Still trying for a critical reading: Frodo says, “I thought, well, that [Big People] were just big, and rather stupid: kind and stupid like Butterbur; or stupid and wicked like Bill Ferny.” 😑 Gandalf of all people calls him out in the very next paragraph, and of course he says that Butterbur isn’t stupid, just slow, and then he says, “The race of the Kings from over the Sea is nearly at an end.”
I’m sorry I wasn’t aware kings were a race of people. (/sarcasm) And even if he was referring to the Númenóreans, they’re still more of a subset of mankind than a race. If anything, they’re kind of… radioactive in a way. Changed by living near Valinor, and once they leave the “exclusion zone”, the radioactivity eventually fades.
And later on, during the Council of Elrond, the Elf in question says, “[T]he blood of Númenóreans became mingled with that of lesser men.” Like, my guy. Only a handful of people from that whole population escaped the destruction. Would you rather they had started fucking their own cousins to keep the bloodline “”””pure””””? I feel like I’m going insane seeing all of this bullshit.
God yes, this interaction was present in the book in some form since some of the earliest drafts, before Aragorn even existed and when Boromir was the only representative in the fellowship for the 'race of kings';
I wouldnt really say that Gandalf is pushing back all that much against Frodo's bigotted assumptions. Again, everyone in Middle-Earth (that we meet) ultimately agrees that racial hierarchies exist in a provable ontological sense and the only problem with Frodo's framing is that he's too dismissive and mean about it. 'Yes, Barliman will never be as quick witted as Aragorn, because he is of a lesser race. But he has his uses Frodo don't be rude.' The point being that 'everyone and everything has it's place, even if they are of a lesser race so be nice' which is a pretty common theme within the books as a whole. Hilarious when Aragorn is the one calling Barliman stupid and fat literally a page later, anyway-
This description of the Numenoreans isn't precisely correct. The reason for their longevity and 'wisdom' and all round 'being better than other men' is in part to do with their proximity to divinity. They are both closer to Valinor and also (at least initially) more in community with 'more divine' beings (elves). But it is also because they are blessed, set aside from other men by Eru to be specifically their betters. They are removed from 'Arda-marred' as payment for their ancestor's participation in the war against Morgoth and can therefore become this greater race of men. They are purposefully set apart and racially 'elevated' because of their faithfulness.
So it is correct to view them as a seperate 'race' (in the context of how Tolkien uses race, when really we should be calling elves/dwarves different species and fallohides/stoors different races but I digress) because within the paradigms that Tolkien sets they are almost as different from 'middle men' as elves are. Indeed, characters often refer to Aragorn in particular with this mystical tone of wonder and awe, a thing he just naturally inspires not by his character but by simply his divine blood and lineage.
It is also not quite true that the 'Numenorean-ness' lessens because of it's lack of proximity to divinity. The lessening of numenorean longevity in Gondor in particular is more tied to a kind of social contagion, the less faithful Gondor gets the less long lived the Numenoreans become. Their divine blood superiority comes from their higher minded faith and the less faith there is the less superior they seem. Elrond does blame the lessening of 'Numenorean nobility' partly upon their 'mixing with lesser blood', but somewhere within the account of the Gondorian Civil War we are reassured by Tolkien that Numenorean blood is more dominant than middle-men blood and therefore Valacar having a child with Vidumavi would have been fine, Eldacar didn't have a lesser lifespan. All of which I kind of interpret as meaning like... with more dunedain living in closer proximity to middle-men they 'became more like them' ('men of the twilight but with memory of other things' as Faramir puts it) and that contributes to the lessening of faith and divinity among them, ergo their lifespans decreased. But don't get me wrong I do also think we are meant to uncritically believe that the actual 'mixing with lesser blood' was to blame too.
I do think it was also meant to be to do with the increasing threat of Sauron, the last Gondorian to live 150 years was Hador and the Witch King returns to Dol Guldur the very year he dies and breaks the watchful peace some years later. So 'the shadow' is another thing to blame for the 'humbling' of the 'superior race' of numenor but I think this is also tacitely more to do with the shadow having an adverse effect on dunedain behaviour, making them 'more warlike' like the middle-men. IT'S ALL CONNECTED!!
The reason I have rambled this long is just to try and hammer home how indelible this line of thinking is to the very logical fabric of the story. Aragorn's pure divine lineage, combined with his careful raising by elves to the most faithful man seen this millenia, being mentored by a literal maia and ultimately being Canonically Chosen By God, is what gives him this 'undiminished' Numenorean-ness. It's his pure blood, his divine race, and his ontologically correct religion that makes him this way and he is here to save Gondor and The World from being ruled by 'lesser-men' which we are all supposed to clap for.
It doesnt even matter if he's a prick to hobbits, barliman, Boromir, Hama the Doorward, Eowyn or anybody else! Again, as Tolkien says in his own words;
In The Lord of the Rings the conflict is not basically about 'freedom', though that is naturally involved. It is about God, and His sole right to divine honour. The Eldar and the Númenóreans believed in The One, the true God, and held worship of any other person an abomination. Sauron desired to be a God-King, and was held to be this by his servants; if he had been victorious he would have demanded divine honour from all rational creatures and absolute temporal power over the whole world. So even if in desperation 'the West' had bred or hired hordes of ores and had cruelly ravaged the lands of other Men as allies of Sauron, or merely to prevent them from aiding him, their Cause would have remained indefeasibly right. As does the Cause of those who oppose now the State-God and Marshal This or That as its High Priest, even if it is true (as it unfortunately is) that many of their deeds are wrong, even if it were true (as it is not) that the inhabitants of 'The West', except for a minority of wealthy bosses, live in fear and squalor, while the worshippers of the State-God live in peace and abundance and in mutual esteem and trust. So I feel that the fiddle-faddle in reviews, and correspondence about them, as to whether my 'good people' were kind and merciful and gave quarter (in fact they do), or not, is quite beside the point.
