Faramir
Faramir, son of Denethor; Captain of the Rangers of Ithilien; Prince of Ithilien
Name and Lineage
Faramir — the younger son of Denethor II, the Steward of Gondor, and Finduilas of Dol Amroth — was from his youth the reverse of his brother: where Boromir was the proud slayer of many Orcs, Faramir was “of a gentler and more courteous mood, and in wisdom he was the kinder and the wiser” — a reader of lore, a lover of music, and a captain of no less valour, especially in the hidden war of Ithilien. He was the descendant of the line of the Stewards, “wiser than the wisdom of the Stewards”, and was all his life the second in his father’s heart, the “beloved” residue of a bereaved household.
Captain of the Rangers
- For the last of the Third Age, Faramir commanded the Rangers of Ithilien, the men who harried the Enemy in the woods east of the Anduin, guarding the approaches to Minas Tirith. He was the brother with the hard craft of the secret war: he knew the deep vales of Ithilien and the passes of Mordor’s shadow.
- The meeting with Frodo: in the Ithilien woods his company captured Frodo and Sam, and brought them to the hidden refuge in Henneth Annûn. There Faramir showed the worth of his house: he did not seize the Ring that lay before him — “I would not take this thing, if it lay by the highway”, he said of the temptation — refusing the spell that mastered his brother, and counselling Frodo kindly on the way to Mordor, “to the hazard of my life and honour”.
The War of the Ring
- Recalled to Minas Tirith on the eve of the war, Faramir was sent, against his own judgment, to re-take Osgiliath; and in the fighting at the crossing he was struck by the madness that had struck Boromir — though he read it as the “reverie” of the Nazgûl — and was wounded by a dart of the Black Captain, and borne dying to his father’s halls while Denethor, maddened, prepared to burn himself and his son together upon a pyre.
- The rescue: at the pyre of the Steward, Gandalf (with the aid of Pippin) saved Faramir from the flames of his own father’s despair — “Shall the tombs of the Kings be denied to their sons?” — and carried him to the Houses of Healing, where Aragorn (as the King) healed him of the Black Breath.
Steward and Prince
- With the founding of the Reunited Kingdom, Faramir — the last Steward of Gondor in the Third Age — laid down his office to the returned King, and was made by Elessar (Aragorn) the Prince of Ithilien and the descendant of the stewards’ trust, “the best beloved of the King’s counsellors”.
- He wed Éowyn of Rohan in the spring of the New Age, in a “fair and fruitful” realm; they dwelt in Ithilien — where he revived the healing art of the Gardens of the Wood among the tales — and their son Elboron carried on the Princedom. Faramir died in the Fourth Age 82, “the last of the long line of the Stewards” in lordship, and was esteemed wise and true beyond the age.
Significance
Faramir is the “gentle, courteous, and wise” lord of Gondor — the man who resisted the Ring that took his brother, who gave truth to the “utmost of the wisdom” of the Stewards, and whose healing and marriage with Éowyn bind Rohan and Gondor into the peace of the Fourth Age.