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Originally Posted by The Saucepan Man
Personally, I prefer to think of them as having succesfully raised a rebellion against Sauron in the east, thus limiting the number of Variags/Easterlings available to him in the War of the Ring. Although I am aware that this doesn't square with Gandalf having been the only one of the Istari who succeeded.  |
I prefer to think, that they have some success at their beginning to hinder the peoples of the East from attacking Gondor. These thoughts came to me, because of the long phase of quietness at the east-borders of Gondor in the middle of the second millenium in the Third Age.
I would like the fact, that the Blue Wizards are the reason for this long time of peace. But the point of time, when the attacking of the peoples of the east (Wainriders, Balchoth...) starts, signifies for me, that this was point of time of their failure. :-(
@Saucepan: Here is the quote of Queen Beruthiel from UT, The Istari, Footnote 7:
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Originally Posted by UT
Even the story of Queen Berúthiel does exist, however, if only in a very "primitive" outline, in one part illegible. She was the nefarious, solitary, and loveless wife of Tarannon, twelfth King of Gondor (Third Age 830-913) and first of the "Ship-kings", who took the crown in the name of Falastur "Lord of the Coasts," and was the first childless king (The Lord of the Rings, Appendix A, I, ii and iv). Berúthiel lived in the King's House in Osgiliath, hating the sounds and smells of the sea and the house that Tarannon built below Pelargir "upon arches whose feet stood deep in the wide waters of Ethir Anduin;" she hated all making, all colours and elaborate adornment, wearing only black and silver and living in bare chambers, and the gardens of the house in Osgiliath were filled with tormented sculptures beneath cypresses and yews. She had nine black cats and one white, her slaves, with whom she conversed, or read their memories, setting them to discover all the dark secrets of Gondor, so that she knew those things "that men wish most to keep hidden," setting the white cat to spy upon the black, and tormenting them. No man in Gondor dared touch them; all were afraid of them, and cursed when they saw them pass. What follows is almost wholly illegible in the unique manuscript, except to the ending, which states that her name was erased from the Book of the Kings ("but the memory of men is not wholly shut in books, and the cats of Queen Berúthiel never passed wholly out of men's speech"), and that King Tarannon had her set on a ship alone with her cats and set adrift on the sea before a north wind. The ship was last seen flying past Umbar under a sickle moon, with a cat at the masthead and another as a figure-head on the prow.
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And another quote from UT, The Istari:
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Originally Posted by UT
Beyond the fact that these notes on the choosing of the Istari certainly date from after the completion of The Lord of the Rings I can find no evidence of their relation, in time of composition, to the essay on the Istari.7
I know of no other writings about the Istari save some very rough and in part uninterpretable notes that are certainly much later than any of the foregoing, and probably date from 1972:
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We see here, that Tolkien gave them names, but after the completion of Lord of the Rings and after he had written the letter.
Interesting is, that the 7 in the text refer to the footnote, which included the story of Queen Beruthiel and our letter #180. You could imply, that this allude to the fact, that the story of Queen Beruthiel was written after he had written the letter.
So, my post backups the post of HerenIstarion. ;-)