Land of the King, Essay: In Hindsight

Hindsight is 20/20 as they say. I’ve improved significantly, incredibly, as a writer since I wrote LOTK so I thought, I’d write a sort of appendix, a sort of finisher. An analysis of sort of some of the arcs I wrote and overall what I think I could have done to write it better in hindsight, and if I wrote LOTK again now (not that I intend to) what could and should I have done instead? If you guys are interested, you could stick around for this little essay of mine.

So where to begin? At the start I suppose. LOTK or some variant of it, was in my head for years. It’s no joke to call this my childhood passion. I read ASOIAF when I was ten years old (yeah I know what you’re thinking, I did not understand the smut scenes, they confused the fuck out of me). I read LOTR AND Silmarillion when I was around the same age as that, about nine to ten. I was a pretty well-read kid.

Anyway as a fan of both series, it eventually occurred to me. How awesome would it be to have Numenoreans in Westeros? So I scrounged the internet trying desperately to find any fics or discussions I could on the topic. It led me to many forum pages and quite a few fics.

I really have got to mention my primary inspirations here, which are ‘Over the Sunset, into the West,’ by FieryMatter and ‘House of Elendil’ by EricDal. There’s a oneshot on FFN by the name of ‘Sons of Westernesse, Sons of Westeros’ as well which really helped inspire me. So credit where due for the inspirations!

So with my idea, and with my inspirations seeing other people write out their own versions of this awesome premise, I began to daydream. In free periods at school, I’d literally be writing ideas down in a notebook or pacing around at home imagining awesome battles. It was a fun time.

Now readers, you may be interested to hear this, but my initial idea was not the Nine Ships. Oh no, little me wanted the best of the best. I wanted to throw Numenor in the year 1800 Second Age right into the Sunset Sea, with Romenna being directly on the same latitude as the mouth of the Mander River, and oh about a thousand miles between Numenor and Westeros?

I reckoned, 1800 Second Age, there weren’t yet any Numenorean colonies in Middle-Earth, but the Numenoreans had already entered into their colonization mode. Also, they didn’t have gold, so the moment they discovered Westeros, Ciryatan would lead an invasion into the Westerlands. Or when his father died. I would have tossed them in sometime before the Doom, or maybe even after it, and let Ciryatan conquer Westeros. I was quite serious about this. I even handwrote a 1000-word draft in my notebook on the first chapter (the teleportation of Numenor) and some long ass Annals of Kings style appendixes on the history of Numenorean conquest in Westeros.

Then came 2020 and lockdown. I was holed up in my house with nothing to do. So I decided why not just write a fic? So I did. I realized my Numenor idea was a bit much and decided hey, what if I do Over the Sunset, but only the Nine Ships? And then I proceeded and history was made. The birth of author Tertius711 and his very first fic.

I came up with the name ‘Land of the King’ after some thinking and seeing how Arnor meant ‘land of the king’ in Sindarin. So I thought, brilliant. Name’s done. But not quite. See crossover fics need a catchy tagalong to get attention, especially on forums like SpaceBattles and AlternateHistory. So I came up with ‘Arnor in Westeros’ to instantly tell any prospective reader what the fic was about and it worked.

So let’s get to the arcs. First up, the landing. I quite like this arc and the whole Hooded War, I don’t regret anything about it and I feel that it was a brilliant start to my epic saga. Looking back man some of my ideas were really brilliant if I toot my own horn. Like come on, Annuminas, the Tower of the West being Casterly Rock, a castle in the Sunset Sea? A Minas Tirith/Menegroth/Erebor style capital for Arnor? How cool is that?

Then we come to the chapter that really defined what LOTK really was about. The first Annals of Kings. Inspired by Tolkien’s LOTR Appendix A, Annals of Kings and Rulers, the Annals of Kings were a means for me to write about 5000 years of epic history in one fic while having mini arcs dedicated to covering particularly interesting kings or events, many of which I left to reader votes at the time. Unfortunately, this later resulted in a side effect of people not actually caring too much for the characters but rather for the nation of Arnor as a whole and its journey through Westeros and history, which while unfortunate, wasn’t quite unexpected either.

So past Annals, we’ve got the King of Giants, Tarondor Hirgaer and his war on the Ironborn, Krakenslayer, all pretty solid arcs or chapters IMO and the prose still holds up well to me though I have no doubt improved.

Then we come to the first really major arc. If we don’t count Tarondor who technically had quite a few chapters, then the War of the Three Brothers was the first really character driven and major arc I had, along with a principal main character, Cirion, second son of Earendur Falastur.

Inspired by Tolkien’s original division of Arnor by Earendur’s sons in canon, I adapted that story into LOTK as a full on civil war. I thought for weeks on what the twist could be since my at the time limited writing skills made Ostoher way too obvious as the killer. And then I thought, what if Ostoher, had unknowingly been telling part of the truth? And therein came the idea for Amlaith to have known his plot and manipulated events to his benefit. One of my best plot twists and not one anyone expected. They all thought either Amlaith or Ostoher was the killer not Ostoher is the killer and Amlaith knew and kept silent to get the result he wanted.

Ofc, this being LOTR inspired, Amlaith has to get his just desserts so he dies a miserable pathetic death much like how poor Garth Goldenhand did in the Reach. Thanks to FieryMatter for helping me create the first LOTK map around this time (which I put in the Annals) and also for helping me realize that a defeat for Amlaith isn’t implausible despite the wargs and superhumans he had at his disposal.

So we move on from this arc. I gave Cirion a little arc on the Wall while watching too much Attack on Titan: No Regrets. I gave Beleg the Young an arc restoring rule over Arnor watching too many HBO Rome clips, etc. Pretty fun chapters altogether. I liked them, and I liked teasing the Others for the like the only time until the final arc lol.

Annals of Kings II was a pretty great chapter that continued the history I think and set up the Kin-Strife. Some chapters here and there adapting Celepharn and some other conqueror kings were asked for and I delivered. By now, Arnor conquering and steamrolling everyone was, while still interesting in a historical lens, getting really boring to write.

Which is why we then entered the Kin-Strife. It’s an arc that many have praised, and for good reason. I still think it holds up as one of my best arcs. It adapts two stories from canon, one is Arvedui and his destiny to either be the last king of Arnor or its restorer, and the other is the Kin-Strife of Gondor. Altogether I think it was a brilliant arc with nice tie-ins to canon, nice symbolisms and prophecies, great characterizations (though I wish I had time and skill to flesh characters other than Arvedui and Argeleb out), and also a really brilliant opening move by Valyria in an aptly named chapter (Tears of Lys) to begin their millennia long feud.

So after the Kin-Strife, we had another Annals, and Arnor slowly preparing its continent for war against Valyria. Tbch the chapters in the intermediary bored me to write. It’s why I lowkey combined three kings into one chapter at one point. That’s how hard it was to write because I was that impatient to get to what I really think is my personal favorite arc in all of LOTK.

The First Dragon War, and its Sothoryos prequel. Our MC this arc is none other than Jaenara Belaerys. She’s famous in the ASOIAF fandom for being an explorer to Sothoryos but most importantly for giving the only canon last name of another of Valyria’s Forty Families but I digress.

I took Jaenara and made her a Dunedain-Valyrian, as her mother was the last purebred descendant of the Dunedain slaves taken from the Tears of Lys. Thus Jaenara has Dunedain blood and Dunedain lifespan. She’s basically the Numenorean-Valyrian dream combo but deconstructed perhaps? Her two heritages war inside each other and this really comes to a head when she meets Turin and his crew, a group of Arnorians exploring Sothoryos.

They team up and explore Sothoryos, have some adventures together through creepy Yeen, and bond. Eventually Turin reveals he is the Third Prince of Arnor and offers her to come her mother’s homeland. Jaenara rejects this, still unable to come to terms with her divided heritage and they part ways.

Turin returns home and we discover Arnor is ready to wage war on Valyria. We fast forward a few years and Arnor starts its war. Epic glory. They seize the Stepstones and Pentos and Myr swiftly, all that needs to fall is Tyrosh and their victory is complete. Turin was tasked with besieging Tyrosh and he’s about to win when the taskforce of 300 dragons sent by Valyria destroys his army.

Man, I remember the backlash that chapter got. I couldn’t understand it at the time. These are dragons. Dragons wrecked the Elves and Dwarves in the First Age and needed legendary heroes or demigods to defeat. Even Smaug was felled by chance. Valyria sent 300 dragons to attack the Arnorians. They took them by surprise at night and a 50k Arnorian army still took 14 dragons down. It’s downright amazing. In fact, I honestly now think that I nerfed Valyria but I’ll get to that later.

Still overall I think the First Dragon War is one of my finest arcs. The Second was pretty weak though and while the Third was truly epic and glorious in scale, in hindsight I think I made a serious mistake sidelining Turin and Jaenara in Braavos because as the characters we had followed through Sothoryos and the First War, they made natural protagonists to follow here as well.

It was also around the Third Dragon War that I noticed my readership began to decline. Chapters got less feedback and likes. It took me a while to understand but I eventually figured out there was maybe a bit of burnout for some readers. The First Dragon War was the epic climax and for whatever reason things felt kind of tame afterward. Disappointing but not unrealistic.

Not to mention around that time High Tide started picking up and for what was at the time less effort, I would get far more feedback and discussion because High Tide is a self-insert story which has a big fanbase in ASOIAF fanfiction and also isn’t a niche interest like a crossover is.

Still I pushed on. From the Third Dragon War we came to the Vale arc, which some have complained to me about for being unrealistic. Honestly I can somewhat agree now. I argued a lot with my beta before he finally convinced me. In hindsight (which is what this essay is about), part of me does wish I had stood my ground. Why the Arnorians didn’t win the Vale Civil War does bend the suspension of disbelief a little. They had superior technology, superior soldiers, superior everything. They even had skinchanger scouts. The idea that Arnor is war fatigued and doesn’t want to commit does make sense but the problem is that Arnor realistically should curbstomp regardless of war fatigue. Still rereading and editing that arc recently has given me a new appreciation for it because it’s that well written, at least IMO, so even if SOD bends a little, I like the arc. It’s still pretty immersive to me and well I killed off the autonomous Northern Vale principality in the end anyway so no harm in the long run I guess.

After the Vale arc was mostly filler. There’s a Doom chapter which wasn’t originally planned but I realized that the Valyria plotline needed some closure to finish it off. There was initially going to be a mini arc inspired by CaekDaemon’s incredible Raiders of the Lost City where an Arnorian expeditionary ship investigates Gogossos following the Red Death. It would be called ‘Ghosts of Gogossos.’ It would be a horror arc. I eventually canceled my plans for this arc because of the fading attention given to the story and also my own doubt in my ability to write convincing horror of this scale. Why mimic what is already perfection? (Raiders that is)

Then lastly we come to the final arc. Before I edited it, there was originally a plotline where Hyarmen basically went democratic. It got a lot of criticism for that and honestly? I get that. That was again a suggestion of my beta that I argued immensely with him and regret not standing my ground on. Still even in my original conception, Hyarmen would have had very obnoxious nobles and elites whose distance from the homeland had made them daring. There wasn’t any democracy in that original idea though and honestly I regret putting it in to begin with. It feels like it came out of left field. I spent an entire evening editing it back to my original vision and have since polished a lot of the chapters more thoroughly. So if you’re reading this after that, rejoice. No cringe democracy in your Númenórean story whatsoever.

A lot of my story decisions for LOTK were really years past from the posting of this chapter by now. Even my final chapters were initially written two years ago and held in my computer for a long time as my beta slowly worked on them and eventually gave up on the project entirely.

So overall, am I satisfied with the final arc? Honestly I think it works. Ofc I wish I could have done it better and if I’m being honest it feels a little rushed but the key points are there. Aragorn having only daughters, and his eldest Silmarien inheriting the throne as the first Ruling Queen in history was always the intention. I followed the line of kings from canon for so long I wanted to finally diverge from it. And also Eldarion (of the Eldar) existing without an Eldar for a mother just didn’t feel right to me.

Still even then I could not resist certain parallels. Making Ashara Dayne, a well-known canon ASOIAF character from a family associated with stars stand in for Arwen Evenstar as Aragorn’s wife was an idea I had had in mind for so long. As was the idea of Narsil breaking and being reforged into Anduril, the Flame of the West, Lightbringer. The tie-ins to both ASOIAF and LOTR were too good to pass up.

Overall while LOTK is a flawed story, it was my first and I am quite proud of how most of it went. That being said, I did promise to write about an alternate version so here goes.

So what could an alternate version of Land of the King look like?

While I am overall quite happy with how I wrote LOTK overall, I have been considering an alternate version with several differences that I will never write due to having moved on to other projects. Still for fun I would give it to y’all here just as food for thought though I make no pretensions as to whether the quality of this idea is good, some of it sounds very ambitious and wack even to me but since it was just a thought exercise I ran with it.

Rather ambitiously, I think I would have made the story very different right at the start. The Nine Ships land early, as in during the Age of Heroes before the First Long Night. Fast forward a few hundred years and an established Arnor in the Westerlands would fight in said Long Night and due to their influence, the Others would be defeated completely and the Wall would never be built.

Furthermore, I think I would have developed an alternate mythology system (if one still inspired by Tolkien’s Ainur), that gives a plausible way for Arnor to acquire the Other’s ice magic (perhaps in a manner similar to the theory the Starks have Other-blood or made some kind of treaty?). Eventually the Seven Maiar are taken out of the equation early due to an early Long Night arc and Narsil broken and reforged into Anduril would be the OG Lightbringer instead of Dawn.

Ultimately magic would have played a much greater role and the Age of Heroes would have been explored significantly and the timeline I would push to be 8000 instead of 5000 to account for this earlier start date before the Long Night and also for any deviations from the canon line of kings for Ruling Queens since I regret not doing those until very late in the original LOTK.

Arnor’s kings in general while being overall very good, we might have more checkered kings like an early king exploiting the First Night (which he legalized once more) or things like that. To show the Arnorians have not lost the flaws of the original Numenoreans entirely. (that this helps spread Numenorean blood throughout Westeros is definitely a coincidence 

Anyway moving on, a lot of the original arcs such as the conquest of the Greyborn would still feature although this time there would be no wildfire as I had misjudged the history and origins of the Alchemist Guild. It has very clearly Essosi or even Valyrian roots and would remain as such. Perhaps ice magic or skinchanging features to ensure victory instead. I’d have accounted for all these changes of course and tried to integrate them as best as I could. Giants and mammoths would still join Arnor and feature in large numbers. The native fauna such as aurochs, shadowcats, and direwolves are also more extant, as are Children of the Forest. There may even be some intermarriages between the Arnorians and Children to gain more magical power and potentially longer lives.

Arnor would have more civil wars without long term damage including one which enshrines the rights of a ruling queen, and so on. Eventually over the course of thousands of years, Arnor would stretch across the entirety of Westeros from the Summer Sea in the south all the way up to the Lands of Always Winter (no Wall after all and friendlier seasons with the Others defeated long ago).

At this point I would have jokingly said in an AN that I should change the story’s name to Land of the King – Arnor is Westeros. The name of the continent Westeros would become interchangeable with the realm that ruled its entirety, Arnor. Much like how Eriador and Arnor became interchangeable in canon LOTR.

Eventually a version of the Kin-Strife would happen (and with so much more land you can imagine the Dunedain-Tergil-Casterrim caste divisions to be even more pronounced) only this time it would be the decades long civil war it was in canon and result in Arnor truly splintering into seven kingdoms (on purpose reference). Valyria would attack to seize the Stepstones and Lys from one of the splinters, and this would be later used as a way to reunite Arnor against a common enemy.

Anyway the Andals would attack this divided Arnor, their sheer desperation and numbers fleeing the Valyrians making them a great plague on the divided Arnorian realms. They’d be kinda like the Wainrider invasions into Gondor.

Eventually a series of kings from the senior line in Annuminas would deftly conquer, intrigue, marry, and politick their way to reuniting the Seven Kingdoms of Arnor as one High Kingdom once again. The invading Andals are either destroyed or assimilated as a subject class, and the matters of purity and class divisions are at least partially solved.

In this alternate version of Land of the King; coming to Planetos removed the morality aspect of the Numenorean’s gifts and encoded it into their genetics instead. All Numenoreans, regardless of morality would now expect to live to 200-250 years around (from Nature of Middle-Earth) while House of Elros could expect to live to 400 or so. The gifts would appear to persist greatly even in those of mixed blood but may eventually diminish (similarly to canon LOTR and also the dragonlord blood in ASOIAF)

This also means that yes the Forty Families now live long lives though their superiority complex, incestuous need to keep blood pure, and fear of losing their powers should they dilute it, means that only the Forty Families are long lived in Valyria.

Anyway, with Annuminas successfully reuniting Arnor, they would curb regionalist sentiments under a greater Arnorian identity once more and would have to do quite the social engineering to ensure the various social classes in Westeros get along, Dunedain, Tergil, Casterrim, Andals, Rhoynar, and others.

The original Rhoynar migration to Arnor before the Kin-Strife would never have happened and instead Nymeria would now exist before the First Dragon War and would lead her people to find refuge in Arnor, teaching them water magic for survival and eventually assimilating. This would help explain Arnor’s delay in waging war against Valyria without a meaningful anti-fire method.

They would dramatically expand water magic to an even greater extent than they did in original LOTK and become as good at water magic sorcery as Valyrians are at their fire magic. Combining this with their ice magic from the Others way back they even get full on ATLA waterbending. They would also push their skinchanging to new heights and a number of Bloodraven level seers would be born. The Children of the Forest would also not lowkey disappear but remain and give their insights with regard to magic to further aid. Eventually the Braavosi slave refugee fleet does not pass the Valyrian controlled Stepstones (and canonically Braavos sounds like it was founded after the fall of the Rhoynar given there were Rhoynar slaves in that fleet) but instead to Arnor where they would be accepted and welcomed. The Faceless Men would join the ranks of Arnor’s magical arsenal and be used to great extent, combining Numenorean telepathy with their face-changing.

Arnor would also eventually expand once more and conquer the Summer Islands, desiring the archipelago’s resources and intending to use the islands as a strategic base in the Summer Sea given Gogossos and the Basilisk Isles under Valyrian rule. They also fear that Valyria has designs on them also. Integration of the Summer Islands goes well though it takes a number of generations.

Arnor would also colonize Hyarmen (no Annuromen or democracy this time) as a refuge in the event they are defeated by Valyria. Numenoreans are no strangers to exile.

So let’s summarize. After the Kin-Strife, Arnor eventually reunites and accepts refugees from Valyrian conquests (Andals, Rhoynar, Braavos) while also conquering the Summer Islands. They eventually reform their society and by assimilation and social engineering, they integrate all the new lands and peoples into Arnor culturally if not genetically. The tendency of Dunedain to take women from lesser races as informal mistresses has helped spread the blood of the Dunedain far and wide to further the process. The Summer Islands’ own cultural views on making love mixing with this tendency among the Dunedain/First Night helped spread it there.

The differing ethnic groups may end up creating a cosmopolitan like Arnor with many ethnic appearances similarly to Gondor in canon (to an extent) but a point would come that basically pretty much everyone in Westeros has Numenorean descent and culture binding them together. Numenoreans aren’t racist on color after all and so this wouldn’t matter to them and we know the King’s Men in Harad interbred with the Haradrim and eventually became indistinguishable from them.

The pure Numenoreans are numerous enough that it doesn’t matter in terms of losing the Gift by now since unlike Middle-Earth where they were solely a ruling class, Westeros became a new Numenor for the Nine Ships and their population exploded, especially because they recovered fastest from the Long Night which devastated the First Men).

Arnor would also heavily aid and incentivize the giants and Children of the Forest to expand their population (and give them lands to do so), while increasing the skinchangers present in their people as far as possible. It is possible that interbreeding with the giants and Children may occur as well as the First Men are suspected to, though this would be uncommon given how the Numenoreans are so-so on even mixing with ‘lesser men’.

The Numenorean sub cultures created as a result of centuries of division into seven realms are reunited by the common threat of Valyria reminding them of their shared heritage (also the purity issue eventually being solved helps this greatly. Pointing to Valyria as the enemy is what helps to unite Arnor back into one realm again culturally, much like it did Arnor against Angmar. This Arnor would develop its technology, culture, and magic and prepare for war. It is thus this strong united Westeros (Arnor) that faces the Valyrians.

Speaking of. A good friend of mine, Valkorion510 has long since convinced me that I severely undersold the Valyrians in LOTK. Canon indicates to us they maintained a proper military and suggests and HOTD confirms (as much as I hate the rest of the show has good Valyria lore) that they had over a thousand dragons. Furthermore, I mostly ignored Valyria’s magic and sorcery, such as their pyrokinesis abilities (among pretty much all magic you can think of) and their bloodmagic and flesh shaping (imagine them unleashing Gogossos’s monstrosities on Arnor, you know they would and should have.)

Steelbows, windlances, superhuman Numenorean strength and senses, and upgraded water magic and healing, skinchanging, and giants, just don’t feel like they’re enough against how truly insane Valyria is. (remember dragons in LOTR are beaten by divine power or divinely inspired heroic fortune). Ofc it might just be me but that’s how I feel.

Which is why I would break the tech stagnation I had lowkey imposed on Arnor (which didn’t make sense because they’d have had to push it as far as possible and have thousands of years to do so) and Lost Road! Arnor. For those of you who don’t know, the Lost Road is an alternate version of Numenor by Tolkien which went steampunk. They had ironclads, airships, and either ridiculously powerful tension projectile weapons or its heavily implied they had cannons (darts travel for leagues unerring).

In order to try to preserve the thematic feel of Arnor with its steelbows and windlances, I’d have had this happen in phases. In the First War, they have and use everything they had in canon technologically and much more magic but they are also experimenting with black powder to create black powder aided scorpions or rockets much like the Chinese had. They also have prototype airships, cannons, ironclads, and arquebuses. It would be a truly titanic clash from this magically empowered Arnor vs canon compliant Valyria. The clash of ice/water and fire magic throughout the war also leads some to call it ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’.

The alternate First Dragon War would end with Arnor successfully conquering and holding the Stepstones including Tyrosh, while the storyline of Turin and his army getting destroyed would be moved to let’s say Lys since Arnor has irredentist desires on Lys also. (And yes I’d keep the Turin plotline with Jaenara Belaerys too. Jaenara is still a child of the last pure Numenorean slave in Valyria though her father and family are also showing those Numenorean gifts, hers is to a greater extent. Also Turin’s father is now Arador, grandfather of Aragorn II)

Valyria throws its armies and dragons across the sea and in the Stepstones for years but fails to make inroads into Westeros and they cannot reclaim the Stepstones. At the same time however the Arnorian attempt to create a truly ambitious Essosi empire has utterly failed as well leaving the Narrow Sea as a tense battleground.

In the aftermath of that war, Valyria would clamp down on rebellions in Essos from the Ghiscari (finally and utterly destroying them), resettle the Rhoynar ruins and purge Garin the Great’s curse (as they now seek to maximize the potential of the lands they have.) They would also found a military outpost where Braavos canonically was in preparation for the next war, while tightening their control over subject vassal lands in Sarnor and Qarth, bringing all of Essos east of the Bone Mountains under their vassalage.

For its part, Arnor would further its technological and magical progression to truly Lost Road steampunk levels while Valyria would further its blood magic, creating the Glaurungs (of which there are more of this time though they cut down on the Valyrian steel armor part) and readying to unleash hordes of Gogossos monstrosities (which they are now willing to use compared to the First War where they hesitated and took too long to decide due to overconfidence)

Eventually we would come to the Second Dragon War a hundred and fifty or so years after the First. Due to their long lives, it is the same leaders of Valyria as last time, helping continuity. People like Jaenara’s brother for example. On the other hand, Aragorn II would have been born to Arathorn II, Turin’s older brother in this Land of the King.

Valyria would still pull its Dagor Bragollach in this alternate timeline by invading Arnor across the Narrow Sea, faking a push at the Stepstones to make Arnor concentrate its armies south before striking them in the Vale, Stormlands, Crownlands, etc. It would be a titanic invasion of Westeros and a long exhausting war as Arnor fights for survival using airships and cannons but also still their traditional weapons such as steelbows and swords in a rather Warhammer or MCU Asgardian style.

Eventually Valyria will successfully conquer the Stepstones and seize Dorne as a solid foothold, pushing Arnor back and ravaging its heartlands, with dragons raiding even as far as Arnor’s capital of Annuminas. Still the Arnorians fight onwards to the very end, the Valyrians begin to lose steam and are severely overextended, they suffer critical defeats in a number of battles and are slowly pushed back.

And then the Doom comes. With the heartland annihilated, Valyria’s war effort collapses. Essos would descend into anarchy as slaves and vassals revolt and the Dothraki start ravaging faraway Sarnor. The Valyrian dragonlords outside of Valyria waging war begin to infight or attempt to carve up Essos.

Still in this timeline, with Valyria more spread out from the peninsula due to having a peer, its empire’s decline is slower and eventually Arnor, under Aragorn II’s leadership, would push into Essos to destroy the last dragonlords and bloodmages.

With the remnants of the Freehold and Essos in a wreckage, once Arnor recovers from the terrors of the Second Dragon War and defeats Valyria’s remnants in a Third Dragon War, it would have no rival to its ascendancy and would eventually spread across the world to forge an empire upon which the sun never sets.

I think that this plotline, while far more ambitious than the original (and that’s saying a lot) has a more cohesive overarching plan and more realistic climax that’s more original to the story than being a ripoff of Martin and Tolkien entirely. Though it being so ambitious and markedly different to both LOTR and ASOIAF may have also been its downfall as it entered the uncanny valley and lost popularity as a result due to failing to appeal to people. Still it’s ultimately just a fun thought exercise that’s unlikely to ever really materialize.

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Lastly, I would like to answer a question I never did in the story. What happened to Middle-Earth without the Nine Ships?

I imagine without Elendil or his sons, the Lords of Dor-en-Ernil (kin of Elendil who he named Prince of Belfalas and later became Prince of Dol Amroth) would ally by marriage with the leaders of Pelargir and unite the lands that would become Gondor under their Faithful rule as the Kingdom of Pelargir.

In the north, the Numenoreans in Eriador would just pledge to Gil-Galad and recreate the First Age with (Dun)Edain sworn to a Noldor High King, while south of Pelargir, the King’s Men colonies would rally to Umbar (OTL they lost most of their Numenoreans fighting in the Last Alliance so a Kingdom of Umbar that was effectively a third Realm-in-Exile did indeed have a chance to form).

I don’t know how the War of the Last Alliance would go without Elendil. Badly I think, Elendil was quite an important unifying figure to the Dunedain and a legendary warrior that helped kill Sauron.

Who knows though maybe Eru intervened to properly kill Sauron or maybe Eru disappearing the Nine Ships made the Valar send Eonwe to kill Sauron? In that case we can just have a fun Noldor-Numenorean Kingdom of Eriador just chilling in the north and then Numenorean Kings of Pelargir and Umbar duking it out in the south for supremacy.

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Anyway if you have stayed this long to read to the end of this very long and probably badly organized essay of mine, thank you once again for reading my story and I hope this epilogue essay was entertaining to you to read at the very least. This will be my final goodbye to LOTK.