#ch: mardil

[isabelpsaroslunnen]

[Original date: 13 March 2018]

Unrelated to Éowyn, but one of the things I find interesting about the LOTR movies is how much harder they push the Chosen-One-by-blood narrative wrt Aragorn than the book. It's certainly present in the book, but much more debatable.

The short version: in the films, Aragorn has to convince himself that he should be king. In the book, Aragorn has to convince the people of Gondor that he should be king. He doesn't lead the dead to Minas Tirith; he leads Gondorian armies to Minas Tirith by saving south Gondor and winning their support.

The longer version:

In the films, Isildur, last king of Gondor, refused to surrender the Ring and was betrayed by it. His male-line heirs were kings, by right, of Gondor, but never claimed it. The main tension: Aragorn is king by right, but doesn't want it out of fear of hereditary weakness via Isildur.

In the books, Isildur handed over Gondor to his brother Anárion's heirs and left to take the Ring to Elrond. Much later, the king descended from Anárion died without male heirs, and his son-in-law, separately in line to be the next heir of Isildur, claimed to be rightful king. It was dodgy af and Gondor rejected the claim.

(Dodginess: a) he only claimed it as Isildur's heir because his family's kingdom was in shambles, b) he argued that since their ancestors had ruling queens, he should be king through his wife [??], and c) his father was actually alive at the time [?????].)

Gondor crowned a cousin of the old king, a captain of the line of Anárion who had just showed up with an army and saved Gondor. That guy's son was a fool (IMO) only kept in check by his faithful Steward, also descended from Anárion, and when that king got himself killed, Gondor decided to just keep the Steward.

It's not like Isildur's heirs could have waltzed in at any time as Rightful Kings. They thought they were (including Aragorn), but Gondor was pretty much "lol no" about it. When Denethor says Aragorn is only an heir of Isildur so idgaf, that's what he's talking about.

So Aragorn has to simultaneously be his own ancestor who claimed the throne AND the guy who actually got it by saving Gondor. Obviously, all this is pretty involved for film, but "Aragorn's family tried to claim Gondor by blood alone, but got rejected, so Aragorn has to prove himself to become king" isn't.

It's not just "they changed a thing = bad." I genuinely think it's interesting in a cultural sort of way that they could have made it much less Chosen One-ish than the original, and instead made it very much more so, AND modern audiences found that profoundly appealing.