Second Age

They settled in what we know as Harad, and built settlements and lives away from the melting pot of First Age Beleriand.

We next encountered them in the Second Age, when the Numenoreans started to explore eastwards, away from their island continent.

The Numenoreans had, of course, been banned from sailing too far west, so heading east was obvious.

They landed on the coast of Harad and started to engage with the people that they found there.

The ethnicity of the Haradrim is thus, like in Gondor, a mix of humans who had stayed in Middle-earth and those who had been Numenoreans.

For all the talk of the nobility of the heritage of Aragorn or Denethor, there will have been those with similar ancestry in Harad.

Of course, Sauron fell at the end of the Second Age, but old alliances and enmities held strong, and for most of the Third Age, Harad was in some kind of conflict with Gondor.

Gondor invaded a couple of times, holding the port city of Umbar for several centuries, and in return, the Haradrim and the Corsairs of Umbar, a piratical raiding civilisation that had grown up around the port of Umbar, attacked and raided Gondor.

Like he's what he's got to do is show up.

give of himself and return goodness that he sees back to the people he comes into contact with, try and change them for the better, and sort of get them on side to become a kind of fellowship against Sauron in the Second Age.

Yeah, and it's a true cautionary tale.

We need to learn from these people.

It's cool.

So just from the first age to the second age, how do we see him evolve in his horrific elements?

Yeah, so the second and third age, Sauron sort of takes over as the big bad.

So first age, Morgoth is defeated.

And as he does, he starts to like slowly build up his army.

So if you watch season one and two of rings of power, um, it's sort of doing that where Sauron's trying to rebuild himself and his armies.

Um, And he eventually is able to manipulate the people of Numenor, where Sauron actually has not ruled anything yet in the Second Age.

And I won't give any spoilers for the show or the Silmarillion, but Sauron basically is unable to rule as he wants to.

Akalabeth is...

It's not all we have of the Second Age, like the period between the Silmarillion and... uh the main narrative of of lord of the rings but it's like the big outline of it okay okay um and yeah the the the handful of of named characters toward the end of this that you recognize from lord of the rings are going to be be like prominently featured in that section all right cool

i'm pumped yeah Nobody will move me like Melkor, a.k.a. Morgath, though, I don't think.

Morgoth.

Andoril is named after the sword that defeats Sauron before the beginning of the Fellowship of the Ring.

It's something that happens at the end of the First Age, before the Second Age, which is the age that comes before the Third Age, which is the one that the Lord of the Rings takes place at the end of.

Anyway, this is the sword that breaks, and it gets reforged, and it is made into Andoril, the sword that Aragorn wields throughout The war.

And so, yeah, it's a Tolkien reference.

It could have been.

The good news is, despite the fact that this takes place in the Second Age and we are in sort of the prime era of Numenor, we don't have to say too many Numenorean names.

Like, I would say the most complex one at the moment is Aearian, the daughter of Elendil.

Yeah, it was so important.

So it is one of those things where the setup of Numenore... feels like it's a little too early.

It's sort of, they're combining different elements that maybe aren't in the textual histories.

But if you've ever visited the Wikipedia page for The Second Age, you know that Numenor has a huge role to play here and that its story is sort of central to everything that's going on.

So it's like, all right, well, this feels like it'll be important for season four.