LoTR on Amazon: Welcome to the Second Age

[Valandil]

This might be the best approach. You bring up a lot of good reasons for it.

I wonder if "Young Aragorn" would have left them with too little to do. Like you say, not a lot of major battle scenes (a few - when his adventures take him into Rohan and Gondor), and besides... we all know where things are heading with him.

Second Age gives them something much closer to Game of Thrones, or whatever. And... maybe it'll be toward the end, during the time of Ar-Pharazon - or maybe it will be in the middle of the Second Age, when Sauron first makes the One Ring and takes over much of Middle Earth.

And... if they stay in the Second Age, they're much less likely to contradict my own fanfic histories of Middle Earth, which is VERY important!