/grump

[anghraine]

I get that most people like Aragorn a lot more than I do (I think he's interesting but ... complicated in ways that are generally overlooked), but the posts about how he's not really creating an imperial state because becoming "overlord" of Mordor's allies is a) right and just or b) impossible are so ?????

And when Tolkien says Fourth Age Gondor became an imperial power he didn't really mean that, and the line about how all of Mordor's allies were slain or subjugated has nothing to do with imperialism—because, see, they were BAD PEOPLE, or, alternately, Gondor is just a small(??) weak country without the power to do what LOTR explicitly says it did, and therefore Aragorn's reign is actually unproblematic.

Like, I get going "that's a dumbass decision and I'm choosing to ignore it," but arguing that it's not there? No.

Comments

[elperian]

As an outlier in Tolkien fandom for mostly caring about hobbits more than anything (hobbits and ROHAN AND THE ROHIRRIM!!!), especially more than the average Tolkien person seems to, I've always been a little >_< at the monarchist (and imperialist) ending with Gondor. Who needs kings anyway?! Down with monarchies! /American>

I get that the stewards were acting like kings because functionally...yeah...but to have literally The Return of the King as a big thematic note has never resonated with me *shrugs* But if that's your particular jam in the first place, don't you have to deal with the canon of it all? Especially when it's...the original canon?!

[yay for an excuse to use my Eowyn icon tbh]

[anghraine]

Hah, and I used to feel out of sync with LOTR fandom for not caring much about hobbits! But then again, that was a long time ago and Tolkien fandom these days is a different beast.

At some level, the monarchist element is ... I mean, it's built in pretty deeply into the structure of Middle-earth. So I think there's an extent to which we're stuck with it, and it's mostly a matter of either buying into it or resisting the pull of the narrative. I do think that a lot of Americans in particular do buy into it (and fetishize royalty in general).

Like, it's always been interesting to me that PJ & Co amped up the Chosen King aspects of Aragorn's arc so much—there's a pretty drastic shift from Aragorn personally winning the throne despite Gondor's rejection of his family's claim, to Aragorn being naturally entitled to the crown by birth but reluctant to accept his true destiny. And by and large, American audiences loved it and it's pretty widely seen as a major improvement on the book.

I can see why people who are RAH RAH RAH about their hero rising from obscurity to kingship might be LALALA NOT LISTENING about the imperialism, which is related but not quite the same thing. It's just ... yeah, they're all tied up together in the text. I do wonder how much of the appeal of kingship/royalty is at least partially aesthetic rather than concerned with what it means to rule a large country that becomes bigger and more powerful under their fave's rule.

(Personally, I love Gondor like nobody's business, but its past and future are drenched in imperialism and there's no getting away from that IMO.)

[elperian]

Hah, and I used to feel out of sync with LOTR fandom for not caring much about hobbits! But then again, that was a long time ago and Tolkien fandom these days is a different beast.

I was never really in sync with the fandom even when hobbits were more in focus, because there was a lot of misogyny to go with it and a lot of ship-based fic which was not up my alley. Just rowing merrily in my own boat, I guess.

At some level, the monarchist element is ... I mean, it's built in pretty deeply into the structure of Middle-earth.

Oh, for sure! Except...much less so in Eriador generally, and very much less so in the Shire (what is a king to a hobbit *cough*) There were ancient kings and kingdoms, but it just means almost nothing there in the TA. Even Rivendell, Lothlorien, and even Moria are less about monarchy as we normally think of it (the dwarves in The Hobbit are a definite exception here; the 'King under the mountain' is a real thing). Frodo leaving the Shire and seeing how other people run things is a big part of FOTR, but as I recall it's really TTT/ROTK that bring in more ideas of kingship. I'm moving through FOTR on my re-read and it tracks pretty well with my recollection on that front.

to Aragorn being naturally entitled to the crown by birth but reluctant to accept his true destiny.

I remember how odd this was to me when the movies came out. I do think you're on to something with the aesthetic vs. content though; aesthetic preferences drive a lot in fandoms.

[beatrice_otter]

That is ... that is some special reasoning they got there.

[anghraine]

Yeahhh.