The Numenoreans have dropped, and hoooo boy. It looks like Numenor is straight from the Appendices - and that's not a good thing.
Starting with the cast: second from left is Queen Regent[sic, sic, sic] Míriel. They gave her the accent in her name, but
Regent? For her father? For her child? The first would just about work, the second is all wrong for Numenorean politics. Or do they just not know the word 'Regnant'? She shows up several times in the article in armour, at one point at the head of an army - which, I have to say, I'm all here for.
Front and centre in the image is Pharazôn, the Queen's counsellor. He is
dramatically older than her, so I'm guessing the forced-marriage plot is off the table. The Appendices just say he usurped the sceptre, so they're likely doing that in a different way.
To the left is "Kemen", which is a Quenya word but can pass for Adunaic. He is Pharazon's son, so that's another strike against the marriage plot (he looks too old to be Miriel's kid, as has been suggested elsewhere). My guess is that he's gonna die to trigger his father's meltdown, but who knows?
Then on the right side of the image we have Team Faithful: Elendil, his daughter Eärien, and his son Isildur. Isildur is a young mariner; Elendil is also defined as a sea-farer. (Anarion, incidentally, is described as "off-screen".) I have no issue with Eärien: she fits neatly into the canon, and a stay-at-home woman character is something Tolkien used several times in his Numenor stories. I'm less happy with Elendil and Isildur being sailors and soldiers, rather than obvious nobility; but an early version of Isildur did talk about fighting in Pharazon's army, so there
is canon justification.
Numenor is described as "opulent", a "seemingly idyllic paradise", but also as troublingly divided. It's confirmed that the ruling line are part-Elven, and the basics of the pro-Valar/pro-"independence" divide are discussed. So far so Tolkien, but it's bizarre that the article is claiming a coastal capital. They've literally used the map which shows Armenelos inland! I wonder whether the deep ravine we've seen leading to the city in the trailers is their solution to that? (To be fair, digging a canyon-deep canal in order to put a port in their capital would be
very Numenorean.)
Perhaps the most irritating to some: there's a shot of Galadriel riding with Elendil on the Numenorean coast.
My guess is that her "raft" sequence ends with her rescue by a Numenorean ship, rather than her being a deliberate visitor, but who knows at this point?
Per the mini-trailer, this suggests her early plot is "worries about Orcs > gets on Swanship > falls in Sea > winds up on raft > taken to Numenor".
I'm getting a definite feeling that Galadriel is a major viewpoint character, and will be running around to the various plot areas to join in. So far, the story seems to have four locations: Eriador (the Lindon-Eregion-Moria plot, with Elrond linking them), Numenor (as discussed here), Tirharad (Bronwyn, Arondir, and Theo - judging by Theo's broken sword and Arondir's trailer archery, I'm guessing they encounter Evil), and the Harfoots ("HarFEET!"). Given that those can be glossed as North, West, South, and East, I guess that's pretty full coverage; and the Ents from the mini-trailer are right in the middle.
hS