Tanaqui
Message:
36659
18 Jan 05 2:53 PM
Reply To:
36657
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Is there any indication in canon as to how old Beregond is? Would there be any reason I couldn't make him about 6 years younger than Faramir?
There's nothing in canon regarding Beregond's age that I can see, but he does have a ten year old son (Bergil) and a brother (though it may be a brother-in-law) who is around 30. (When Pippin tells Bergil that he's 29, Bergil replies that Pippin is almost as old as Bergil's uncle.)
If you make Beregond 6 years younger than Faramir, he would also be around 30 at the time of RotK - and that means he would only have been around 20 at the time of Bergil's birth. While that clearly isn't impossible, it would be a very young age for a Dunadan man to have married and had children. (The typical minimum age for marrage seems to be around 25.)
However, my impression is that it's not completely clear if Beregond is Dunedain: we know his family comes from Ithilien originally, via Lossarnach after Ithilien was abandoned, but he could be either part or mostly Dunedain or he could be primarily non-Dunedain and descended from what Faramir describes as "the sturdy folk of the sea-coast, and from the hardy mountaineers of Ered Nimrais" who apparently make up the bulk of Gondor's population (and who are descended from the original inhabitants, before Isildur and Anarion and their followers colonised Gondor).
So it depends what you consider to be Beregond's likely ancestry and whether Dunedain approaches to marriage have been adopted by those of non-Dunedain descent in Gondor over the years.
Hope that helps.
Cheers, Liz
