The eldest sons of Folcwine of Rohan were twins named Folcred and Fastred,1 born in the year III 2858, while their grandfather Folca still held the throne of Rohan. When the twins were six years old, King Folca was slain while hunting the Boar of Everholt, and their father succeeded as King. Folcwine had further children: an unnamed daughter, and a young son named Fengel, who was born when the twins were twelve years old.
As befitted their princely station, the twins grew in martial prowess to become commanders of the Riders of Rohan. In III 2885, when Fastred and his brother were twenty-seven years old, their father Folcwine received news that the Haradrim were attacking Gondor's southern borders. Not only was Gondor Rohan's old ally, but the King remembered the aid that the Gondorians had rendered after the invasion of Rohan in the year of the Long Winter. Folcwine was therefore determined to send aid to Gondor, but was dissuaded from leading the Riders himself, and instead sent Folcred and Fastred to captain the Rohirrim in defence of Gondor.
Fastred and Folcred rode to join the armies of Steward Túrin II in southern Ithilien, and faced the forces of the Harad at the Fords of Poros. Gondor and Rohan together defeated the invaders, but Fastred and his brother were both slain in the fighting. Their Riders entombed the brothers' bodies within a great mound overlooking the river-crossing, a mound known as Haudh in Gwanûr, the 'mound of the brothers'. Even in death, they continued to guard the realm of their allies, and the enemies of Gondor feared, it was said, to pass the mound of the twins. The Steward of Gondor sent a weregild of gold to Folcwine to honour the loss of his twin sons.
Evidently neither Fastred nor his brother Folcred had any sons of their own, because their much younger brother Fengel became the heir to the Kingship of Rohan in their place. Fengel thus succeeded Folcwine to become the fifteenth King of Rohan, and so his grandson Théoden (who would have been Fastred's grand-nephew) was King at the time of the War of the Ring.
Notes
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The twins are named in this order, which seems to imply that Folcred was marginally the elder of the two, and would therefore have been Folcwine's heir rather than Fastred.
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- Updated 16 January 2023
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