Scarcely Heard of the King in these parts

[TreebeardQuickbeam]

In the Hobbit one of the dwarves says they have scarcely heard of the King in these parts. Strictly speaking, the Kingdom of Arnor collapsed two thousand years earlier and so there was no legitimate king, but was there a king of some sort? If so, who would it have been? What happened to Angmar? Why did the Witch King abandon it instead of ransacking the shire and all of Eriador? On that note, would the "king" have been A deposed descendant of the last king in hidding, or a Troll left over from the realm of Angmar which won the war against Arnor?

[Landroval]

I doubt that the king of the hobbits had anything to do with Sauron's forces. This is what letter #131 seems to imply:

Their chief settlement, where all the inhabitants are hobbits, and where an ordered, civilised, if simple and rural life is maintained, is the Shire, originally the farmlands and forests of the royal demesne of Arnor, granted as a fief: but the 'King', author of laws, has long vanished save in memory before we hear much of the Shire.

and the same goes with the prologue of FotR:

About this time legend among the Hobbits first becomes history with a reckoning of years. For it was in the one thousand six hundred and first year of the Third Age that the Fallohide brothers, Marcho and Blanco, set out from Bree; and having obtained permission from the high king at Fornost, they crossed the brown river Baranduin with a great following of Hobbits. They passed over the Bridge of Stonebows, that had been built in the days of the power of the North Kingdom, and they took ail the land beyond to dwell in, between the river and the Far Downs. All that was demanded of them was that they should keep the Great Bridge in repair, and all other bridges and roads, speed the king's messengers, and acknowledge his lordship.

[Gordis]

Originally Posted by TreebeardQuickbeam

In the Hobbit one of the dwarves says they have scarcely heard of the King in these parts. Strictly speaking, the Kingdom of Arnor collapsed two thousand years earlier and so there was no legitimate king, but was there a king of some sort? If so, who would it have been? What happened to Angmar? Why did the Witch King abandon it instead of ransacking the shire and all of Eriador? On that note, would the "king" have been A deposed descendant of the last king in hidding, or a Troll left over from the realm of Angmar which won the war against Arnor?

I advise you to read Appendix A to LOTR. It is really interesting.

[Valandil]

TBQB - welcome to Entmoot!

Tolkien wrote that passage in "The Hobbit" long before he had even begun to conceive of the LOTR storyline or to work up the outline of the area's history.

Even then - he sort of makes it fit. Hobbits tend to be "by the book" sort of people. So - they're adhering to the "King's Laws" one thousand years after the last king fell from power. To them, it's just the natural thing to do.

So - there's no "king" per se, when Bilbo and the Dwarves are making their journey - but the 'cultural memory' of a king is quite strong to Bilbo - and any other Hobbit (and perhaps to the Dwarves as well - who are familiar with Kings of their own, and would probably like the orderliness that kings would bring to wild lands such as those).