Tell the story of the downfall the Reunited Kingdom (i.e. Gondor + Arnor)

If you’re still reading this, you probably already know I am referring to the realm established by one Elessar, né Aragorn and sometimes known as Strider, Thorongil, and several other aliases. The title character of RETURN OF THE KING, in other words.

For purposes of this thread, we are playing the Great Game; that is, we are pretending that LotR is exactly what the prologue claims it to be: a genuine history of a lost civilization, probably one that rose and fell before the Quaternary Glaciation. For my part, I am also assuming that the motivations and actions as shown in the book are pretty correct, but that the events of The Silmarillion were no more a true history than the Odyssey, and that a lot of the seeming “magic” is actually tech that Frodo & Sam did not understand and that later scribes misinterpreted. Others may wish to make other assumptions.

Okay, so let’s recap. In the year 3019 of the Third Age, three little Hobbits destroy the One Ring; as a direct result, Sauron discorporates, the Dark Tower falls, and Aragorn not only claims the kingship of Gondor, but also reunites the realms established by his ancient ancestor Elendil. Establishing the royal house of Telcontar, he rules for 120 years, dying at the age of 210; his formerly-elven bride, Arwen, dies not long after this, of grief or something. He’s succeeded by someone I can’t be arsed to look up. But nothing lasts forever, and eventually the Reuninted Kingdom falls and is lost to history until the early twentieth J.R.R. Tolkien discovers a copy of the Red Book of Westmarch and proves that he’s smarter than any of us by translating it.

So what happened to the Reunited Kingdom? Ice Age? Plague? Meteor? A time-travelling Lex Luthor, on the lam from the Justice League and killing time between kill-Kent plots?

It evolved into the Minoan civilization. It lost a lot of territory when the Mediterranean flooded. Then a volcanic eruption finished off the remnant in Crete, as we know.

A civil war between Arnor and Gondor lasts for over 200 years and leaves both nations in ruin. Rohan initially sided with Gondor, but after sustaining heavy losses during the infamous Battle of Tharbad sues Arnor for peace and withdraws from the war. The Hobbits practice guerrilla warfare when the Shire is briefly taken by Gondor. Gondor, in retaliation, slaughters them mercilessly and the few Hobbits that survive flee to the west where they intermingled with men.

A holy man unites all of Rhovanion during this time by preaching of a one true God and they conquer most of what remains of Arnor. Gondor was easily conquered by Harad.

Thus ended the Kingdoms of Arnor and Gondor.

How is that flippant?

Wait, three hobbits? Are you counting Smeagol as a hobbit or ignoring Pippin because he’s annoying?

No wonder we can’t translate Linear A. It’s really Elvish. However, I think Crete is quite a ways from Wales, err, I mean Gondor.

He probably just miscounted but I think three is a more accurate answer. Smeagol + Sam + Frodo = Three hobbits destroying the ring.

At the end of the Second Age, the king of the dead mean of Dunharrow pledged allegiance to Isildur. However, these Men refused to aid Isildur in his war against Sauron, for they had worshipped the Dark Lord during the Dark Years. Isildur said that they would not have peace or rest till they fulfilled their oath upon his command or that of his heirs. During the War, they came to the aid of neither side, but hid in the mountains. In the third age, Aragorn convinced these men to fight on his side. They won and found peace.

However, what is not mentioned is how Isildur was able to curse these men to an undead fate in the mountains. Sometime after Aragorn’s death, the kingdom gave the dwarves mining rights to the mountains of Dunharrow. The dwarves found a cannister with the elven rules for “Trixar”. The cannister was ruptured and a poisonous vapor was released. The Dwarves fell in an agonizing death.

But it didn’t end there.

I speak, of course, of the thing that ruins all beauty. It destroyed the Mayans, the civilization on Easter Island, and Lindsey Lohan. I speak of ZOMBIES! The undead dwarves shambled into Gondor, and were beaten, but not before many of the defenders were bitten. The infection spread, and the brains of the citizens of Gondor and Arnor were eaten. Civilization fell to the zombie apocalypse. As it always has, and always will.

Maybe she lost the will to live. I hear it’s a common cause of death among women of royalty.

I like Pippin. I’m counting Smeagol as a hobbit, as he shares the RingWar MVP aware with Frodo & Samwise.

No wonder YOU can’t translate Linear A. Leave the Greater Perfesser out of it. :wink:

The usual threats. :mad:

Something will have to happen to cause the reshaping of Arda into a more recognisable modern form, correct?

At the end of the first age, the lands west of the blue mountains sank beneath the seas during the War of Wrath.

At the end of the second age, Numenor (sp?), the Atlantis prototype, sinks, and the world was made round.

Whatever reshapes the continents into the modern form may have sank Gondor… or something.

In that I thought of it very quickly, & expected I might come up with more answers that contradict it later. And I don’t care.

Not a bad answer - but what caused the civil war? It’s possible the legitimacy of Aragorn’s line was called into question, but that’s more a point of political propaganda than an actual causus belli. People may speak of the legitimacy of their governments, but most of the time they only fight and die when there is something rather more concrete they expect to gain.

Good question. The best answer, of course, is that the Reunited Kingdom (“RK”) will never fall. Of course not! It remains in its idealized form forever, an exemplar of wise monarchism, military strength and domestic tranquility for as long as humanity reads Tolkien’s works. At least, that’s how I like to think of it…

But I will play by Skald’s rules, and note that most monarchies in human history have fallen for just a handful of reasons:

Overthrow. This could be relatively peaceful (like Germany after WWI) or violent (the French Revolution). In a May 1964 letter, Tolkien wrote about his unfinished and abortive LOTR sequel, “The New Shadow”:

*Since we are dealing with Men it is inevitable that we should be concerned with the most regrettable feature of their nature: their quick satiety with good. So the people of Gondor in times of peace, justice and prosperity, would become discontented and restless - while the dynasts descended from Aragorn would become just kings and governors - like Denethor or worse. *

If you’ve got a king like Elessar, monarchy is a great form of government, but you can’t be sure of always having such a wonderful fella on the throne. One of Elessar’s successors would inevitably be incompetent, crooked, foolish, crazy, despotic, or evil, or some toxic combination thereof. Over the long term, that’s inevitable with any monarchy, especially one that actually has power. And, sooner or later, he (or she) would very likely so piss off the people of Gondor that they would rise up, depose him or her, and either end up with a strongman, establish a democracy (unlikely so early in human history, but hell, there’s plenty that’s ahistorical in Tolkien’s writings) or invite in another monarch - from Rohan, say, or Rhun, or Harad, or who knows where. Sooner or later that dynasty, too, would screw things up enough or so change the polity of the kingdom that it would no longer be recognizable as the RK.

War. From its very outset, the RK is at war in the South, reconquering Umbar and Harad, and in the East, cleaning up the remnants of Sauron’s realm. Still lots of bad folks out there. Sooner or later, over the years, long after Elessar has left the throne, one of those wars will not turn out to Gondor’s liking, and it might be conquered in turn. The new boss won’t want the old boss still on the throne, and some not-so-worthy successor of Elessar might find himself both jobless and headless.

I hate to say it, but the longstanding friendship between Rohan and Gondor wouldn’t last forever, either. Neighboring kingdoms tend to look enviously or nervously at one another over the long haul, and sooner or later they’d probably come to blows.

Dynastic failure. Inbreeding or the failure to produce a widely-accepted heir, or one old enough to actually rule, can easily lead to the collapse of even the most time-honored royal family. Such might be the fate of the House of Telcontar, and thus of the RK.

Coup. A general gets too big for his britches, or a prince or duke decides he’d look better on the RK’s throne than the current loser. He pushes off the incumbent and gets crowned himself, or rules without a crown like Oliver Cromwell, or has a puppet king for window dressing. Once the precedent is established, lots of other people look in the mirror and see a potential Supreme Leader. Upheaval, civil war and foreign intervention all possibly follow, and then it’s sic transit gloria mundi, baby.

Other catastrophe. A big volcano, meteor strike, plague (for which there is precedent in Gondor’s early history) etc. could all so devastate the realm that it ceases to exist.

Depressing. Which is why I still like my first answer best.

Even Numemor fell, dude. Aragorn was but a pale shadow of Elendil, who himself was much lessened from Elros.

The Dunedain have already shown a racist bent several times in the past (the enslaving of the lesser men on the continent during the Numenor days, the Kin-Strife in the Third Age). I can see the Dunedain of Gondor looking upon the mixed-race Telcontar with some amount of concern and disgust, after the death of Aragorn, at least, and probably several generations down the line. If a second Kin-Strife were to begin, and the people rose up to put a descendant of Denethor (the last full-blooded ruler of Gondor) on the throne, this time as true king, I can see that weakening the kingdom to attack by the barely checked Haradrim or Easterlings. And if Arnor maintained the friendship with elven ideals and wisdom (see them as the Faithful to Gondor’s Kingsmen), they may very well go to war with Gondor to restore the Telcontar, weakening BOTH kingdoms to invasion and destruction.

Sometime between the end of the Third Age and recorded history, technology regressed from late-Medieval to neolithic. That’s beyond “dark age”- more like humanity was pruned down to a few thousand survivors, who for generations eked out the barest survival. Sounds to me like something pretty darn cataclysmic happened.

My guess is that Sauron left behind some sort of “doomsday” device intended to destroy the world if he ever fell. Possibly by a heroic sacrifice that hasn’t been told it didn’t quite succeed, but humanity was set back 10,000 years.

That’s an intriguing theory. I could see a good short story being written about that.

That’s because JRRT’s themes tended to reflect the mythos that things were more ideal and stronger and more beautiful the further you went into the past, and that time corrupted all things…

I don’t know how the Reunited Kingdom fell, but I do feel sure that the Descendants of Melian persisted.

And you thought he was done for? Well, guess again!!

:smiley: