Quote:
Originally Posted by Galadriel55
I think that Amandil's ancestor was the younger brother of the Numenor king, or something like that.
|
Elder sister of Tar-Meneldur, actually.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Galadriel55
In a way, Arwen is Aragorn's great (etc) aunt.
Aragorn is also related to Galadriel, Turin, and many other people.
|
Actually, Arwen is Aragorn's first cousin, removed something like 50 times (all the generations from Vardamir, son of Elros, who was her first cousin, with no removes). In terms of consanguinity (shared blood) this is such a diminution of relationship that many of us probably have more closely related parents or grandparents than this, if there's a common ethnicity. Of course, there would have been plenty of intermarriage in the descendants of Elros.
For example, Aragorn is descended from Aranarth, son of Arvedui, the first Chieftain of the Northern Dúnedain, by both his parents--meaning that his parents, Arathorn II and Gilraen, were more closely related than he was to Arwen. As another example, Aranarth himself was the son of two descendants of Elendil: Arvedui from Isildur and Fíriel daughter of Ondoher from Anárion. And those are only the documented cases.
Probably, already by the time of Amandil and Elendil, it would have been nigh on impossible, if not totally impossible, for a high nobleman such as the Lord of Andúnië to marry someone who was not a descendant of Elros.. After that many generations on an endogamous island, probably everyone had some touch of Elrosian blood. In fact, the marriage of Valacar of Gondor (an ancestor of Fíriel and thus of Aragorn) to Vidumavi, daughter of Vidugavia the Northman, was quite possibly the ONLY instance in Aragorn's ancestry since the Akallabêth of a forefather marrying a woman who was not a descendant of Elros.
And, of course, any descendant of Elros is,
de facto a close relative than Arwen, because the shared ancestor is not Elros, but his father Eärendil, who is a step farther back in the family tree. In fact, Éowyn would probably have been a closer relative than Arwen, since her grandmother was Morwen of Lossarnach, who was probably of noble blood and thus almost CERTAINLY a descendant somehow, somewhere, of Elendil--who is a whole Second Age of descent closer in ancestry to Aragorn than Eärendil.
It's like the crowned heads of Europe... if we all had as much genealogical information as they do, we would all be finding recurring ancestors.