Tolkien's Kings

In our discussion this week, we explored the different types of kings of men Tolkien created in The Lord of the Rings as well as what we felt were the disparities between how they’re represented in the books as well as in the movies. I love the comparison between the films and the books and my post this week is going to touch on this again.  

We looked at how Theoden was a king that was very in touch with his people, after Gandalf stepped in and freed him from Wormtongue’s influence, immersed in the conflicts they’re going through, and their frontman when the Rohirrim went into battle. In comparison, Denethor was extremely out of touch, far removed, and never put himself forth when Gondor was in peril, actually told his people to go burn down in flames, essentially. We also considered how the films didn’t really give us a look into the thought process of Denethor whereas we did get this understanding from the book.  

Keeping all that in mind, I wanted to jump forward a bit and look at Aragorn as the up and coming king as he doesn’t actually take on the mantle of king for very much of the tale, even though most know and see him as such, he pushes these formalities aside until the fighting is done. In this way, Aragorn actually embodies a bit of both the kind of king Theoden was as well as the sort of leader Denethor was. He’s very much a character involved in all the action but he’s also aside by pushing aside and not taking on his mantle as king for so long. The one thing that I missed and I think the film was sorely lacking was Aragorn going into the House of Healing and showing off his sort of mystical healing abilities that also stems from this notion that Gondor has that the king will have the healing touch. I thought this was a really interesting aspect of Aragorn’s character development as king and the film could have really benefited from showing this. The movies are just lacking something really vital to me from not showing this, as small of a scene as it was.