#also by force of will i didn't talk about fourth age gondorian imperialism but speaking of :(

[anghraine]

I remember being surprised when I first read LOTR in high school and discovered that Faramir “only” lives to the age of 120. Despite his Númenóreanness and the emphasis it gets in the text, there are actually a couple of Ruling Stewards who lived as long or longer—the Steward Hador remains the longest-lived of the Ruling Stewards with a lifespan of 150 years.

But the older I get, the more the concept of Faramir living to 150 seems like it would be more of a curse than a blessing.

Okay, I hate math and I’m bad at it, so maybe I got some numbers wrong, but:

Tolkien nowhere suggests that Éowyn shares Éomer’s (relatively) long life of 93 years. But if she did live that long, Faramir would survive her by more than ten years. If she has a more typical lifespan of 80 years, Faramir would outlive her by more than twenty years. If Faramir lived as long as Hador, it would be more than fifty years.

On top of that, Tolkien is pretty clear that the lifespans of the Dúnedain were not renewed and would continue to dwindle. In Gondor, Denethor and Faramir are special exceptions to the general trend. So it strikes me as pretty likely that Faramir and Éowyn’s children would have shorter lifespans than Faramir’s—at most, theirs would probably be in line with the later Stewards, so maybe late 90s. Quite possibly shorter. Even in canon, it’s possible for Faramir to have a child who dies of old age before he does himself. Give him another 30 years and it’s a certainty.

As it is, Faramir outlives his brother-in-law Éomer, King of Rohan (eight years his junior) by some 19 years. He outlives his cousin Elphir, Prince of Dol Amroth (four years his junior) by 15 years, and Elphir’s son is only 13 years from his own death when Faramir dies. We don’t know the death dates of Elphir’s siblings, Erchirion, Amrothos, and Lothíriel, but it’s certainly possible (even probable) that Faramir also outlived one or more of them, given the usual lifespans of the House of Dol Amroth.

That’s in canon. If he then lived for 30 more years ... :(

So these days, I do think 120 years works well: it’s long enough to reflect Faramir’s peculiarities (and to add an appropriately bittersweet tang to things), but not so long that it starts to seem cruel.