The White Council

Re: Black Númenórans (another nonconclusive dicussion)

Tolkien and Inklings Discussion

: : What happened to the B. N.s? I believe that some, in colonies or in the service of sauron servived at least till the end of the Third Age. My arguments are: : : 1) They were too valuable a resource to lose for the Dark Lord, he would have an interest in keeping them as powerful as possible.

: Well certainly on the face of it, the BNs would be a resource that Sauron / his Nazgul would have cultivated.

: But I'd caution that that certainly shouldn't be taken as meaning their star would have gone on in the ascendant. First there's the waning bloodline (see below). Second, it would seem likely to me that they would have 'found their level' and then just maintained it -- although the only reasoning I can offer for this is that we'd have heard more about it if they'd been going from strength to strength.

: : 2) It mattered not whether or not they even got racially "polluted" by "lesser" races- as long as they saw themselves as B. N.s (as Alaric's Visigoths). The " waning of the Dúnedain"-equivalent would probably be negated by Sauron's influence.

: Here I disagree. The waning was most significant in the dilution of the Numenorean bloodline -- resulting most especially in the inexorable decline of their sorcerous potential. Even if the Forces of Darkness encouraged eugenic practices, in-breeding would become the agent of a different sort of decline.

: : Any comments?

: IMHO the upper echelons of society in Umbar would have been effectively Black Numenorean, even though Tolkien, in continuing to call them the Corsairs, continued to remind us of their origin in Castamir's faction of the Faithful from the days of the Kin Strife.

It seems unlikely that Umbar was the only place Black Numenoreans would be found. In the days of the later Kings of Numenor the King's men are stated to have founded many settlements over the coastlands of Middle Earth. Such settlements in the further reaches of Harad and Rhun would not have impinged upon the settlements of the Faithful in NW Middle Earth because of distance, though they probably would not have escaped Sauron's notice.