Early in “The Black Gate Opens”–chapter 10 of The Return of the King, the concluding book in The Lord of the Rings trilogy–Aragorn and the forces of Man make their way to the entrance of Mordor for their final stand against Sauron, in a last-ditch effort to distract the Eye from Frodo and Samwise making their way up to Mount Doom. As they proceed, the heralds cry out: “The Lords of Gondor are come!  Let all leave this land or yield them up!”  To which Imrahil suggests, “Say not The Lords of Gondor.  Say The King Elessar.   For that is true, even though he has not yet sat upon the throne; and it will give the Enemy more thought, if the heralds use that name” (198).  Then, before the Black Gate itself, the heralds again cry, “Let the Lord of the Black Land come forth!  Justice shall be done upon him.  For wrongfully he has made war upon Gondor and wrested its lands.  Therefore the King of Gondor demands that he should atone for his evils, and depart forever” (201).  In each case, the rights of the legitimate King are invoked, and this feels integral to me.

For a thing that quietly gnawed at me throughout my most recent re-read of The Lord of the Rings is why it was so imperative, so essential, to Tolkien, that there be a King that Returns.  There have been occasional hints of Christian apocalyptic allegory here and there throughout the trilogy, as the King appears to be a type for the coming Messiah, but nothing that rises to the level of his colleague C.S. Lewis’s Chronicle of Narnia; on the whole, Aragorn hasn’t felt too much like a Christ-like analogue, but simply the heir to a restored Monarchy after a particularly long interregnum.

One might argue that Tolkien’s infatuation with the Monarchy is just another way of saying he’s English–but then, the English have had a really fraught relationship with their Kings!  From King John forced to sign the Magna Carta in 1215 and the legends of Robin Hood, to the Peasant Revolt of 1381, to Jack Cade’s rebellion of 1450, to the War of the Roses and Guy Fawkes and the English Civil War and Charles I’s beheading and the American Revolution (which is best understood as a bunch of Englishmen once again trying to kill their King) and the Sex Pistols sneering “God Save the Queen” in the ‘70s (“she ain’t no human being!”) and The Smiths singing “The Queen is Dead” in the ‘80s and Prince Charles’ motorcade being attacked during the 2011 London riots with shouts of “Off with his head,” the English have a long and bloody history of always trying to get rid of their monarchy!   That the British Monarchy is one of the few surviving left on Earth is one of the supremest ironies of history.

Even in Tolkien’s time, the monarchy had already been reduced to a figure-head arrangement, the real power lying primarily with Parliament, the forces of Democracy having largely won their victories, the term “constitutional monarchy” coined as a polite way to say that the Monarchy is allowed to stick around primarily due to institutional inertia.  There is certainly nothing Messianic about the British Crown.

Yet there is about Aragorn’s.  I’ve been trying to put my finger on why, because it just seems so odd for a book all about challenging the absolute rule of a dictator should simultaneously celebrate the rise of a Monarch; the cognitive dissonance is astounding.  But I think this chapter rather off-handedly explains the appeal of a King to Tolkein: “For wrongfully he has made war upon Gondor and wrested its lands.”  Quite simply, Sauron has no rights to Gondor–or the rest of Middle-Earth for that matter–because the King is asserting his claims.  That the King still largely lacks the military-apparatus necessary to enforce said claims is beside the point: for what Aragorn represents is not that hereditary monarchy is an ideal form of government (I highly doubt that even Tolkein seriously believed that), but rather that there is a proper order, that the current rule of darkness is not the way things are supposed to be. King Aragorn does not merely challenge Sauron’s power, but his legitimacy.

Although, as a red-blooded American, I have even less interest in a Monarch than the British, I have as of late found a strange sort of solace in wanting to say to the gathering forces of darkness, you have no rights here.  You do no belong here, you are not the way things are supposed to be.  There is just this sense that something has been usurped–not a Kingship per se, but an overall order wherein cruelty and viciousness are not allowed to run amok unchecked.  That, I believe, more than any mere nostalgia for some chivalrous past that never actually existed, is the real appeal of Aragorn to Tolkein–this idea that evil can be checked by a proper claimant who can order it off its property. 

Which in turn perhaps explains Gandalf’s own boldness before the Mouth of Sauron.  The White Wizard snatches Sam and Frodos’ accouterments from the Mouth quite simply because they do not belong to him; they are not his to offer nor to bandy about nor to keep.  Gandalf then calls Sauron a haggler, a base master of treachery, and the Mouth a slave.  These are not random insults, but cutting jabs intended to mark the Dark Lord as just another thuggish low-life trying to basely steal what isn’t his; Sauron may still be able to force things from you like a common mugger, or haggle with you like some back-alley swindler, but nevertheless he still has no legitimate claims to anything that actual Free Men may possess.  The Mouth of Sauron himself must feel this, because after Gandalf snatches away Frodo and Sams’ garments, he ceases all his mocking laughter and swiftly retreats to the Black Gate with his tail between his legs, to take refuge in Mordor’s numbers because he can’t take any in its claims.

This whole idea, that evil has no real claims to this world, that it can be evicted, is an empowering one, and can help to muster your forces and courage and righteous indignation, even when you feel outnumbered.