> I'm no expert, but if I remember correctly from
>what I have read, Aragorn was actually the heir
>to the vanquished northern kingdom of Arnor. I
>think what happened was, Arnor fell to Angmar
>(led by the Witch-King, a.k.a. the Lord of the
>Nazgul), and so though Aragorn was an heir of
>Isildur, he never had a kingdom. He was born and
>brought up in Rivendell as a refugee of sorts.
>Meanwhile, the southern kingdom of Gondor still
>existed, but the line of kings had died out.

After I posted this, Stephen reminded me that Wikipedia is a great source for all things geek, so I read the "Aragorn" entry there, plus a ton more. You're right about what you say, but it still doesn't explain a few things to me.

Aragorn never had a kingdom to rule in the north, true. But neither did his father, or his father's father, and on back for something like 15 generations. The Witch-King destroyed Arnor something like a thousand years ago reckoning from Aragorn's (actually Aragorn II of the Dunedain) time. So for all these years, all these generations of heirs to the throne of both Gondor and Arnor hung around in the woods playing game warden or something. Why?

The best explanation I've heard came from a website (I've lost the link now, but I'll try to dig it up) where this guy who was obviously an insane hardcore Tolkien junky posts essays on many Middle-earth related topics. His essays are long and often boring for us non-Tolkien-heads, but the gist of one of them seemed to be that although Aragorn was indeed rightful heir to the throne of Gondor, proving it to the Ruling Stewards was another matter entirely.

It goes something like this. Elendil, patriarch of the Kingdoms or Arnor and Gondor, had two sons, Isildur and Anarion. Isildur and Anarion both had sons (Isildur four, Anarion only one) but being the elder son, Isildur's heirs would be the ones to rule over the two Kingdoms. However, shortly after the war that vanquished Sauron (the first time) that resulted in the death of Elendil and Anarion, Isildur and his three oldest sons were also killed after being ambushed by orcs (this is the famous "betrayal" of the One Ring, where it slipped off Isildur's finger as he tried to swim across the river while invisible to escape the orcs.) Isildur's youngest son, Valandil, was too young to take the throne right away, and Isildur had left his nephew Meneldil (Anarion's son) in charge of Gondor in his absence, so Meneldil continued to rule in Gondor after the death of Isildur. When Valandil came of age, he did not assert his right to the throne of Gondor, and the two kingdoms essentially split, with the House of Isildur ruling in Arnor, and the House of Anarion ruling in Gondor. Anarion's line should never have been Kings of Gondor, but they sort of became so by default once Isildur's line failed to claim the throne.

Eventually, the line of Anarion failed, and the Ruling Stewards took over control of Gondor until a rightful heir to the throne could be found. However, here's the tricky part. Apparently at this time, there were still heirs of Isildur kicking around in the north (well, their had to be, since there would still be some there hundreds of years later, but I mean "kicking around" in a more visible manor than playing at game warden). But for some reason, the Stewards did not recognize any of these heirs, and thus either by tradition or by some actual rule, they apparently decided that Isildur's line of heirs were not necessarily rightful Kings of Gondor either.

This doesn't make any sense to me at all, but that's apparently the position Aragorn was in. He had to prove to Denethor (later Faramir) that he was a rightful heir of Elendil, but sort of tactfully leave out the part about Isildur, since apparently the Ruling Stewards had long ago decided that Isildur's heirs were either all dead or had given up their claim to the throne of Gondor (and on that part I'm not clear at all). The stupid thing is, there ARE only two possiblities if one is claiming to be an heir of Elendil. Either you are of the House of Isildur, or the House of Anarion, and the Stewards had apparently already ruled out both lines as heirs somehow. Anyway, when Aragorn presented himself to Faramir as a claimant to the throne, he claims only descent from Elendil, not Isildur, and Faramir, having already recognized Aragorn as rightful heir (by combination of Aragorn having healed him while he lay stricken in the Houses of Healing and from Aragorn's ability to command the Army of the Dead, I guess) recognizes him officially, despite the crazy contradiction that apparently entailed.

So the *short* answer is, I STILL am not entirely sure why it took Aragorn (and for that matter, his ancestors of 15 generations or more back) to make their claim to the throne of Gondor, but apparently it has something to do with some really wacky rules and/or traditions of the Ruling Stewards of Gondor that they would have to overcome to do so. *shrug*

-- Dave