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Of Thegns and Kings and Rangers and Things - Page 10

© Michael Martinez

So, instead of appropriating the royal authority for themselves the Shire chieftains (most likely the clan or family leaders) acted to preserve the royal authority. They expected, or hoped for, the return of the king. Aranarth was the rightful king, and the Thain was elected in 1979, four years after Aranarth took the title of Chieftain of the Dunedain. The Thainship must therefore have been appointed to the Shire-folk by Aranarth. In essence, he established a feudal relationship with them. They continued to recognize his royal authority, but they also enacted a practical measure for their own defense, which the Dunedain were no longer able to provide for directly. Tolkien doesn't tell us when Aranarth's people settled in the Angle. It may have been generations before they migrated to that region, and their purpose in doing so is not entirely clear. But what is clear is that Aranarth (or one of his descendants_ established the Rangers as a special service to maintain the authority of the king throughout Eriador. Bree and Tharbad may have had similar local military offices which were eventually lost, either as the populations of those regions diminished, or as the Rangers gradually cleared Eriador of most of its evil intruders. Technically, Arnor ceased to function as a kingdom or nation. There was no king to govern the people or to act on their behalf in dealing with other nations. But the last rightful king bequeathed to his heirs the authority over all military forces in Eriador, as well as the claim to nobility and royal prerogatives. The kingship became dormant, passing into a sort of regency under which the rightful heirs of the kings acted as their own regents. However, the symbols of Arnor's kings, the Sceptre of Annumninas and the Star of Elendil, were given to Elrond. Elrond was therefore appointed the trustee of the royal authority of Arnor, holding its emblems in escrow until such time as an Heir of Isildur proved able to reestablish the kingdom. Rather than dissolve Arnor and divest himself of the kingship, Aranarth simply created a public trust to hold the kingdom in perpetual abeyance. Everyone recognized that the kingdom of Arnor still existed, but only in a legal state of suspension. In this way Arnor's surviving peoples became autonomous but remained subjects of the crown. And yet Tolkien writes that "after Arvedui the North-kingdom ended". That is, the North-kingdom ceased to exist as a state, and it neither enforced its laws nor enacted new ones. But some of its institutions survived, or were preserved through inheritance by new institutions.

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