Vorondil

   The first hereditary Steward of Gondor.

   One of three Stewards to serve King Eärnil II of Gondor. He was an important figure in Gondorian history, as the first of the Stewards to inherit the title by direct line from his father. Vorondil was the son of Pelendur, the Steward who had assumed the rule of Gondor during the crisis following Ondoher's loss. On Pelendur's own death, his position as servant and adviser to the King fell on Vorondil his son.

   Vorondil's Stewardship was a time of war and loss for Gondor. In only his second year as Steward, he saw the Nazgûl come out of Mordor and lay siege to Minas Ithil, and two years later still, they succeeded in capturing it and the palantír it contained.

   History remembers Vorondil less for any part in the loss of Minas Ithil, though, and more as Vorondil the mighty Hunter, who hunted the Kine of Araw in the far eastern lands on the shores of the Sea of Rhûn. The great horn carried by Boromir in The Lord of the Rings originated as the hunting horn of Vorondil, and may even have been made by his own hand. Vorondil served Eärnil as Steward for twenty-one years. Just as he had inherited the position, he was in turn succeeded by his son Mardil, who was to become the first of the Ruling Stewards and the founder of a tradition that would survive in Gondor for nearly two thousand years.