Isildur's fault and the Gladden Fields

Bruce N H

Active Member
Hi all,

I'm just listening to session 145 Archival Drama fro a couple of weeks ago and had a couple of thoughts.

There was discussion of "Isildur's fault" - Aragorn said that Isildur's heir should help remedy Isildur's fault, so goes on the hunt for Gollum with Gandalf. Discussion centered on what was the "fault"? Was it failing to chuck the Ring into the Cracks of Doom, or was it losing the Ring at the Gladden Fields. My suggestion is that it's both, because they are connected events. It was a direct result of his failing to destroy the Ring that Isildur was still carrying it at the Disaster. Even after the immediate events around the fall of Sauron, Isildur was hanging around Minas Anor for a time tutoring his nephew and writing documents for Gandalf to find. The forces of Sauron were destroyed and the good guys controlled all the borders of Mordor, so Isildur could easily have marched back over to Mount Doom to throw in the Ring. So it was a daily decision to keep rather than destroy it. So it's one continuous fault.

The other though was on Narsil vs the Ring. Corey asks why someone would be carrying the shards of Narsil but not the Ring. I would suggest that the shards of Narsil are a public treasure of the House of Elendil, not a personal treasure of Isildur. It's not like Queen Elizabeth 2 is carrying the crown jewels around with her. No, they're under the safekeeping of the guards entrusted with their care (in the Tower of London, right?). So too with the shards of Narsil. There would be an honor guard carrying them. But the Ring, on the other hand, was private, a personal treasure of Isildur. If it's power is working on him, Isildur is probably already thinking of it as his precious. He's not going to have some guard carrying it around for him.

Oh, I should note I'm ignoring the apocraphyl work in Unfinished Tales. That was obviously written by later Isildur apologists. I blame Findegil.

Anyway, just my two cents. On two topics. So that's four cents.

Bruce
 
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