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Tar-Ancalimė

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Brief Information   
Details   
Emerwen Aranel - The Princess Shepherdess   
Notes and Comments   

Brief Information    

The first ruling Queen of Numenor.

According to The Line of Elros - Kings of Nśmenor, Unfinished Tales

"She was the only child of Tar-Aldarion, and the first Ruling Queen of Nśmenor. She was born in the year 873, and she reigned for 205 years, longer than any ruler after Elros; she surrendered the sceptre in 1280, and died in 1285. She long remained unwed; but when pressed by Soronto to resign, despite she married in the year 1000 Hallacar son of Hallatan, a descendant of Vardamir. After the birth of her son Anįrion there was strife between Ancalimė and Hallacar. She was proud and wilful. After Aldarion's death she neglected all his policies and gave no further aid to Gil-galad.


Details    

From: Aldarion and Erendis, Unfinished Tales

In the eight hundred and seventieth year of the Second Age Aldarion and Erendis were wedded in Armenelos, and in every house there was music.

Ancalimė was born in the Spring of 873

On her 4-th birthday her father, Aldarion, leaves his family and sails away to Middle-earth for 5 years.

Erendis leaves Armenelos and goes to “Emeriė .

To that place she takes her daughter and they live with a few only servants – all women.

Erendis is so bitterly disappointed that she tends to raise her daughter to her own mind, and to feed her upon her own bitterness against men.

The atmosphere in the house however, is tense and there was little enough of laughter for Ancalimė in the white house in Emeriė. It was hushed and without music, as if one had died there not long since.

Erendis totally occupies herself with the education of her daughter.

All Ancalimė's teaching was from her mother; and she learned well to write and to read, and to speak the Elven-tongue with Erendis, after the manner in which high men of Nśmenor used it.

Much Ancalimė also learned of Nśmenor and the ancient days in such books and scrolls as were in the house which she could understand.

No men are allowed to come into the house, or even close to the household.

Erendis never speaks to Ancalime about her father.

and she clung to her, and would not have Ancalimė leave her side, not even to visit Nśneth and her kin in the Westlands.

Ancalime is nine years old when Aldarion returns.

Aldarion looked at her keenly, and though his face was stern he smiled within: for he saw there a child of his own, rather than of Erendis, for all her schooling.

"You knew me once, Lady Ancalimė," he said, "but no matter. Today I am but a messenger from Armenelos, to remind you that you are the daughter of the King's Heir and (so far as I can now see) you shall be his Heir in your turn

Account of this important event is given by Christopher Tolkien:

In the year 892, when Ancalimė is nineteen years old, she is proclaimed the King's Heir and at that time Tar-Aldarion causes the law of succession in Nśmenor to be changed

The change of the law is referred to in The Lord of the Rings, Appendix A (I i):
The sixth King [Tar-Aldarion] left only one child, a daughter. She became the first Queen [i.e. Ruling Queen]; for it was then made a law of the royal house that the eldest child of the King, whether man or woman, should receive the sceptre.

Tar-Aldarion dies in 1075.


Emerwen Aranel - The Princess Shepherdess    

Based on comments of Christopher Tolkien:

Of the history of Ancalimė during those years when she was growing up there is no certain form. There is less doubt concerning her somewhat ambiguous character, and the influence that her mother exerted on her. She was less prim than Erendis, and natively liked display, jewels, music, admiration, and deference; but she liked them at will and not unceasingly, and she made her mother and the white house in Emeriė an excuse for escape.

She had a profound dislike of obligatory marriage, and in marriage of any constraint on her will. Her mother had spoken unceasingly against men, and indeed a remarkable example of Erendis' teaching in this respect is preserved:

Thus it is, Ancalimė, and we cannot alter it. For men fashioned Nśmenor: men, those heroes of old that they sing of; of their women we hear less, save that they wept when their men were slain. Nśmenor was to be a rest after war. But if they were weary of rest and the plays of peace, soon they will go back to their great play, manslaying and war. Thus it is; and we are set here among them. But we need not assent. If we love Nśmenor also, let us enjoy it before they ruin it. We also are daughters of the great, and we have wills and courage of our own. Therefore do not bend, Ancalimė. Once bend a little, and they will bend you further until you are bowed down. Sink your roots into the rock, and face the wind, though it blow away all your leaves.

Moreover, and more potently, Erendis had made Ancalimė accustomed to the society of women: the cool, quiet, gentle life of Emeriė without interruptions or alarms.

Ancalimė, like her father, was resolute in pursuing her policies; and like him she was obstinate, taking the opposite course to any that was counselled.

She had something of her mother's coldness and sense of personal injury; and deep in her heart, almost but not quite forgotten, was the firmness with which Aldarion had unclasped her hand and set her down when he was in haste to be gone.

She loved dearly the down-lands of her home, and never (as she said) in her life could she sleep at peace far from the sound of sheep. But she did not refuse the Heirship, and determined that when her day came she would be a powerful Ruling Queen; and when so, to live where and how she pleased.

It seems that for some eighteen years after Aldarion became King he was often gone from Nśmenor; and during that time Ancalimė passed her days both in Emeriė and in Armenelos, for Queen Almarian took a great liking to her, and indulged her as she had indulged Aldarion in his youth.

In Armenelos she was treated with deference by all, and not least by Aldarion; and though at first she was ill at ease, missing the wide airs of her home, in time she ceased to be abashed, and became aware that men looked with wonder upon her beauty, now come to its full.

As she grew older she became ever more wilful, and she found irksome the company of Erendis, who behaved like a widow and would not be Queen; but she continued to return to Emeriė, both as a retreat from Armenelos and because she desired thus to vex Aldarion. She was clever, and malicious, and saw promise of sport as the prize for which her mother and her father did battle.

She remained unwed beyond a certain time; and to these provisions Tar-Aldarion added that the King's Heir should not wed save in the Line of Elros, and that any who did so should cease to be eligible, for the Heirship. It is said that this ordinance arose directly from Aldarion's disastrous marriage to Erendis and his reflections upon it; for she was not of the Line of Elros, and had a lesser life-span, and he believed that therein lay the root of all their troubles.

At all events, suitors for Ancalimė's hand soon began to appear in Emeriė, and not only because of the change in her position, for the fame of her beauty, of her aloofness and disdain, and of the strangeness of her upbringing had run through the land.

In that time the people began to speak of her as Emerwen Aranel, the Princess Shepherdess. To escape from importunity Ancalimė, aided by the old woman Zamīn, went into hiding at a farm on the borders of the lands of Hallatan of Hyarastorni, where she lived for a time the life of a shepherdess.

What is certain is that Ancalimė fell in love with a shepherd who was minding flocks in the same region; and to her this man named himself Mįmandil.

But at length he declared his love for her openly, and she drew back, and refused him, saying that her fate lay between them, for she was the Heir of the King. But Mįmandil was not abashed, and he laughed, and told her that his right name was Hallacar, son of Hallatan of Hyarastorni, of the line of Elros Tar-Minyatur. "And how else could any wooer lad you?" he said.

It was however to Hallacar that Ancalimė was wedded in the end. From one version it appears that the persistence of Hallacar in his suit despite her rejection of him, and the urging of the Council that she choose a husband for the quiet of the realm, led to their marriage not many years after their first meeting among the flocks in Emeriė. But elsewhere it is said that she remained unmarried so long that her cousin Soronto, relying on the provision of the new law, called upon her to surrender the Heirship, and that she then married Hallacar in order to spite Soronto. In yet another brief notice it is implied that she wedded Hallacar after Aldarion had rescinded the provision, in order to put an end to Soronto's hopes of becoming King if Ancalimė died childless.

Her life with Hallacar was unhappy, and she begrudged him her son Anįrion, and there was strife between them thereafter. She sought to subject him, claiming to be the owner of his land, and forbidding him to dwell upon it, for she would not, as she said, have her husband a farm-steward. From this time comes the last tale that is recorded of those unhappy things. For Ancalimė would let none of her women wed, and although for fear of her most were restrained, they came from the country about and had lovers whom they wished to marry.

In the year 1075 Ancalimė became the first Ruling Queen of Nśmenor. It is told that after the death of Tar-Aldarion in 1098 Tar-Ancalimė neglected all her father's policies and gave no further aid to Gil-galad in Lindon. Her son Anįrion, who was afterwards the eighth Ruler of Nśmenor, first had two daughters. They disliked and feared the Queen, and refused the Heirship, remaining unwed, since the Queen would not in revenge allow them to marry. Anįrion's son Sśrion was born the last, and was the ninth Ruler of Nśmenor.

Notes and Comments    


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