Ar-Pharazôn
the Golden; the last King of Númenor
Name and Lineage
Ar-Pharazôn — “the Golden”, in Quenya Tar-Calion — was the last King of Númenor (the twenty-fifth and final in the line of Elros), the most powerful and the most proud of its lords: he — the Akallabêth: — already under the shadow that had grown since the kings turned from the Light.
The Humiliation and the Capture of Sauron
At his height of power he was offended at the rising might of Sauron in Middle-earth; sailing with a Great Armament — he demanded the Dark’s submission, and Sauron, seeing no escape, came as a prisoner (in fair-seeming) to Númenor — “taken” — where in three years he wrought his masterpiece of flattery.
- The corruption: Sauron rose to the king’s counsels and high-priest of the Dark; under Ar-Pharazôn, Númenor turned to the worship of Melkor, the persecution of the Faithful, the burning of the White Tree and the banishing of the Elves-message.
The Folly and the Drowning
Taught “the fear of death”, Ar-Pharazôn
— he built the great Temple — and at last, desiring the deathlessness of the Valar, sailed his armada to the West to enslave Aman — the supreme folly.
- In the answer of the One (and the prayer of the Valar), Númenor was swallowed by the sea, and Ar-Pharazôn and his host — he perished with his armada (save that his tomb-mountain, in one tradition, shall be his grave until the Last Battle — the Akallabêth:).
Significance
Ar-Pharazôn is the archetypal “king of pride” — the ruler whose might and fear of death undid the greatest kingdom of Men, seduced by the Shadow; his fall is the Second Age’s Fall (mirroring Fëanor’s in the First), and its consequence (the Drowning, the rounding of the world) reshapes the geography of the whole mythology.