#given that faramir lived to 120

[sesamenom]

fun fact! we actually do have concrete ages for a lot of people (from a combination of appendices and NoME sun year conversions) at the point of the Quest of the Ring:

[edit: i am tired and misread the original post - take this as the Assorted Apocrypha version]

Gandalf: 54,960 Sun Years Aragorn: 88 Legolas: ~2000 (exact birthdate unknown) Gimli: 140

Frodo: 51 Sam: 39 Merry: 37 Pippin: 29

Boromir: 41

Based on average lifespans we can translate these ages to Human Age (to make it easier to compare them):

Gandalf: ∞ Aragorn: 31 Legolas: 25-ish?? Gimli: 39

Frodo: 40 Sam: 31 Merry: 29 Pippin: 22 (by lifespan percentage) OR 17 (by age of majority)

Boromir: 25

so (unless he's lying on the genealogical records) boromir is not quite the youngest member of the fellowship, but he's certainly close!

The Fellowship gets on the topic of their ages one night and Boromir comes to the dawning realization that he has absolutely no idea how old any of his companions are supposed to be at all

[torchwood-99]

I was thinking back about your posts on Aragorn and Arwen's deaths, and I wondered: what if, given his Númenorean lineage, Faramir did decide that his life had been enough, a little like Aragorn? It would be for different reasons: for example because it's been years without Éowyn, and he knows Ithilien is in good hands with his children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and he's got nothing left to do that his family can't do

I can imagine Faramir too would make a decision like Aragorn did. There is a big difference in that even if he had not probably outlived Eowyn, Eowyn was not an elf and could not perish of despair like Arwen did. Despair could drive Eowyn to seek death, but it wasn't an outright death sentence like it was for Arwen. Plus, Arwen's people had mostly left Middle Earth by this point, whereas Eowyn's people remained. Losing Faramir would not have left Eowyn rootless as it would have Aragorn.

Also, we hear of Eowyn's plans and hopes for her life after the war. She speaks of her own purpose and goals, which means she has an existence and a purpose beyond Faramir. Arwen we never know of having a purpose, a reason to live, beyond Aragorn. She spends many years in waiting for Aragorn to reclaim his crown, and we never know what she did before that, just that she travelled between Rivendell and Lothlorien.

Galadriel ruled Lothlorien and pulled down walls. Elrond was a great healer and ruled the Homely House. Her brothers were warriors. For all that she was thousands of years old, there is no suggestion that Arwen did anything. After meeting Aragorn and intending to become his queen, she continued to hide out at Rivendell, doing nothing to learn of the people she hoped to one day rule. And after she got married, we don't really get a indication she did much as queen either.

Whereas we could do a generous reading and say that she probably did something, aside from weaving Aragorn a banner, even if Tolkien chose not to include it, the fact Arwen gave up and died, and died alone in the remains of Elven land, does seem to indicate that she had little existence beyond Aragorn, not just as a character, but as an individual.

Crucially, Arwen did not want to die. Arwen still had not wearied of life. When she knew Aragorn meant to die, she begged him not to, and considering how elves could fade from sorrow, her begging Aragorn not let himself die, could also be read as Arwen begging Aragorn not to let her die too, not when she still had a wish to live.

But both narratively and in-universe, Aragorn was Arwen's purpose for living. When Aragorn chose death for himself, he pretty much chose it for Arwen, because Arwen had no function without Aragorn.

I don't think would have been quite the case for Eowyn. Eowyn falls in love with Faramir and this saves her from the despair she had been feeling, but when she returns Faramir's love, she speaks mainly of how she no longer wishes for war, no longer centres her existence around finding, now wishes to heal things and fix the land and love everything that grows. Her love for Faramir is referenced by her admitting she no longer wants to be queen (as a counterpoint, Arwen only falls for Aragorn when she sees him as a kingly being, and it's made clear that for one of her lineage, nothing less than a mortal king would do.)

Both Arwen and Eowyn found purpose and a reason to live through their love for a man, but whereas Arwen's purpose was her man, Eowyn's love for Faramir and Faramir's love for Eowyn did what love is meant to do. It gave her renewed hope, it rejuvenated her, gave her energy and support, so that she was able to look at the world around her in its entirety and think what she wished to do in it.

Aside from this, Faramir lived to 120, and Eowyn probably didn't live that long. Eomer died in his nineties. However, I wouldn't be surprised if Eowyn did live to her hundreds (to have died in the same year as Faramir, she would have needed to be 108 when she died). She had some Numenorean blood, and women live longer than men, so it is not improbable.

Also, if Faramir would have had the ability to lie down and die as Aragorn did, I don't think that, after having lived a full life with Eowyn, he would have necessarily wanted to cling on for many years without her. He would not have died of grief, so much as a readiness to move on.

Aragorn's peaceful acceptance of death is treated by Tolkien as "the correct" attitude to have, and as Faramir is treated as something of a paragon, and the character most like Tolkien, it's hard not to imagine Faramir would have chosen to die at the end of his life with a similar sense of peace and trust. I think he would have stayed longer to comfort his children and grandchildren, see them prepared to rule Ithilien, then passed on as Aragorn did, taking hope that he and Eowyn would be reunited.

[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.

[morwensteelsheen]

@khokali replied to this post:

Faramirs life sounds like a study in abject misery tbh. Maybe it is genetic.

yeah, absolutely!!!! i think it’s really easy to focus on boromir as the ultimate tragic figure (and he is, of course, and the terrible extent of his tragedy really can’t be overstated), but there’s so much to be said for faramir as this tragic hero too.

like there’s the easy stuff about him outliving everybody he loves; in the book he obviously outlives his entire nuclear family, but if he lives to 120, he’s definitely outliving éowyn, maybe even a couple of their kids. by the time he dies it’s very likely that the only people around him who remember the war are aragorn and arwen — maybe some of the younger dol amroth brood are still kicking, but who knows. 

but then there’s faramir’s kind of brutal self/situational awareness. he’s the one that gets the imladris dream (multiple times), and seems to be pretty embittered about not having been chosen to go on that particular quest, which no doubt brings its own kind of misery especially after boromir’s death. then there’re the awful implications of him being aware of everything being a bit Shit. like yeah, cool that aragorn’s around and the king has returned, which seems to be the shit he’s into, but is it really? like once you live past the sheen of the heir of elendil, what does that actually look like in practice? and not in GRRM’s dumbass “tax policy” way, as in, what of faramir’s numerous critiques of gondor would actually improve with a king at its helm? from what little context we’re given — not much! there’s still war, war that actually seems reasonably unnecessary. and faramir, who is bitching about that sort of thing when he’s 36 (and probably younger, lbr) is going to have to keep bitching about it at 56, and 76, and 96, etc etc like god, talk about some cassandra-level tragedy.  

lmao i am making myself so sad about this!!! why couldn’t jrrt have done some wacky elfy shit and said that éowyn lived to 108 or whatever so i dont have to think about faramir outliving her by so many years!! fuck!

[fangirl-erdariel]

Good point!

However, in the appendices of the book, where the reigns of the Stewards of Gondor are described, it's mentioned that Denethor had always been a proud man and that even decades earlier, when Aragorn (using the name Thorongil) served Denethor's father Steward Ecthelion, Denethor never liked him. And the reason given in that text is that even then Denethor guessed Aragorn's identity and didn't like him because he didn't like the idea of having to give up the power he saw as rightfully belonging to him. The same text also gives me the impression that he was overall kinda... maybe not outright paranoid, but sort of bordering on that, even long before Boromir ever left to Rivendell. That he'd been using the palantir for probably most of his reign, meaning Sauron had had quite a long time for twisting his worldview and driving him slowly toward despair.

Which is not to say that an old dog couldn't learn new tricks, of course. However I'd say it's somewhat less likely considering all those things.

You could be at least in part right, though. It may very well be that when most others, at least most others whose opinions he'd take into account at all, would side with Aragorn, he might reluctantly give up. It might even be that when faced with the possibility of civil war, Denethor would be the first to fold (after all, his goal is primarily the good of Gondor too and just about anything would be better than civil war, so he might decide keeping himself in power would not be worth the bloodshed).

In any case, Denethor was a year or so older than Aragorn, making him 88 at the time of the book if don't remember somethong wrong (yeah I'm not bothering to google stuff or look things up from the book and calculate stuff rn, so I may not be 100% correct). And if I remember things right, the Stewards of Gondor, if they died of natural causes, typically lived to be around 120-130 years old, meaning even if Denethor's rule continued, he'd likely only have around 30-40 decades left anyway. Whereas Aragorn lived to be like over 200 years old so he'd still be around and well by the time Denethor died. At which point, if he'd kept in touch with Boromir and Faramir, they might well decide to ask if he's still up to being the king.

Although in that scenario... I'm not sure if Elrond would wait around several decades more to see if Aragorn was gonna get the throne or not. I don't know. Elrond might do that, he might not. And I don't think Aragorn would declare himself the king of Arnor before he had the crown of Gondor, because honestly there's not a lot to be the king of in what used to be Arnor, and without the resources from the kingdom of Gondor, I'd say even beginning the work of restoring Arnor to it's former glory would be near impossible.

In any case, there's a lot of possibilities, and we could spend all eternity discussing them. And I think the only thing that can be said of all of them is that no matter what would happen, it would be a lot more complicated and messy business than in canon. Even if things went the way you suggest and Denethor accepted Aragorn's claim fairly quickly.

[vardasvapors]

Faramir and Éowyn! Because I love them!

1. I REALLY LIKE ITHILIEN I really like the idea of them being able to just chill there sometimes in between all the long-term cleaning up and restructuring stuff post-Sauron like ahhhhh what a good…in-between-y sort of healing healthy neutral zone-ish physical location and temporal/historical situation to be, re-establishing this new area and new House, doing cultural relations stuff now that they can relax more, maybe cleaning up the Dead Marshes, fixing up or building more of a cover between them and the wastelands nearer to Mordor, chatting with Legolas and all his elves who set up shop next to them and giving Legolas relationship advice, then writing to Eomer to make him give Gimli relationship advice ok no sorry i will stay on topic

2. I’m ofc a huge fan of how well their stories match up but also how like…kind of a couple things that bother me about both of them also match up really well? Like, it always lowkey kind of bugged me how Tolkien goes through all this stuff with Faramir talking about how war and conquest and violence is so terrible….and then emphasizes how many battles he fought in and how great a warrior he remained after the war lmao. Which makes perfect sense in-universe, because that’s exactly what the situation in canon warrants! But narratively it’s kind of…bleh. And it always lowkey kind of bugged me how Eowyn is both the only warrior woman who’s defying gender roles while at the same time is the character who is taught about how bullshit war and glory is. Which also makes perfect sense in-universe because that’s precisely what her specific character warrants and her specific character arc is really excellent! But narratively against all context it’s kind of…bleh. And yet, putting the two of them together, the two ‘bleh’s interact in a really fascinating way, especially if it got the further elaboration and detail those bleh’s deserved.

3. I think that even though the Gondorians would really like Eowyn there would also be some shitty like, cliched and personality-flattening hot takes on The Narrative of Their Dynamic And Falling In Love Arc, about like, taming and pitying and teaching her how to fit into a proper marriage dynamic and about the Uber-Numenorean scholarly Faramir with the ringwraith-slaying shieldmaiden from the less cultured nation, etc…and idk I feel like this might bother them more than they think it should?

4. I love Merry and Pippin’s respective relationships with either of them! I love the idea of them like, talking about Merry and Pippin themselves, as Merry and Pippin talk about them….and also okay so like Merry and Pippin definitely visited them later too? I’m, I love this sort of weird thing…

5. Faramir dying at age 120 seems somewhat too young to me, given how super-Numenorean he is emphasized as being throughout the whole story. I mean, compared to Aragorn’s 210? But it seems that the date of his death would have likely been not too long after Eowyn died, maybe even very shortly after Eowyn died if she lived to be very old (which is not unlikely given how hale Theoden was in his 70s and that she’s a bit Dunedain herself), and so maybe he decided to will himself to die after she died – a la all those bazillion women in the legendarium who up and died when their husbands died. Okay fine I admit this is partly just about my salt over all those always-female widows, but I genuinely like it as a character thing too.