J.R.R. Tolkien's most famous works take place in the Third Age of Middle-earth,
and the author has expanded on the history of his legendarium elsewhere. But what about
the years after the end of the War of the Ring? Just what happened in Middle-Earth's Fourth Age?
If you want to properly understand the Fourth Age, it's important to get a good idea of what
led up to it. The First Age begins when the Dark Lord Morgoth sneaks into the realm of Valinor,
steals the one-of-a-kind-jewels known as the Silmarils, and hightails it back to
Middle-earth. Looking for revenge, a faction of elves set out in pursuit of their enemy.
These elves spend the next 500 years waging war against Morgoth. They win some early victories,
but over time, the Dark Lord regains the initiative — and eventually utterly
overwhelms the elves and their mortal allies. The Free Peoples are only saved from defeat
when Aragorn's ancestor, Eärendil, sails back to the Blessed Realm and asks the god-like Valar for
help. This leads to the catastrophic War of Wrath, in which Morgoth is overthrown,
his servants are scattered, and vast swathes of Middle-earth are drowned beneath the sea.
The Second Age is defined by the rise of a new Dark Lord:
Morgoth's chief lieutenant, Sauron. This age is peaceful at first, as the remaining elves
resettle in their new homes in the eastern regions of Middle-earth, and men continue to
populate the continent. Off the coast, some of these men found the island kingdom of Númenor.
Eventually, Sauron makes his return to Middle-Earth. Disguised as an elf named Annatar,
he helps the elves forge rings of power — and then creates his own ring in secret to
control them. When this backfires on Sauron, he declares war on the
elves and redistributes most of the elvish rings to races he can more easily control.
"One Ring to rule them all."
Sauron nearly succeeds in conquering all of Middle-earth, but when he is confronted by the
full might of Númenor, he willingly surrenders himself to them. Sauron, however, has a plan.
Taken back to the island nation, the Dark Lord corrupts its king and many of its people,
and eventually convinces them to invade Valinor and take on the Valar themselves. This goes
pretty badly — to say the least — and Númenor itself is sunk beneath the sea as a result.
One faction of uncorrupted Númenóreans survives, however, and settle two kingdoms on the mainland:
Gondor and Arnor. When Sauron arrives back on the continent
and begins to stir up trouble again, these two kingdoms join forces with the elves. Together,
they march on Mordor, defeat Sauron's armies, and cut the Ring from the Dark Lord's hand.
For the first millennium of the Third Age, Middle-Earth is at peace. Around a thousand
years into the Third Age, the Valar send the five wizards to Middle-Earth to help guide the Free
Folk in their struggle against evil. Around the same time, the forces of Sauron begin to muster.
The kingdoms of Gondor and Arnor are involved in a number of conflicts
over the ensuing years. Arnor is eventually destroyed in a war against the Witch-King,
and Gondor loses its own king, leading to the long rule of the Stewards. The Shire is
also founded about halfway through the Third Age, Rohan is settled 900 years later, and after that,
Saruman settles down in Isengard and starts to break bad. Meanwhile, the Dwarves unleash
the Balrog in Moria, duke it out with the Orcs of the Misty Mountains, and fight a
war against Morgoth's dragons that eventually leads to Smaug attacking the Lonely Mountain.
To top all of the drama off, the One Ring is eventually rediscovered,
leading to the War of the Ring and the final destruction of Sauron.
The Fourth Age begins with the end of the War of the Ring.
The specific date of the beginning of the age is the source of some contention,
but in the Appendix to the Return of the King, at least, it's officially recorded that this
age begins when the keepers of the Three Elven Rings — that is, Elrond, Galadriel,
and Gandalf — set sail for Valinor. This, for the record, is September 29th of the 3021st year of
the Third Age. In a timeline Tolkien provided in the appendix to The Return of the King, he writes:
"Frodo and Bilbo depart over Sea with the Three Keepers. The end of the Third Age."
With the departure of the Three Rings from Middle-Earth, the kingdoms of men find their
true place in the world. This new order is predicted by Gandalf in The Return of the King,
when he tells the ancient ent Treebeard:
"The New Age begins, and in this age it may well prove
that the kingdoms of Men shall outlast you, Fangorn my friend."
The definitive event of the early Fourth Age
is the coronation of Aragorn as ruler of Gondor and Arnor.
"Let us together rebuild this world, that we may share in the days of peace."
Taking the name Elessar, the new king becomes protector of a huge portion of Middle-Earth,
and proceeds to rule over his new realm for an incredible 120 years.
During this time, he declares the Shire a free region under his protection,
and gives most of Saruman's former domain to the Ents.
Aragorn also makes his steward, Faramir, the prince of Ithilien. Faramir becomes one of
Aragorn's chief generals, and, in a letter later in life, Tolkien even explained that the king made
Faramir the lead counselor of his chief advisory group, known as the Great Council of Gondor.
Aragorn also remains close with Éomer, who rules as the king of Rohan for 65 years.
These brothers-at-heart renew the Oath of Eorl, swearing to come to one another's aid
when needed. In The Return of the King, Tolkien writes that they fight together often, because:
"For though Sauron had passed, the hatreds and evils that he bred had not
died, and the King of the West had many enemies to subdue..."
Aragorn and Arwen marry just before the beginning of the Fourth Age. They proceed to rule happily
for over a century, and the queen gives birth to a son, named Eldarion, and a number of daughters.
120 years into the Fourth Age, at the ripe old age of 210 years old, King Elessar finally dies.
However, he doesn't pass in his sleep — nor is he killed in battle. Instead, Aragorn willingly gives
up his spirit before he becomes old and broken. It's also explained that, after Aragorn's death:
"Arwen went forth from the House, and the light of her eyes was quenched, and it seemed to her
people that she had become cold and grey as nightfall in winter that comes without a star."
The queen then bids farewell to her children and travels to Lothlorien. All of the elves have left
the Golden Wood by this point, but she wanders through the empty land nonetheless. Eventually,
she lies down to rest in the same spot where she and Aragorn had become engaged long before. There,
she quietly dies, and it's said that her green grave will remain until the world is changed.
In Gondor, Eldarion becomes king, and in a letter written in 1972,
Tolkien briefly mentioned that his reign lasts for roughly a century.
"Never thought I'd die fighting side-by-side with an elf."
"What about side-by-side with a friend?"
After Sauron is defeated and the War of the Ring comes to an end, Legolas and Gimli stay
pretty busy. On their way home from war, these newfound friends first visit the Ents in Fangorn,
and then Aglarond, the Glittering Caves hidden behind Helm's Deep. Afterwards, Gimli returns to
the Lonely Mountain, only to find that the War of the Ring has devastated the whole region.
Eventually, he gathers some of his fellow Dwarf-folk, and they settle down in Aglarond.
Gimli himself leads the Dwarven colony, becoming the "Lord of the Glittering Caves."
This relocation puts Gimli close to Minas Tirith, and The Return of the King states:
"He and his people did great works in Gondor and Rohan."
Of particular note, they fix the gates of Minas Tirith,
which the Witch-king's army had smashed, forging the replacement parts out of steel and Mithril.
Legolas does his part to back up Aragorn's fledgling new kingdom, too,
and brings elves from Mirkwood to settle in Ithilien. After Aragorn dies, however,
Legolas finally follows the calling of his kind and takes a ship across the sea for
Valinor. Interestingly, Tolkien claims that, because of their one-of-a-kind friendship,
Gimli is also given permission to travel with his elven friend to the otherworldly realm.
The Shire remains a bustling center of rural activity during the Fourth Age — and Sam, Merry,
and Pippin are at the heart of the action. Sam and Rose have 13 children, and their daughter,
Goldilocks, ends up marrying Pippin's son, Faramir. Sam inherits Bag End,
finishes writing the Red Book that Bilbo and Frodo had worked on, and is elected
the Mayor of the Shire's unofficial capital Michel Delving for seven consecutive terms.
Pippin remains a knight of Gondor and also becomes the Took and Thain,
both important leadership positions in his family
and the Shire, respectively. Merry becomes the Master of Buckland,
a small colony settled long before by his family just outside of the borders of the Shire.
Eventually, Rose dies, and legend states that Sam, the last of the Ring-bearers,
actually follows his master west to the Undying Lands. A couple of years later,
the elderly Merry and Pippin leave the Shire and head south. They eventually die in Gondor,
where they're laid to rest next to Aragorn.
Details regarding the Fourth Age are hard to come by, especially after the first couple
of centuries. However, it seems clear that, by this point in the timeline, the age of Men has
truly dawned. The First and Second ages had been dominated by the Elves and the Dwarves,
while the Third Age had seen men slowly rise to prominence. By the Fourth Age, however,
the elves and dwarves are clearly on the way out, and Men are on the up-and-up.
In the prologue to The Fellowship of the Ring, it's explained that some of the High-elven folk
remain in Middle-earth for a time, led by Elrond's sons and eventually joined by Galadriel's husband,
Celeborn. While it isn't known when Celeborn finally sails to the Blessed Realm,
when he does go, he takes with him the last living memory of the Elder Days in Middle-earth.
The dwarves remain in Middle-Earth, however, and, judging from Gimli's colonization efforts,
even appear to expand their dominions for a time. Nevertheless, they do slowly drift out of sight,
out of mind, and eventually right out of Middle-earth's history.
Aside from The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, most of the Middle-earth
material that we have today was published by J.R.R. Tolkien's son, Christopher Tolkien,
after his father's death. This wasn't for the elder Tolkien's lack of dedication to his world,
though. It was more the result of a deep-set perfectionism that
held the great author back from publishing much other material.
Nevertheless, Tolkien did try to publish more Middle-earth stories during his lifetime,
including a sequel to The Lord of the Rings. Called The New Shadow,
the story appeared to be set a century or so after Aragorn's death — placing it well
into the Fourth Age. The concept toyed with a resurgence of evil in Middle-earth long after
the events of the War of the Ring had become ancient history. However, Tolkien never got
more than a handful of pages into the story before he gave up. In a letter written in 1964,
he referred to the project as both sinister and depressing,
adding that it had the making of a "thriller" — but that it was, alas, simply not worth doing.
Tolkien's letters are an important source of information for fans of Middle-Earth,
as the author used them to reveal more about Middle-Earth's long and complex history.
In one of these letters, the author provides a hint as to when he personally believed the
Fourth Age ended — or at least how it fits into the world's larger history. In this letter,
Tolkien points out that he imagines the 20th century to exist roughly 6,000 years after the
Third Age. He initially states that this could put us somewhere around the end of the Fifth Age,
judging from the approximate lengths of the Second and Third Ages. However, he also clarifies:
"They have, I think, quickened; and I
imagine we are actually at the end of the Sixth Age, or in the Seventh."
While nobody can be sure of the exact timeline of the Fourth Age, it is clear that,
at one point, the future of Tolkien's world becomes the distant past of our own.
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