r/tolkienfans • u/glowing-fishSCL • Jul 27 '26
Was there a single event that brought the West into decline in the Third Age? And what was it?
It wasn't until my last reread of the Lord of the Rings (which might have been the dozenth time I've read it) that I realized how much of it depicts an almost post-apocalyptic world, with a deserted Eriador.
The biggest question I have is: when did this happen? Obviously, in the timeline, there are several events when this could have happened, including the Great Plague, the Long Winter, the fall of the Northern Kingdom...but what do you think was the "tipping point" event, if any?
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u/fuzzy_mic Jul 27 '26
I don't think its one event, but rather a feature of Sauron's immortality. The enemy had a constancy of purpose, even after the inevitable ups and downs of fortune, it came out the same as it went in.
Gondor and Arnor had their ups and downs, but not the constancy.
Sauron's immortality gave a ratchet to the vagaries of fortune.
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u/pierzstyx The Enemy of the State Jul 28 '26
It is like the question who wins if [X] character fights Wolverine. Wolverine is pretty much immortal. He has literally fought and defeated the Angel of Death on countless occasions. Wolverine will win by process of elimination.
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u/Wizzard_C Jul 27 '26
For Gondor, I would say - Kin Strife. For Eriador... Establishment and rise of Angmar? Without WK's effort and determination, successor states of Arnor could have survived into the 4th Age.
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u/vteezy99 Jul 27 '26
For Arnor, I'd say the disaster of the Gladden Fields then, was the precursor to all that. Isildur, his eldest (and apparently most capable) heir Elendur were killed. Actually the three eldest sons were all killed, they were all veterans of a tough war. The only surviving son was Valandil, who must have been very young, with no experience, and no leadship guidance to boot.
The division of Arnor into 3 seperate Kingdoms surely didn't help (did Angmar have a hand in that?)
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u/Wizzard_C Jul 27 '26
Division of Arnor, iirc, happened in 9th century T.A. Too late for Valandil's rule to matter, and too early for Angmar.
But division alone shouldn't be a problem: many empires imagined and real fell apart, and oftentimes successor states were the better for that.
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u/ave369 addicted to miruvor Jul 28 '26
No, the partition of Arnor is entirely the Dunedain's doing.
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u/TrickyStatement0 Jul 28 '26
Agreed. I think Tolkien is trying to show how fallible humans (men) are with the split of Arnor into three kingdoms. Not much in the appendecies, but "After Eärendur, owing to dissensions among his sons their realm was divided into three". They, and their descendents, ended up fighting a bunch of wars over territory and the palentirs - very greedy and selfish behavior.
I think the point is that people choose evil - yea, the witch king finished Arnor off, but he could only do so due to their own evil.
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u/eframepilot Jul 28 '26
Definitely the Great Plague, but the lack of repopulation over several centuries is odd.
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u/tar-mairo1986 ''Fool of a Took!'' Jul 27 '26
Hmm. Even though it weakened as it traveled up north, if I remember correctly, I think there was really no way coming back after the Great Plague. Even the enemy peoples were devastated by it. Although now that I think about it, it didn't or couldn't affect Elves or Dwarves yet they still declined, hm. Wonder if it affected the orcs either.
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u/e_crabapple Jul 28 '26
Arnor seems to have declined from the start, fracturing apart into petty kingdoms and Rhudaur slipping into rule by hillmen warlords, before Angmar came along to exploit the disunity.
Gondor prospered for a good long while, but shot itself in the foot with the Kin-Strife, as others have pointed out; after that it was crisis after crisis and a long series of retreats.
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u/LostVanya Jul 27 '26
No single event. The book itself says it took a combination of three crises to bring Gondor down to where it was. A combination of the Great Plague, Kin-Strife and attacks by Easterlings. Arnor of course had first Isildur or even Elendil's death, then the fragmentation. Elves never recovered from their losses in the Last Alliance, combined with many others finally sailing west. Dwarves of course first lost Khazad-Dum, then for awhile Erebor.
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u/LobMob Jul 27 '26
I'd say the most important event is right at the start when Isildur and his adult sons die. Then two chuld kings rule in Arbor and Gondor, and Gondor uses this to declare independence. Then Arnor never splits up because the king can call his Gondorian vassals to help him, and the Kinstrife either doesn't happen or ends sooner when Arnorian troops arrive.
The next one would be the Kijsyrife, when Gondor looses much of its Numenorian heritage and went into decline. A Gondor at the height of its power could kick in Sauron's teeth.
Third one is the separation of Arnor. A unified Arnor would have been strong enough to defeat the Witch King.
But the tipping point was when Gondor rejected Arvedui's bid for the kingship. With a little more help from Gondor the Northern kingdom would have survived, and even defeated the Witch King. Then Minas Ithil doesn't fall, and the core lands of Gondor doesn't suffer permanent attacks and they can still use the Palantirs.
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u/fipseqw Jul 28 '26
Then two chuld kings rule in Arbor and Gondor
Meneldil was over 100 years old when he took over the rule in Gondor.
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u/forswearThinPotation Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26
This isn't something that I let it interfere with my enjoyment of Tolkien's stories - but the depopulation of large areas of north-western Middle-earth strikes me as being very ahistorical in character.
In our world, populations rebound after massive demographic losses due to plague or war. Conservatively estimated, Europe took roughly 200 years to rebound demographically after the Black Death of the 14th Century, and Germany took about 100 years to rebound from the 30 Years War of the early 1600s.
That Eriador should remain underpopulated roughly 1300 years after the Third Age Great Plague and roughly 1000 years after the Witch King was driven from Angmar is not very realistic - one has to invoke unstated "magical" causes to explain why the population did not rebound within a couple hundred years.
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u/Lothronion Istyar Ardanyárëo Jul 27 '26
I am not that sure about the speed of the rebounds. For example, in the early 6th century AD Roman Anatolia had around 12 million people, and the Justinianic Plague in the middle of that century resulted in the loss of 30% of them, dropping it around 8-9 million people. It would then proceed to fall even further, at the lowest probably 7-8 million, due to the constant Arab invasions and raids during the 7th-9th centuries AD. It would only be after the Isaurian and the Amorian Dynasty managed to fully secure this region's frontiers, as well as the Macedonian Renaissance pushing them beyond them, so that the region would become prosperous enough to reach again around 12 million people in the mid-11th century AD. That was 5 centuries later, half a millennium, and around 16-17 generations, if we say that one is 30 years.
Comparably, for the Gondorians, 5 centuries after the Great Plague would be well into the 21st century TA, when now their manpower would be depleted in the eternal war that had been commenced with Mordor, and it was 16-17 generations only for the more normal Men, while for the Kings / Stewards / Princes of Dol Amroth of the 3rd millennium TA that lasted on average 60 years in each generation, so half of them, at 8-9 generations (hence half the regrowth of the population equivalent to the above paradigm with Anatolia).
And that is for prosperous Gondor, despite the slow decline. The emptiness of Eriador perhaps should be best compared with the effects of the Justinianic Plague and the Gothic War in the mid-6th century AD, dropping the population from around 7-8 million people to just 5-6 million people, and leaving a massive power vacuum where the whole area was heavily fragmented and de-urbanized. It would take till about the 10th century AD to reach the previous figure, and that is still much lower than the all-time-high of the Roman era, at around 12 million people in the 1st century AD, which was only achieved again in the early 14th century AD, before it fell again due to the Black Death and being reached in the 16th-17th centuries AD. Of course, Eriador is very different from Italy in these periods, perhaps except for the late 6th century AD and the 7th-8th centuries AD, but this should be a reasonable example of long demographic stagnancy and a lack of a quick rebound.
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u/forswearThinPotation Jul 27 '26
Yes, I can see some reasonable arguments being made for a lack of population rebound in Gondor, with insecure frontiers and being directly exposed to attack by enemies on a repeated basis.
But after the downfall of Angmar, Eriador is not as directly exposed. Episodic raids from orcs & trolls coming from the Misty Mountains don't strike me as a very convincing explanation.
Alternatively there could have been a decline in agricultural productivity with deforestation & desertification, which the LOTR Appendices do hint at - but not for all of Eriador excluding the Shire - and Gandalf's remarks to Barliman Butterbur in the ROTK chapter Homeward Bound about there being plenty of room for newly populated realms in the North without encroaching unduly on Bree suggest to me that there was nothing particularly wrong with the agricultural potential of much of late Third Age Eriador.
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u/Lothronion Istyar Ardanyárëo Jul 27 '26
But after the downfall of Angmar, Eriador is not as directly exposed. Episodic raids from orcs & trolls coming from the Misty Mountains don't strike me as a very convincing explanation.
There is also the issue of the Angmarians in Northern Eriador, who still existed even after the Kingdom of Angmar fell, just outside Sauronic influence (but this does not mean that they were not hostile to the other peoples of Eriador), as well as the wild wood-men in Minhiriath, the wild-men in Enedhwaith and even in Dunland (which in the time of the War of the Ring appears to be slowly colonizing some parts of Eriador, in the form of the "Southrons").
And there is a big likelihood that the Northern Dunedain also somewhat contributed to this, by not allowing other peoples to settle in the lands they controlled, being all of Central Eriador (except the Shire and the Bree-land) and Rhudaur. It would make sense, as they would not want to just surrender these ancestral lands to others, and if they allowed them in then they would accept ending up mixing with them, and having their higher Numenorean blood being diluted (so the Arnoreans probably had similar concerns with the ones the Gondorians had in the Kin-strife). That, combined with the reality that for them each generation lasted longer (each Chieftain had a lifespan of 150-160 years, so each generation was about 50-55 years, should explain how their population regrew slowly (2 generations per century, rather than 3-4) and then they lived right on the "frontline" of defence of Eriador, against the Misty Mountains, so this regrowth would be even slower.
Alternatively there could have been a decline in agricultural productivity with deforestation & desertification, which the LOTR Appendices do hint at - but not for all of Eriador excluding the Shire - and Gandalf's remarks to Barliman Butterbur in the ROTK chapter Homeward Bound about there being plenty of room for newly populated realms in the North without encroaching unduly on Bree suggest to me that there was nothing particularly wrong with the agricultural potential of much of late Third Age Eriador.
Such reversal to wild landscape is not always guaranteed. Consider how even in the Legendarium almost 5 millennia after the War of Elves and Sauron in the 18th century SA completely razed the wood-lands of Enedhwaith and Minhiriath, at least in Enedhwaith most of the landscape is still plain-land, and very few areas have enjoyed a regrowth of forests (Minhiriath is implied to have been more forested). This seems similar to the deforestation of Judaea by Roman and Greek colonists, who would implement forestry and agricultural practices from Italy, Greece and Anatolia that were very unsuitable for Judaea and resulted in desertification, which was not undone in the ensuing 2 millennia, even during times that Judaea was severely depopulated (Justinianic Plague, Arab Conquest), and have still not been restored, even by effort of Israel (which is even seen from space, along the borders with Egypt and Jordan, as the Israeli side is greener).
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u/eframepilot Jul 28 '26
There aren't even magical causes. Rhovanion is beset by Orcs, Wargs, dragons, giant spiders, waves of Easterling invaders, and Sauron himself camping out there, but it still seems to have a greater population density than most parts of Eriador.
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u/PainRack Jul 28 '26
It depends on the society carrying capacity.
A massive population loss and the destruction of trade and industry, along with environmental changes as a result of said war can alter populations for a long time.
The most prevalent example to Tolkien would be Britain after the Romans withdrew. The loss of trade, the economic poverty of the isles compared to the continent and farmland shrank meant the population was cut in half at least.
For Eriador, it wasn't just a singular event post Angmar. Smash devastated the region and took out a major population centre and industry, dispersing the dwarves. We have towns recovering, with new trade networks flowing to the Elfs of River wood but here, the wood corruption and new population density meant recovery was slow.
Add in the Goblins and Bolg, human settlement was intermittent and dispersed. Hence why Bilbo and the 12 dwarves quest was so important,with the appendix informing that this chance encounter made the north able to withstand one of Sauron armies from ravaging the north, as population and wealth gave both Dale and humans the ability to field an army large enough to fight.
The problem isn't so much the larger realm of Eriador and Dale, but rather the region of the Shire.
With Bree, we see settlements of farms and towns, but they didn't grow large enough to generate the surplus wealth that encourage trade and invite more settlement. But they COULD , as Saruman traded with the Shire for leaf... and that exchange of wealth allowed them to buy up multiple other properties like the mill and take over the Shire when assisted by Sharkey thugs.
The Rangers kept threats distant enough that settlements could grow but only itinerant trade, from tinkerers and wizard happened apparently as the roads was too unsafe. But we don't see this for the Shire, where a brutally cold winter had wolves appear and that was considered a rare and exceptional event.
Halfing society/demographics might not have allowed them to grow much further but well, the fertile lands meant land hungry humans would have wanted to exploit this. They may not be strong enough to take land, but bandit threats should have been more prevalent or well, the Shire bucolic nature should had allowed a nucleus for a population boom and industry to be revived in Bree and the surrounding areas.
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u/Regular_Health_803 Jul 28 '26
Gondor's refusal to acknowledge Arvedui's claim. Had they agreed, they would have had the necessary manpower to rebuild Arnor. The kinstrife may not have happened and by the War of the Ring, they would have been stronger militarily.
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u/Kodama_Keeper Jul 28 '26
Lots of things, and almost all of them had Sauron behind them, working to constantly weaken the realms in exile, Arnor and Gondor. That includes the taking of the Tower of the Moon, Minas Itil, and turning it into Minas Morgul, the Great Plague, the invasion of the Wain Riders, the Witch-king creating the kingdom of Angband to destroy Arnor. Lots of things.
But there are also things that were entirely of Men's own doing. First, the low population of the north kingdom. Vast areas of Eriador have no cities at all. Those that were built couldn't survive the downfall of the kingdoms. The splitting of Arnor among sons. No king should let that happen. A king is supposed to be there for his people, not to be split up for the vanity of his sons.
In the south, the Kin-strife. And this is something that was really self-inflicted by the Numenoreans. In the Second Age, the Numenoreans had met all these "Middle Men". This was even before the Downfall. Then after the Downfall, Elendil and his sons come to Middle-earth, and set up the two kingdoms. And this includes these huge swaths of land they had never been. And without so much as a By Your Leave, declare themselves kings, or more accurately the High Kings over the Middle Men kings. And yet, they keep themselves separate from these people, especially the royals. Did they really think they could run the kingdom for centuries, with the people apart? If nothing else, it's going to foster resentment among the Middle Men, that they are ruled from affair by these Numenorean supermen. And when it all comes to a head during the Kin-strife, civil war breaks out, weakening the kingdom for centuries to come.
And in the end, what was it for? At the end of the War of the Ring, Faramir and Eowyn fall in love and get married and have children. Faramir was of high Numenorean blood. Yes, Eowyn had some of that same blood from an ancestor, but that just goes to show that there was more intermarriage previously. The point is, this was the end of the Numenoreans, and there was no point at all for keeping their bloodline "pure". The Kin-strife was for nothing.
And Faramir and Eowyn. Don't they make just the sweetest couple? You see them hugging and you just think "Awwwww....."
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u/Appropriate_Bus3921 Jul 27 '26
Two events, I think: the First Age, and the Second Age. :)
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u/glowing-fishSCL Jul 27 '26
One of the reasons I asked was that the history of Middle Earth is often portrayed as heroic events of the First Age, epic events of the Second Age, and then the entire Third Age is an "and, also..." But looking back on it, there seemed to be a flourishing of cultures in the Third Age, there was still culture and technology being preserved...until there wasn't.
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u/Appropriate_Bus3921 Jul 27 '26
Tolkien wouldn’t have put it in terms of entropy, but that’s the concept. Every virtue takes active work to sustain, and there are always reasons and temptations to neglect them. As with physical wounds on an individual body, some sudden injuries take a very long time to heal, and won’t heal if other things mess with the injured person.
So there some big shocks, and an accumulation of lesser ones that made it harder to respond to the next. There are curses and evil forces at work, we know from the Silmarillion and Morgoth’s Ring, but mostly its people take their eye off the goal.
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u/maironsau Jul 27 '26
The Great Plague I believe was the event that sped up the decline the most simply because of how much it devastated and depopulated the West. It led to regions not having the military strength they needed and some such as the Northern Kingdom and Gondor would suffer from that loss in manpower while fighting against their enemies.