Board Thread:Fun and Games/@comment-26535281-20150703012624/@comment-26360929-20150703224336

Agreed, Denethor was shown to be a drivelling fool in Peter Jackson's adaptations, but when I read the book, I had a prouder figure in mind, and I feel Mr Jackson did him wrong. Just remember this passage from The Return of the King:

“[Sauron] uses others as his weapons. So do all great lords, if they are wise, Master Halfling. Or why should I sit here in my tower and think, and watch and wait, spending even my sons? For I can still wield a brand.’

He stood up and cast open his long black cloak, and behold! he was clad in mail beneath, and girt with a long sword, great hilted in a sheath of black and silver. ‘Thus I have walked, and thus now for many years have I slept,’ he said, ‘lest with age the body should grow soft and timid.’”

Actually, the fact that Denethor, unlike Théoden, did not endanger the rule of his realm by riding forth himself and risking to be killed makes him already the better ruler. He may have despaired at the seeming impossibility of victory, but he didn't ride forth to a bitter ending like Théoden. (This conflict of the personalities of a capable ruler and an admirable hero dominates the second part of Beowulf, of which, as I am sure you know, Tolkien was a great student and in which he possibly revived literary interest with his essay The Monsters and the Critics.)

And finally, I suppose having Númenórean blood gives Denethor enough plot armour in Tolkien's works not to die by the hand of a mere Northman.