Quote:
Originally Posted by Kuruharan
As for how it fell, Tolkien did write some pages of The New Shadow where in the time of Aragorn's successor Gondor was already starting to unravel. I don't know that we should suppose that the Reunited Kingdom's dominion was of any great duration.
|
It certainly wouldn't be unprecedented historically for a great empire to be expanding its borders while at the same time rotting at the core - and the same went for Numenor. From Tolkien's viewpoint the two would probably be linked, since conquest for its own sake was in his view a mark of degenerate kingship.