be shown thru them.
Indeed, I get the impression the Palantíri as described in the UT essay and in LotR may not have been precisely the same, being written in 2 different ‘phases’ of JRRT’s career. The LotR Stones appeared capable of transmitting images thru time as Gandalf’s statement about watching Fëanor and the statement about the Anor-stone showing Denethor’s hands around it burning imply, which is not suggested in the essay.