[Keeper of Dol Guldur]

I had practically written an essay on this post ... but I accidentally pressed backspace while not in the text box, lost the whole thing, and am very sad about it now.

It's in my opinion, that as far as the Sins and Virtues go, there are seven of each for a reason. Balance.

They balance each other out perfectly. In the same regard, a few of them cancel other ones out.

In Boromir, we see pride, envy and lust. He only lost his temper once, which threw him off balance quite literally, going from 3 out of 7 Sins to 4 out of 7, which is over half. But since he kept a cool head almost all the time, I wouldn't call him angry.

As far as virtues go, all men of Gondor have faith in the Valar. Faith in the quest ... is another thing. He probably had faith in Frodo, but didn't have any hope of Frodo getting into Mordor, let alone to Mount Doom. He'd seen the place, he knew the odds ...

But Boromir was charitable, steadfast (fortitude), righteous (justice) and always kept his cool (except just once). He was also pretty keen on prudence. Since Gandalf didn't counsel prudence, and the whole idea of trying to sneak into Mordor and destroy the ring went against all common sense, we can't even say the quest was prudent.

He had 3 out of 7 of the Deadly Sins, but he had 6 out of 7 of the Heavenly Virtues. When he lost his cool with Frodo, and bumped up to 4 Sins, he lost a little bit of fortitude, and temperance, knocking virtue down to 4. Still, he never really got into the realm of sin any of our key villains attained and held.

I think it's important to mention that Sloth didn't really exist before electricity and all of our other modern comforts. The laziest person in Middle Earth was probably Bombur, who was so fat, that he was carried around. Dwarves seemed most prone to Sloth. But everybody had to do all sorts of basic things, just to stay alive. Sloth just wasn't prudent.

The most sloth came in the form of Lords staying in their towers, ruling from a safe place, and actually ... that was prudent. Even so, Sauron, Saruman, Denethor, Elrond, Celeborn ... they didn't sit around on thrones all the time. There were things to be done.