Would you have wanted to live in Minas Ithil?
 

Before Minas Ithil was emptied of its people and then taken over by the Nazgul who would have actually wanted to live there? I mean its not like you had no where better to go. You had the great capital Osgilliath, strong Minas Anor, the green fields of Lebennin, the fairest place in the entire realm just down the road in Ithilien so why would you to choose to live in a city where many people seemed to mysteriously vanish when they strayed into the mountains? Even without Sauron I'm sure the Mountains of Shadow merited their name literally and figuratively and in Minas Ithil you were surrounded by them. It just seems to have been a very depressing place to live. Do you think the people living there were serfs and were forced to by the lords of the city because that is the only reason I can think of for choosing to live there.

Gondor would have offered all sorts of tax- and welfare-benefits to entice folk there (and, of course, to stop them leaving). A bit like the Western Isles. :D

But why would the government want to keep people in the Western Isles?

And, to be slightly on topic, in Minas Ithil?

The two have much in common actually. Dark, water separates them from the main part of the Kingdom, quite far from anywhere reasonably densely habitated...

Nostalgia, maybe. They don't want the towns (a.k.a Minas Ithil) to become ghost towns. Actually, maybe the Gondor administration didn't care too much; and look what happened there.

Take note Blair: the darkness will fall upon thy land in the deepest darkest corner. Angband, Mordor, Hebrides, so the prophecy went.

Well...I go to the Western Isles, or a Western Isle, Colonsay, twice a year, and I doubt I'll ever stop...

I would suggest that the citizens of Minas Ithil were in a rather more extreme version of that position (viz. they actually lived there all year round, as do crofters etc). They were bound my history, tradition and love to their native city, and to them, however grim the mountains, they were their mountains.

Not unlike my attitude to Oxford actually. It's small, hopelessly provincial, grey, dismal, and the air is incredibly unhealthy reducing me to a coughing, sneezing wreck much of the time, but I couldn't envisage living anywhere else, though ironically enough I go to boarding school and so do live somewhere else...

I always knew it was grim up north :p First time I went to Scotland it rained for all but one morning over 2 weeks... second time it barely got light....(Aviemore ..November :rolleyes: )..it was rather more photogenic than I imagined Mordor ..