Hi all,

One thing I've had trouble with is understand the politics of Gondor. I understand that it's similar to the medieval feudal system, but that's not what I have trouble with. However I have some questions.

1) What makes a city in Gondor (or anywhere) a city? I'd class Bree as a town but it's put as a village. In Gondor there seems to be a lot of cities, where are all the towns and villages?

2) What's the culture for each province?

3) If Dor-en-Ernil is a Principality, are the other provinces Counties?

4) What type of equipment would they have in the various provinces?

5) Which province is Minas Tirith in?

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"If you can imagine something, then it is possible."
-Whiskas, 26th May, 2009

I don't think Tolkien ever explained all that. I think you can assume that most of Gondor was heavily settled in a 19th century Europe-kind-of-way...lots of rolling farmlands and livestock grazing, interspersed with small pockets of "nature". IIRC, the whole of the Pelennor was one big farm and hamlet-dotted landscape, not the empty waste depicted in the film.

As for regional equipment, probably the most detail you're going to get is the scene in the book where Pippin is watching the troops arrive.

Aha, thanks then. That's slightly annoying. I guess I'll have to use my imagination combined with that part in the book for the equipment.

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"If you can imagine something, then it is possible."
-Whiskas, 26th May, 2009

Ask the same question on this site: http://www.lotrplaza.com/forum/default.asp

You'll probably get a very thorough (maybe too thorough!) answer.

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"There are few left in Middle Earth like Aragorn, son of Arathorn." - Gandalf, Many Meetings

Ah, thank you. I want it to be as thorough as possible so that'll help.

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"If you can imagine something, then it is possible."
-Whiskas, 26th May, 2009

I don't know about in Gondor, but in real life, the specifications for hamlet, village, town and city are:
Hamlet: Group of houses.
Village: + Church.
Town: + Market.
City: +Cathedral and/or University.

I know it is like that in real life, but in Middle Earth there are no religions, therefore no churches.

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"If you can imagine something, then it is possible."
-Whiskas, 26th May, 2009

Well, they did know about Eru and the Valar...not really a religion because it's based on "fact"...plus the "fact" of having a demon on your doorstep They might have had shrines or something, like on the isle of Numenor.

1) I would assume that, like in Rohan, the population centres would be the cities, with homesteads elsewhere - smaller hamlets. We saw that in the burnnig of the Westfold in the movie; though there were quite a few people more than there should have been for the number of houses.
Anyway, Bree shows on a map as a village because it is small. Only a few hundred dwellings. The Breeland was a region densely populated, yes, but many of the people were in Archet, Staddle, and Combe as well. The high population of the area isn't quite close enough together to refer to as a town, while the cities of Gondor, probably mostly walled, would be.

2) Most likely similar to the rest of Gondor's, which itself comes from the Númenorean culture. Hard for me to be more specific than that, knowing as little as I do about it.

3) I dunno. Forlong was a Lord, so it's hard to discern Lossarnach's state, but I'd say County isn't the right term.

4) The same? I'm not 100% sure what you mean by that.

5) It is the capital city of Anórien, as Minas Ithil was of Ithilien.

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"Mustard the Rohirrim! We've got to ketchup with those Uruk-fries before they capture the Hornburger!"

Wild guess?

The basic organisation amongst the Northmen, Dunedain and Dunlendings (all of whom being descended from the Men of Beleriand) was probably a Hundred (cantref in Brythonic). A hundred represents about a hundred households, give or take, and a hundred hides of land, a hide being enough land to support a household.

Each hundred was represented by some noble whose job it was to muster out a warband from that hundred households, raise taxes and equip said warband. (Boronas being the Sindarin word, for anyone keeping track at home). Now, where it gets messy is when you start adding up those hundreds. Throw a number of hundreds together and you get some sort of medium sized administrative unit which in our world we called a shire, later called a county.

That was the easy bit. The rest... well we don't know. There are lords, who answer to the king or steward. Indeed, I suspect the officer of steward was originally the king's chamberlain.

I also suspect that the Princedoms of Ithilien and Dol Amroth and Anorien are hereditary titles, probably dating back to the foundation of Gondor. Probably originally were titles belonging to the sons of Elendil. As Gondor developed, the princedoms went to different families, the title remained, but newer areas, such as Anfalas became "lordships" or "provinces" - probably something close to what we would call a "dukedom." The places west of Belfalas were probably settled later, and probably awarded to whatever nobles were leading the colonisation.

So there's your politics right there. The "old families" who can trace their lineage right back to Elendil and his sons, and Elendil's director companions, who ruled Anorien (Minas Tirith), Ithilien and Belfalas as well as the guys who owned Pelargir probably commanded more power and respect than the "new families" who owned Anfalas, Pinneth Gellin and the Morthond Vale. Also, I'll bet you good money that the old families were Dunedain, and the newer families either had Dunlending blood or were Dunlendings.

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Dreaming of getting back to painting...any month now.

Politics sure wasnt like nowdays.

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I am a ranger of the north.

Yes - I can imagine some tv political pundit asking Boromir some silly question and getting a good thumping for impudence. Tolkien wrote the stories as a means of exploring language - that was his starting point. He also wanted to explore the horrors of war as experienced by a simple agrarian people, a substitute for his beloved Anglo-Saxons. It was never meant to be thoroughly realistic - how can you have a world that scientifically essentially stands still or even goes into partial technological reverse for thousands of years? Don't worry about all that, just enjoy the adventure!

If any of you have every written a longish fictional piece, it can be very disheartening to hear criticism from readers who pick apart actual or perceived inconsistencies in your story. It happens to all authors, to a greater or lesser extent, prehaps in proportion to the length of their works and also perhaps in relation to the degree to which their story is set in a fantasy universe - the more an author draws upon the real world and actual history, the more foundations and sources they have to provide structure to their storyline. No-one is every going to write a book about Julius Caesar conquering North America.

Now, there's a thought...

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Published ebooks:
Instrument of the Empire
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Phantom Ships, Ghost Flotilla
More to come!

In a Donald Westlake book a character's life work is a novel called "Veni, Vidi, Vici, with Air Power", It involves the Romans having WWI-era planes invading Gaul, but none of the other technology advancing at all.

Ah, historical fiction. What a boring world it would be without it.

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"Mustard the Rohirrim! We've got to ketchup with those Uruk-fries before they capture the Hornburger!"