Tumblr crosspost (3 May 2020)

[anghraine]

Every time Denethor bashing showed up on my dash (as on this occasion), I reblogged this quote, which I had originally posted in October 2017:

Denethor was a man of great strength of will, and maintained the integrity of his personality until the final blow of the (apparently) mortal wound of his only surviving son. He was proud, but this was by no mean merely personal: he loved Gondor and its people, and deemed himself appointed by destiny to lead them in this desperate time. And in second place the Anor-stone was his by right, and nothing but expediency was against his use of it in his grave anxieties.

—JRR Tolkien, Unfinished Tales