Color and Racial Heritage in Gondor: the Legacy of the Haradrim Hostage Princes
── ✰ A recent ask that I got addressed a topic that had been bouncing around in my head for some time. So! I decided to put down a relatively bare-bones account of my headcanons about people of color in Gondor. Because in truth, I really do believe that at least part of Gondor’s population are POCs. But what are the connotations of being a POC? What is the history of race in Gondor, the visibility or commonality of non-white people, and so on? Let's dive in. Keep in mind that for now all this lore is in the preliminary stages of development.
Let’s start with geography. Based on the lay of Tolkien's world, the distances he describes, as well as the climatological features he fills in, I suspect that Rohan and the Shire are geographically similar to England, whereas Gondor is similar to southern Europe (i.e., Italy, France, and Spain). As such, I believe that geography and climate alone would not produce populations that differ substantially in terms of skin color, and any POCs who exist in Gondor will likely have the features they do as a result of interface with more southern lands like Harad – which in our world would be most analogous to northern Africa, and would produce people with significantly different skin, hair, and other features.
Now, how did this interface come about? For the more "common" folk, and the lesser nobility, I would suspect a fairly unsurprising, organic set of interactions: more fortunate forces like trade, migration in search of a better life and raw exploratory spirit, as well as the more unsavory features of history, such as skirmishes over bordering lands, "war brides" (ew), or sailors bringing spouses home from voyages, particularly in maritime Dol Amroth.
But for the great noble houses, i.e., those that have kinship with the Stewards' family and the erstwhile royal family, it was a bit different.
According to the Professor, there was a time when princes of the Haradrim lived as hostages at the court of Minas Tirith. Their golden cage presence functioned as part of peace treaties – a flesh-and-blood insurance policy against invasion. Specifically: should the Haradrim invade, their royal sons would perish. And so, as long as peace was kept, life for the hostages, too, was peaceful, good, and plentiful. Superficially, these boys and men were treated in the court as equals, and they socialized, studied, and practiced feats of arms alongside their Gondorian peers.
But life as a hostage is not a position of agency. These princes were not free to come and go, regardless of their age, and were likely otherized and mistrusted in a myriad of subtle ways. But since the arrangements did not have an expiration date, many did in fact integrate themselves as best they could into Gondorian society, doing acts of service to the kingdom, marrying (likely into the nobility), and starting families. As a result, a number of Gondor's "great families" do in fact intertwine their family trees with the Haradrim, and, due to the legacy of hostage-dom, it is both a point of pride and pain.
Different families approach their heritage differently. Some take it as a point of pride, going to the effort of researching and comprehending their legacy – visiting Harad, learning about the culture and reconstructing their genealogy. Some of these efforts have resulted in continued Haradrim influence on Gondor’s fashion, music, architecture and food, particularly since in retrospect the hostage-taking practice has been roundly denounced as inhumane.
But other families are indifferent to their heritage, or seek to avoid it entirely. Because is there essentialism? Yes, there is absolutely essentialism, and one can't blame certain people for trying to defy it. Like most such prejudices, some of it purports, on a surface level, to be positive, or even laudatory: people with Haradrim heritage are considered passionate, creative, honest, and brave. But by the same token, they are also considered "hot-blooded" just like the land of their forebearers, and they are stereotyped as being more impetuous, loud, volatile, and irrational. As a result, a good number of these Harad-descended households go out of their way to behave as primly and properly as they can, living their lives as counterexamples to these loathsome stereotypes, their children burdened by undue expectations. Others seek to reappropriate the stereotypes, defiantly exaggerating certain traits in themselves as a point of pride. And yes, darker skin color in Gondor is sought after, but ultimately, the look remains difficult to divorce from the Haradrim stereotypes.
Real-life inspiration for these headcanons has been provided by two historic figures in our world: Alexandre Dumas and Alexander Pushkin, who were both, incidentally, European noblemen and writers of African heritage (and yes, they had the same first name; the irony does not escape me). Race played different roles in their lives: Dumas, whose grandmother was an enslaved woman, faced racism throughout his life despite being an acclaimed writer and privileged in many ways. Some of his writing had anti-slavery messages, but unfortunately they were largely ignored by the literary establishment at the time. Pushkin, who descended from an African member of the Emperor's court (formally a paige, but more likely a curiosity the monarch liked to show off) actually leaned into his African heritage, referenced it heavily in his work, and amplified the parts of his personality that aligned with the stereotypes.
