Editor’s Note: The following article contains spoilers for The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Episode 3 and Middle-earth Lore.As the focus ofEpisode 3ofThe Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Powershifted from the continent of Middle-earth to the island of Númenor, audiences were introduced to a brand new set of characters: some new, and some familiar to fans ofThe Lord of the Ringsbooks and films. The ancestors of Aragorn, Isildur (Maxim Baldry) andElendil(Lloyd Owen), were shown onscreen for the first time in the series, as well as a new character named Eӓrien (Ema Horvath), Elendil’s daughter, and Númenor’s Queen Regent Míriel (Cynthia Addai-Robinson). Another character introduced in the episode, though, is one who is likely to prove significant (and problematic) for a long time to come: the Chancellor, Pharazôn (Trystan Gravelle).
While he only appeared briefly, Pharazôn clearly seemed to have some weight of authority behind him, and was able to decide what to do with Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) and Halbrand (Charlie Vickers) during their stay on the island. But who is he, really? How did he come to this position, and why does he have so much influence?
To answer the question, we have to go back to the earlier years of Númenorean history. At the opening of Episode 3, Míriel is Queen Regent, buther father, Tar-Palantir, is still alive and technically the king. Tar-Palantir is the 24th king of Númenor, and the reason he has been shunned by his own people is because he was a supporter of the Faithful: a minority of the Númenorean population who still remained faithful to the Elves and Valar despite the growing wave of resentment against them by the rest of the population.
Opposing the Faithful was the majority group that came to be known as the King’s Men, who were distrustful of the Elves and Valar, and eventually openly hostile to both. They came to be called the King’s Men due to the fact that they were favored by the kings of Númenor from the 14th king (Tar-Ancalimon) onward. The 23rd king, Ar-Gimilzôr, was the most openly hostile to the Faithful, but his son, Tar-Palantir, took after his mother and supported the Faithful instead.
Pharazôn Is as Anti-Elf as It Gets
Where Pharazôn comes into the picture is that he is the son of Tar-Palantir’s younger brother, Gimilkhâd. While Ar-Gimilzôr wanted his younger son to succeed to the throne, he could not manage to achieve that; Gimilkhâd was much more like his father than his brother, and Gimilkhâd’s son, Pharazôn, was in much the same mold as his father and grandfather. This means that, in terms of bloodlines, Pharazôn is the nephew of the king and the cousin of the Queen Regent.
At first, though, Pharazôn proved to be efficient, charismatic, and even generous. He was even once good friends with Amandil, the father of Elendil, who was one of the Faithful — even though Pharazôn himself came to be one of the leaders of the King’s Men. The aspect of his history that makes things complicated is that the time compression going on in the TV series makes it unclear what point in his life Pharazôn has reached when we finally meet him. What he does accomplish in his life, though, is significant (if also disastrous).
As a younger man Pharazôn won distinction as a great commander and leader with significant battlefield accomplishments in Middle-earth. But while he was away, his own father had died, strangely young for a Númenorean, and this further sparked Pharazôn’s resentfulness of the immortality of the Elves and Valar, which only grew as he himself grew older.
When he returned to Númenor, however, he was very generous with the wealth he had acquired in Middle-earth, and gained a very loyal public following, especially as he stood firmly against Tar-Palantir’s unpopular support of the Faithful. It was only when Tar-Palantir died, however, that Pharazôn’s ambition drove him to ultimately destructive folly.
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When Tar-Palantir died, Pharazôn used his power and influence to force Míriel into a marriage with him, even though she was his cousin, which was forbidden by Númenorean law. Nonetheless, they were married and Pharazôn usurped the throne, taking the name of Ar-Pharazôn “The Golden” and rejecting the tradition of taking a royal name in Quenya (the language of the Elves).
When he later heard ofSauron’s machinations in Middle-earth, he set out to destroy Sauron’s forces and win for himself not so much a kingship as an empire. This he did, after a fashion. He defeated and humiliated Sauron’s forces in battle, and took Sauron himself back to Númenor. What he failed to see, though, was that this played directly into Sauron’s hands.
Sauron gradually came to be trusted by Ar-Pharazôn, and through Sauron’s influence and his own insecurity, he began to fear more and more his impending death and the restraints of his mortality. As a result, he became even more distrustful and vindictive towards the Faithful, and Sauron’s influence seeped into the Númenoreans themselves, perverting their religion and sowing distrust about the Valar. Ar-Pharazôn began toworship Morgoth himself, offering human sacrifices (often from among the Faithful) at the Númenorean temple on their holy mountain, the Meneltarma, in hopes that he might be granted immortality. He even, near the end, cut down the White Tree of Númenor on Sauron’s advice.
Pharazôn Eventually Wages War Against the Valar and Valinor
In spite of his best efforts, Ar-Pharazôn gradually grew older and older, until in his desperation, he came to believe that the Valar were hoarding their power of immortality in Valinor and that he would become immortal if he were to make war upon the Valar and take over their lands. As a consequence, he raised a mighty fleet to take on the Powers and carried on in spite of all the foreboding warnings seen in the skies above Númenor. The Númenoreans were forbidden by the Valar to ever set foot in Valinor, but Ar-Pharazôn challenged this ban, sailing westward to make war on the lands of the Valar.
At the last moment, apparently, he almost stopped, but his misgivings gave way to his pride, and he landed in the Blessed Realm. At this point the creator deity of the world, Eru himself, reshaped the world and separated the Undying lands from the rest of the world forever, reshaping the flat world and making it round. A great chasm opened up and swallowed Ar-Pharazôn’s fleet, and Númenor itself sank beneath the waves, as a sort of reflection of the Atlantis story in Tolkien’s world. Ar-Pharazôn himself was buried in the earth by this catastrophic reshaping of the world, and there met his end.
The question of how much of this story could be fulfilled onscreen is yet to be answered, and Tolkien’s notes are full of possibilities and variant versions of the events: in some versions, Míriel is even supportive of Ar-Pharazôn, and joins in with his destructive hubris. Their characters are yet to be fully revealed, and the events themselves may be reshaped in the course of the series, but one thing, at least, is clear after Episode 3: the great impact that Ar-Pharazôn has on Númenor is clearly only beginning.
