Aldarion brings to his father a letter from Gil-galad, who believes that a growing shadow in the east of Middle-earth is a servant of Morgoth, and seeks help from Númenor when the assault should come. Tar-Meneldur is in doubt what to do, and decides to resign the sceptre to Aldarion. This dismays Erendis, who refuses to leave her home to attend the proclamation of Aldarion as king.
At this point the manuscript ends, and no clear continuation emerges from Tolkien’s notes. Tar-Aldarion as King makes other voyages to Middle-earth. Though his achievements there are transitory, they pave the way for the success of later rulers, and for the aid Tar-Minastir sends to Gil-galad in Second Age 1700, which leads to the temporary defeat of Sauron. But there are also unfortunate consequences. Aldarion’s involvement in Middle-earth sets Númenor on the road leading eventually to its Downfall, and Ancalimë’s character suffers from her upbringing and her parent’s differences. Though she is clever, she is also wilful and malicious, and her own marriage is also unhappy. In Second Age 1075 she becomes the first ruling Queen of Númenor, the rules of succession having been changed. At the same time, Aldarion ordains that heirs to the Kingship should wed only those of the line of Elros, for he had come to believe that the root of his troubles with Erendis had been that she came of a line shorter-lived line than his own. The last mention of Erendis is that in old age in 985 she sought Aldarion, who was expected to return from a voyage, and ‘perished in water’ (p. 212).
HISTORY
Tolkien worked on Aldarion and Erendis probably in 1960: a sketch by him of a Númenórean helmet, with an inscription referring to Aldarion’s Guild of Venturers, is dated ‘March 1960’ (a redrawn version was reproduced on the dust-jacket of the first British and American editions of Unfinished Tales). Tolkien began, but left unfinished, five sometimes contradictory texts, which tended to move, as he wrote, from annalistic plot outlines to full narrative. The fifth text, which extends for some sixty manuscript pages, has the title The Shadow of the Shadow: The Tale of the Mariner’s Wife: and the Tale of Queen Shepherdess. From this a typescript was made, and at some time after January 1965 Tolkien began yet another typescript, filling out the schematic beginning, but abandoned it after only two pages; this has the title Indis i · Kiryamo ‘The Mariner’s Wife’: A Tale of Ancient Númenórë, which Tells of the First Rumour of the Shadow. He made a few notes and wrote some unconnected fragments of text for the unwritten part of the story, mainly concerning Ancalimë in later life, but little more about Aldarion and Erendis. *Christopher Tolkien notes that the work needed a considerable amount of ‘editorial rehandling’ to prepare it for publication; see Unfinished Tales, pp. 7–8, and *The Peoples of Middle-earth (1996), pp. 155, 351.
CRITICISM
The story of the unhappy marriage of Tar-Aldarion, the sixth King of Númenor, and Erendis, and of their daughter Ancalimë, is of great interest, not only for the information it gives of Númenor during the eighth to thirteenth centuries of the Second Age, but also because it is Tolkien’s most detailed study of a human relationship. The tale becomes increasingly sad in its depiction of two people of different interests and temperaments who love each other but cannot live the same life, until eventually love turns to bitterness. Tolkien gives a sympathetic depiction of both sides. (See also *Women.)
In a review of Unfinished Tales Thomas M. Egan wrote that Aldarion and Erendis ‘really illustrates Tolkien’s power as a story-teller’ and
answers his critics who have claimed he is insensitive to women, putting them up as plaster statues without real knowledge of their character and conflicts in the strains of married life. Using the structure of Númenor’s idyllic realm, Tolkien explores the war of the sexes as husband and wife find love from their differing characters, then grow gradually isolated. … Isolation and loneliness for Erendis makes her want to punish her adventuresome husband, and her recorded dialogue strikes a strangely modern tone. The result, as Tolkien probes further, is the tragic hatred which grows until it poisons their daughter, and sets the stage for further marital conflict in the next generation. … [‘Fragments of a World: Tolkien’s Road to Middle-earth’, The Terrier 48, no. 2 (Fall 1983), p. 10]
In another review, Peter S. Beagle called Aldarion and Erendis
a haunting story out of Númenor which tells of a king and queen who loved and damaged one another, and their daughter as well. Moving even in its sketchiness, it is unlike anything else of Tolkien’s that I know, and it nips strangely at the heart. The man understood more than the grandly heroic; he knew something about sorrow, and about possession, whether by hunger or fury or dreams. [‘A Fantasy Feast from Middle-earth’, San Francisco Examiner, 19 October 1980, p. A14]
T.A. Shippey in The Road to Middle-earth compares Erendis’s retreat to the centre of Númenor, and her statement that the bleating of sheep was sweeter to her ears than the mewing of gulls, to the story of ‘Njǫrthr the sea-god and Skathi, daughter of the mountain-giant, in Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda. Obliged to marry, these two tried taking turns to live in each other’s homes. But the marriage was a failure. …’ Njǫrthr complains: ‘Hateful to me were the mountains, I was there no longer than nine nights; the howling of wolves seemed ugly to me against the song of the swans’. And Skathi ‘replies with a complaint about the noise of the sea-mews’ (2nd edn. 1992, p. 217).
Richard Mathews in ‘The Edges of Reality in Tolkien’s Tale of Aldarion and Erendis’, Mythlore 18, no. 3, whole no. 69 (Summer 1992), discusses how pride and differences in interests and outlook lead step by step to the complete breakdown of the marriage, and describes ‘Tolkien’s refusal to allow the characters of the story to be portrayed in black and white’ as ‘a credit to the sophistication of emotion and mythos he conceives’ (p. 29).
In his ‘Law and Arda’, Tolkien Studies 10 (2012), Douglas C. Kane calls Aldarion and Erendis ‘perhaps Tolkien’s most emotionally nuanced story, a tale of true love initially overcoming tremendous obstacles, only to eventually collapse under the weight of two prideful people with truly irreconcilable differences’. He notes also that the child of Aldarion and Erendis, Ancalimë, the first ruling Queen of Númenor, ‘is described as having disastrous relationships with men, showing that Tolkien was well aware of how dysfunctional relationships tend to propagate themselves’ (p. 53).
Maddalena Tarallo, in ‘Aldarion and Erendis: The Mariner’s Wife’, Amon Hen 205 (May 2007), suggests that readers are attracted to the story ‘mainly for its extreme modernity and for the accurate analysis of the characters’ psychological make-up’. Tolkien reveals ‘many deeply personal aspects’ of his characters’ relationship’, such that ‘we are painfully aware that Aldarion and Erendis almost completely lack a deep spiritual union that might counterbalance their disagreements or at least somehow lessen them’. Tarallo compares their ‘widely diverging attitudes’ and notes their ‘monumental pride’, comparing their tale with that of the Ents and the Entwives (in *The Lord of the Rings) in which ‘the male soul seems to yearn for adventure and freedom, while the female spirit looks more inclined to an orderly, and ordered, kind of life’ – ‘two totally opposed views and the refusal to find a neutral ground where a compromise might be reached’ (pp. 20–1). Tarallo believes that ‘the tale’s strong point resides in the unwillingness of the author to lay the blame on any one of the opposed parties: on the contrary he clearly shows how right and wrong are equally divided’ (p. 21).
Aldershot (Hampshire). From 28 July to 6 August 1910 Tolkien attended a camp with the *King Edward’s School Officers Training Corps (*Societies and clubs) and cadets from other schools at Aldershot, south-west of London. Their camp was pitched on a expanse of open land called Farnborough Common (now subsumed by the Farnborough airfield), and their exercises and inspections