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The Men Who Would Be Steward

© Michael Martinez

Guardianship is the mark of the Stewards of Gondor. They are guardians, wardens, keeping an ancient trust placed in their hands by a family of kings which, at the end of the Third Age, no longer exists. Gondor's Ruling Stewards are a curious example of how authority combined with tradition can produce a subtle irony in power and position. The Elvish word for "steward" is Arandur, "King's servant". The name implies that the Stewards began their long career as something less than government officials. They may have been the personal servants of Gondor's early kings. At some point in Gondor's history, the Aranduri may have assumed special duties which led to their elevation in station and authority. Eventually, they succeeded to the royal authority of the kings, although they never displaced the House of Elendil in Gondor's formal government. Some people have observed a parallel between Gondor's history and the history of early medieval France. The Major Domos of early Frankish dynasties eventually displaced the kings and assumed royal authority. Charles Martel, renowned as the Major Domo who defeated the Moors in southern France, founded a new dynasty. But the problem with comparing the Frankish Major Domos to Tolkien's Ruling Stewards is that it their history provides a Frankish model. Tolkien was not very fond of France, or of French words. In fact, few of the important titles or names in The Lord of the Rings are derived from French words. For example, the term Major Domo is usually translated as "Mayor of the Palace" by historians discussing the Pepinid dynasty (Charles Martel is believed by some people to have been descended from Pepin of Landen, who became the Mayor of the Palace in Metz under King Chlotar II of Neustria). The Frankish Major Domos were in some ways like Tolkien's stewards, in that they governed Frankish nations in the names of their kings, but the Major Domos eventually became kings. They were powerful men who controlled money, armies, and royal appointments. The kings who appointed the Major Domos had very little real power. It proved to be only a matter of time before the Pepinids replaced the descendants of Clovis as rulers of the Franks. Tolkien uses nothing like "mayor of the palace" or "major domo" in Middle-earth. The Mayor of Michel Delving is about the only example of an official whose title derives from a French title. The term "Steward", on the other hand, is a good, old-fashioned Anglo-Saxon word for "sty warden", the guardian of the animal compound. How a beast-keeper should rise to become an important royal officer (and eventually King of Scotland, as in the royal Stewart/Stuart family) is an interesting bit of history.

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