The two Númenórean chapters take place forty-four years after the arrival of Sauron (now so named) in Númenor. Elendil (replacing Amroth) is the leader of a party faithful to the old ways and beliefs, while his son, Herendil, has been half won over to the opinion of those supporting Sauron. The kings of Númenor are now descended from Eärendel, and the last king, Tarkalion, in his pride, summons Sauron to Númenor, demanding homage from him. Elendil, who is trying to persuade Herendil to his own point of view, says that men now covet the lands of others, influenced by Sauron; they build metal-clad ships, strong fortresses, and many weapons. Those who displease the king disappear, and there are spies, prisons, torments, and evil rites. Sauron has built a temple to Morgoth on the mountain holy to Ilúvatar, and is encouraging the Númenóreans to abandon the Elvish Eressëan language and revive the ancestral speech of Men. Elendil foresees that Sauron will encourage the ageing king to invade Valinor in a useless bid for immortality. He asks his son to choose between his father and Sauron, and with Herendils choice for his father the narrative ends.
The picture Tolkien draws of Númenor under the influence of Sauron, a once great nation in decay, almost certainly owes something to then-current events in Nazi Germany. Christopher Tolkien comments:
From Elendils words at the end of The Lost Road there emerges a sinister picture: the withdrawal of the besotted and aging king from the public view, the unexpected disappearance of people unpopular with the government, informers, prisons, torture, secrecy, fear of the night; propaganda in the form of the rewriting of history ; the multiplication of weapons of war, the purpose of which is concealed but guessed at; and behind all the dreadful figure of Sauron . Moreover, Númenor is seen by the young as over-populous, boring, over-known ; and this cause of discontent is used, it seems, by Sauron to further the policy of imperial expansion and ambition that he presses on the king. When at this time my father reached back to the world of the first man to bear the name Elf-friend he found there an image of what he most condemned and feared in his own. [The Lost Road and Other Writings, p. 77]
The second version of The Fall of Númenor probably followed, or was contemporary with, the writing of The Lost Road, for it includes details introduced in that work. Elrond, son of Eärendel, is now named as the first ruler of Númenor. The Númenóreans adopt the speech of the Elves of the Blessed Realm and Tol Eressëa. Elendil, who escapes the downfall, becomes a king in Beleriand and allies with Gil-galad, the Elf-king, against Sauron, whose stronghold, Mordor, is now named. Although Sauron is overthrown, both Elendil and Gil-galad are slain. A later addition states that Tol Eressëa as well as Valinor is removed from the world.
On 15 November 1937 Tolkien submitted the unfinished manuscript of the *Quenta Silmarillion to George Allen & Unwin (*Publishers). In the following month, while the work was being considered, he leaped ahead in it and wrote an account of the end of the First Age which includes information relevant to the story of Númenor. Eärendel now has two sons who are allowed by Manwë to choose freely whether to be accounted among the immortal Elves or mortal Mankind. One son, Elrond, chooses to be of Elf-kind but remains in Middle-earth rather than accompany the Elves returning into the West; but the other, Elros, chooses the fate of Men. At some time after this, in an amanuensis typescript of the second version of The Fall of Númenor, Tolkien substituted Elros for Elrond as the first king of that realm.
THE LORD OF THE RINGS
Further developments in the Númenor story occurred intermittently during the writing of The Lord of the Rings as it began to play an increasingly important role in the internal history of that work, and finally as an essential strand. Tolkien began to write The Lord of the Rings in December 1937, but it was some time before he developed the Necromancer of The Hobbit into the maker of the One Ring Sauron, the servant of Melkor in the First Age, who was responsible for the destruction of Númenor near the end of the Second. It was not until late summer and early autumn 1938 that relevant allusions began to appear in the text: Trotter (the precursor of Aragorn) remarks of land the company is passing through that evil people once lived there, who came under the sway of the Dark Lord. It is said that they were overthrown by Elendil, as King of Western Men, who aided Gilgalad, when they made war on the Dark Lord (*The Return of the Shadow, pp. 1923). The idea emerged that Bilbos ring is more powerful than other rings, and that it was taken from the Lord [Sauron] himself when Gilgalad wrestled with him, and taken by a flying Elf (The Return of the Shadow, p. 226). The flying Elf was soon replaced by Isildur, son of Elendil, who cuts the One Ring from Saurons hand but then loses it in the river Anduin when he is attacked. Tolkien also considered making the Rangers the last remnant of the kingly people from beyond the Seas (The Return of the Shadow, p. 331).
In autumn 1939 the Númenórean realms in exile began to emerge with the mention of Ond (later Ondor > Gondor) in early versions of the Council of Elrond (bk. II, ch. 2). Trotter becomes a man rather than a hobbit, described in Gandalfs letter to Frodo as Aragorn son of Celegorn, of the line of Isildur Elendils son (*The Treason of Isengard, p. 50). Eventually Aragorn becomes the last descendant of Elendil and the rightful heir to the realms Elendil founded. Tolkien tried out several ideas for the establishment and early history of these realms before he was satisfied. The story that eventually emerged was that Elendil the Tall and his sons Isildur and Anárion sailed first to the North, where they were befriended by Gilgalad and Elendil established the kingdom of Arnor. His sons then sailed south and founded the realm of Gondor, close to Mordor. When Sauron attacks and takes Isildurs city, Minas Ithil, Isildur joins his father in the North, and Elendil and Gilgalad form the Last Alliance against Sauron.
THE NOTION CLUB PAPERS AND THE DROWNING OF ANADÛNÊ
During Christmas vacation 1945 and the first half of 1946, with The Lord of the Rings still unfinished, Tolkien began to transform some of the material from The Lost Road into a new work, The Notion Club Papers, again involving time-travel and the final days of Númenor. As part of this work he also wrote *The Drowning of Anadûnê, a new account of The Fall of Númenor. Apparently it was only after completing the first part of The Notion Club Papers that he decided that the second part should deal with Númenor, writing a note: Do the Atlantis story and abandon Eriol-Saga (*Sauron Defeated, p. 281).
In the second part of The Notion Club Papers, two members of the titular society, Alwin Arundel Lowdham and Wilfrid Trewyn Jeremy, evidently having inherited memories from remote ancestors, have experiences like those of Alboin Errol in The Lost Road. Both are stirred by the name Éarendel, both dream of hearing fragments of strange languages (Quenya and Sindarin) or of seeing manuscripts written in strange scripts, and report these at meetings of the Club. Lowdham remembers that his father kept a diary in a strange script, and that after his fathers disappearance in his boat Éarendel Star he found a sheet in the same script but could not decipher it. During one meeting, a thunderstorm rages outside, and both Lowdham and Jeremy seem to have a vision of, or to experience, the destruction of Númenor. They cry out:
The ships have set sail at last . Behold, the mountain smokes and the earth trembles! Woe to this time and the fell counsels of Sauron! Tarkalion hath set forth his might against the Lords of the West . The Lords have spoken to the Maker and the fate of the world is overturned . The ships of the Númenóreans are drowned in the abyss. They are lost for ever. See now the eagles of the Lords overshadow Númenor. The mountain goes up to heaven in flame and vapour; the hills totter, slide, and crumble: the land founders. The glory has gone down into the deep waters. [p. 251, emended from notes 634, p. 290]
The ships have set sail at last . Behold, the mountain smokes and the earth trembles! Woe to this time and the fell counsels of Sauron! Tarkalion hath set forth his might against the Lords of the West . The Lords have spoken to the Maker and the fate of the world is overturned . The ships of the Númenóreans are drowned in the abyss. They are lost for ever. See now the eagles of the Lords overshadow Númenor. The mountain goes up to heaven in flame and vapour; the hills totter, slide, and crumble: the land founders. The glory has gone down into the deep waters. [p. 251, emended from notes 634, p. 290]
Lowdham addresses Jeremy as Voronwë, and Jeremy addresses Lowdham as Elendil. Both rush into the freak storm and do not return for some months. Then they begin to tell of their travels round the western coasts of Britain and Ireland, and of a shared dream in which they were in tenth-century England, Lowdham as the minstrel Ælfwine, Jeremy as Tréowine from the Marches.
Tolkien abandoned The Notion Club Papers with this account only partly told. Only a few notes and fragments indicate how the story might have continued. One note suggests that Tréowine and Ælfwine were to sail west, find the Straight Road, see the round world below, then be driven back. Another has sojourn in Númenor before and during the fall ends with Elendil and Voronwë fleeing on a hill of water into the dark with the Eagles and lightning pursuing them, and at the end Lowdham and Jeremy have a vivid dream of the Fall of Númenor (p. 279).
In association with The Notion Club Papers Tolkien wrote a new account of the fall of Númenor, The Drowning of Anadûnê. This differs significantly from The Fall of Númenor, which had ended with the words: And here endeth the tale of the ancient world as it is known to the Elves (The Lost Road and Other Writings, p. 29). There is no reason to doubt that when Tolkien wrote those words he intended that the Elves knowledge of the world and its history, deriving from the Valar and their own experiences, should reflect what actually occurred. Nothing is said about if, and how, this Elvish tradition was passed on to Men. The Drowning of Anadûnê is intended to show how events in the First Age and the history of Númenor might have been remembered in the traditions of Men after being passed down through many generations: filtered, changed, distorted, and with much forgotten. But this was also a time when Tolkien began to doubt whether he should include in his mythology elements contrary to scientific knowledge, such as a flat world made round, and considered whether to make fundamental changes, or alternatively, changes in perception and knowledge, even writing a version of the *Ainulindalë in which the world was round from Creation. In The Fall of Númenor a flat world is made round at the time of the Downfall, but in The Drowning of Anadûnê the world was always round.