Elros
Tar-Minyatur; the first King of Númenor; the Half-elven who chose Men
Name and Lineage
Elros — the twin son of Eärendil and Elwing, the great-grandson of Beren and Lúthien and the grandson of Tuor and Idril — of the Half-elven blood of the Three Houses. When the Valar, at the end of the First Age, offered the choice to Eärendil’s children, the twins chose: Elrond the Elven-blood (to be immortal), Elros the Doom of Men — “the long-lived” — and choosing mortality, he is the father of the kings of Númenor, the Dúnedain.
The First King of Númenor
After the War of Wrath, the Valar gave to the Elf-friends of the three houses the great isle rising from the sea: Númenor, “Westernesse”, and to Elros (as the heir of Eärendil) the kingship. Elros, called Tar-Minyatur (“First-ruler”) — his Quenya name — reigned four hundred years, “high and puissant”, and built Armenelos; his line of kings, the “Elros-line”, held the sceptre until the Drowning. The Akallabêth records the terms: the Dúnedain of Númenor “lived thrice the span” — their gift of long life; their decline and pride, and at last the fall of their kingdom — all shadowed from Elros’ mortal acceptance.
Significance
Elros chooses exactly what his mother and father — and Beren before them — had been willing to die for: mortality. His choice frames the mythology’s central mystery of the Gift of Men; and his line, through the Long Line of Númenor, carries the story through the Second Age to the last survivor of the kings, Elendil (whose heirs, Aragorn, step but whose thrones he founded).