Have Island, Will Rebel - Page 7

The initial efforts to colonize Middle-earth, therefore, may have resulted from the various noble families sending younger sons over Sea, funding expeditions. The potential for dissension among Numenor's wealthier families would thus have been reduced, and the Kings would have retained considerable power and influence because there would be less competition for their patronage over the essential guilds. It may be that economic power coincided with political power in Numenor because political power would depend on economic power. The effect of the Numenorean colonization policies from Second Age 1200 onward would thus be to preserve the royal power and prevent the absolute dilution of royal prerogatives. Capetian France all but disintegrated the royal power because the kings had to continually bestow lands upon their supporters in order to retain their loyalty. The kings ended up with less land and economic power than many of their great magnates, who were themselves as powerful and influential as the kings, or more so. By the late 1100s, the so-called Angevin Empire allowed the Kings of England to directly govern about half of France because they were also the Dukes of Normandy and Henry II married Elanor of Aquitaine. Assorted other, smaller regions of France had been collected by the family over the generations, including Anjou, from which Historians adapted the phrase "Angevin Empire". Numenor must therefore have produced an immense surplus population through the centuries, and the Kings allowed or encouraged the adventurous people to sail to Middle-earth. The early colonists may have been led by lords whose families were paying for the ships and supplies required to establish the colonies. In return, the families may have set up special trade routes whereby they retained exclusive control over traffic between their colonies and the homelands. By finding opportunities in Middle-earth for younger sons, the families avoided the necessity of breaking up their lands. Nothing like feudalism should ever have developed in Numenor, especially since the kingdom had no enemies which required strong local defense. Royal prerogatives outside of the maintenance of Vinyamar, the haven founded by Aldarion, must have been extremely few overseas until the Numenoreans began to see how powerful they were in the War of the Elves and Sauron (1695-1701). From the period 1800 onward the Numenoreans began to conquer large territories in Middle-earth. But who commissioned the armies and authorized the conquests? The answer must be the kings themselves. If their contemporary aristocracy were breaking new lands in Middle-earth peacefully, the kings must have realized that they were gradually being overtaken by their peers in wealth and prestige. What better way to reassert royal prerogatives than by commissioning military expeditions and wars of conquest? The younger sons of the noble families would be recruited into the navy and army and would serve the kings, not their families. The families might actually have welcomed or even encouraged the change in policy as the conflicts with Sauron would have made the breaking of new lands more difficult. So competition for opportunity in Middle-earth between sons coming from Numenor and sons born in Middle-earth would have arisen. Now the Numenoreans would advance into Middle-earth as liberators and defenders of their colonies, but in reality the Kings might have been setting limits to the expansion of the autonomous nobles. The Kings must have controlled the core guilds in Numenor, so they could decide whose armies were equipped and whose fleets were built.