As fans of Lord of the Rings dive back into the world of Arda and its continent of Middle-earth with Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, there’s plenty of history to be further explored. Many of the realms that are featured in Rings of Power have ceased to exist by the time Bilbo meets Smeagol and finds the ring. That’s because the Amazon Prime series is set during the Second Age, thousands of years before the events of The Hobbit, and as a result, there’s still an endless ocean of uncharted history to be traversed.
One of the more notable places on the map at this time in the world’s history is Númenor, a kingdom of men that emerged out of the sea early in the Second Age. The island was brought up out of the sea by the Valar as a gift to men, but men being men, they would eventually spoil it and bring about its downfall. The beautiful island nation of Númeror was located in the sea between Middle-earth and Aman, the realm containing Valinor, or the mythical Undying Lands that the elves are originally from.
Númenor’s early rise to power
Following the war with Morgoth (the big bad who was Sauron’s boss) that ended the first age, the Valar, or the gods who shaped the world, took pity on the Three Houses of Men and created an island for them to live on. Elros, son of Eärendil, became the land’s first king, and the men of Númenor began to thrive, leading lives that lasted several times longer than the men who continued to live in Middle-earth.
They began to visit Middle-earth and work with the men there, but they were forbidden from sailing westward past the point where they lost sight of their homeland under the Ban of the Valar. This ban was created to prevent men from sailing to the Undying Lands, where they were not allowed to enter.
Sauron deceives the realms of men
More than 1,000 years after Númenor’s creation, Sauron convinced elven smiths to forge him a master ring, and shortly thereafter, the elves were at war with Sauron and his forces. Tar-Minastir, the king of Númenor at the time, sent his own forces to save the elven city of Lindon, and Sauron was driven back and forced to retreat to Mordor. Even in his retreat, though, his evil lingered in the hearts of men.
Eventually, the men of Númenor began to expand and settle in various places along the coast of Middle -earth. These same men began to resent the Ban of the Valar and actively sought the eternal life that they believed had been withheld from them. As a result, in the centuries after Sauron’s retreat, the Númenórians spread themselves eastward and created a vast empire that was unrivaled in Middle-earth. Although they initially came to their newly acquired lands kindly, they eventually hardened and became tyrants.
Some 1,500 years after Sauron forged the one ring, Ar-Pharazôn (the 25th king of Númenor) sailed to Middle-earth with such an overwhelming force that even Sauron had to surrender to his might. The king’s mind was eventually corrupted by Sauron, though, who convinced both the king and the people of Númenor that they would receive eternal life if they began worshipping Morgoth. Things got so extreme that the king even erected a 500-foot statue of Morgoth, and began to perform sacrifices before it. They even cut down the White Tree, which was said to be tied to the line of kings, and sacrificed it to Morgoth.
The Fall of Númenor
Sauron eventually convinced Ar-Pharazôn, who was aging and feared death, to gather an armada and attempt to invade the Undying Lands. When he landed on the shores of Aman, the Valar decided to change the world and trap both the king and his forces under mounds of dirt, where they would never be heard from again. The world’s shape was also transformed from flat to round, and a great tidal wave came and flooded Númenor – as seen in Queen Regent Míriel’s (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) vision in The Rings of Power season 1, episode 4 – killing all those who were living there. Notably, this included Sauron, who from this point forward was unable to change his form to charm those he was manipulating.
Gondor is formed out of the ashes of Númenor
Even as many of the men on Númenor turned against the elves and resented them for withholding the Undying Lands, there were those among the men who remained faithful to the Valar and friendly with the elves. Elendil, the son of the leader of the Faithful in the years leading up to Númenor’s fall, was warned of the disaster that was about to befall his home.
As a result, he and his two sons, Isildur and Anárion, were able to set sail with nine ships before the island fell. Notably, Isildur was able to rescue a piece of fruit from the White Tree which eventually grew to become the White Tree of Gondor. When the Faithful landed in Middle-earth, they established Arnor in the north and Gondor in the south, which were also known as the Realms in Exile due to being founded by those who’d fled the once-glorious kingdom of Númenor.
Later on in the Third Age, sailors from Gondor attempted to sail westward and find the remains of Númenor, but they were still buried underwater and unable to be reached. The island’s ultimate fate was something of a mystery, but no one can know for sure whether, at some point in the future, the world will or won’t be reshaped again and the island reemerge from the place where it sunk.
What The Rings of Power season 1 has covered of Númenor
Warning: Spoilers for The Rings of Power season 1
It’s unclear precisely how much of this story will be told in Rings of Power, which is set in the years leading up to Sauron’s creation of the one ring but, judging by the point we started on and the fact that the series will have four more seasons of story to tell, it wouldn’t be too unrealistic for fans to expect to witness Míriel’s vision coming true and Númenor to sink below the sea before the TV reaches its conclusion.
We’re introduced to the magnificent island kingdom in episode 3, “Adar,” and along with it we’re also introduced to characters who have paramount roles to play later on in the larger history of the world like Elendil (Lloyd Owen) and his son Isildur (Maxim Baldry). At this point in time, the Númenóreans have already grown to loathe the elves and thus Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) does not receive the warmest of welcomes – not that she behaves in a way that’d make people want to be friendly to her from the get-go.
Episode 4 opens with the aforementioned nightmare sequence, which Míriel later tells Galadriel about. Míriel is also swayed into assisting Galadriel in her mission to aid the Southlanders by the fact that Númenor’s White Tree begins weeping white petals, something which is interpreted as a fateful sign from the Valar.
In The Rings of Power season 1, the Númenóreans indeed come to help the people of the Southlands fight their invaders. As a result of the conflict, in episode 7, Míriel loses her eyesight and goes back on the promise she made to Galadriel of assisting her in fighting against the forces of evil in Middle-earth. In addition, Isildur is missing and presumed dead, which fosters doubt and resentment in Elendil’s mind. By the end of the episode, the Númenóreans have sailed back home on their ships. We’ll likely see more of Númenor when season 2 releases sometime in 2024.
Ultimately, though, the story of Númenor is one of many stories about the ways in which a quest for power can be corrupting. The people of Númenor, who were given their island after battling Morgoth and suffering great losses, fall into the hands of another evil despotic leader who once worked closely with the same enemy they fought so hard to defeat. As a result, in a show of the consequences of human hubris, they end up losing the land they had been gifted, and those who survived were forced to find a new place to call home, only to be corrupted once again by the one ring.
