Posted: September 13, 1998 at 17:03:06: by Oberon
: Does anyone else think that the ranger Halbarad got a raw deal, he is the only other ranger mentioned in the trilogy and even carried the standard when Aragron arrived on the black ships, Halbarad was probably the 2nd in command of the rangers after the sons of Elrond or something like that. I'd guess that he fought with Aragorn and helped protect the Shire borders for years, then he finally gets a chance at the big times and he dies near the end of the battle of the fields of Cormallen [sic]. That's gotta suck!!
: Cyberlock.....The Battle of the Pelennor was necessarily a bloody affair for both sides, and not merely for the Dunedain of the North. Rohan, after all, lost its king. Tolkien is never clear on how many of the Rangers fell in the battle, so we have no way of knowing how unlucky Halbarad might have been. It was unlikely that even with their great stature and prowess that the Rangers would have come out unscathed. And to put it in context, the Pelennor was not nearly so costly for the West as many battles in Middle Earth history, or for that matter a good many battles in Anglo-Saxon history. In the War of the Last Alliance, the Dunedain of the North suffered grievous losses (from which they never fully recovered), not the least of which was Elendil the Tall. For my part, I am curious as to how many Dunedain remained in the North at the time of the War of the Ring. 30 Rangers were all that Halbarad could gather in haste, but I don't doubt that they had dwindled to a small number -- a few hundreds all told, perhaps? And where did they dwell? Surely not all in Rivendell. But if not, where? Tolkien is surprisingly sketchy about the history of Arnor and of its survivors -- the lack of information about Halbarad and his fellow rangers is only a case in point.
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