[Leaf]

Originally Posted by Kuruharan

While I don't necessarily disagree with your point, why do you think he had such a drive to become King of Gondor? He had many ancestors that had the same claim as he did but none of them made any attempt to make it good. Was it love of Arwen? Could be, but honestly the reason why the opportunity arose was because of the War of the Ring. Given the circumstances surrounding the situation and the opportunity the war provided, it could be argued that it was his destiny.

I could never find a satisfactory answer to your question. As you say, theoretically every forefather could have tried to claim their right to the throne of Gondor. Your proposal makes sense since we know that appareantly there's a prophecy about the Return of the King:

'...for it was spoken of old among us that it [Narsil] should be made again when the Ring, Isildur’s Bane, was found.'

I think it's fair to extrapolate from the re-forging of Narsil to the re-taking of the arnorian/gondorian throne. But I really don't like the implications of this. This would imply that the believe in this prophecy was so strong that every prospective pretender to the throne would act accordingly and sit tight, giving up their chance to power because the time hasn't come yet. Given all the generations of potential claimants this seems too idealistic to me. It also seems strange to me that there was an expectation that Sauron's Ring will (with absolute certainty) be found again. This makes Gandalf's blunder regarding Bilbos magic ring even more surprising.

I think that the conjunction of the ring-story and the king-story is one of Tolkiens weaker designs.

Originally Posted by Kuruharan

However, I do disagree with your interpretation of Aragorn's motives in this. I do not think he was annoyed or put out by his duty to the Ring quest any more than Frodo or Sam, who also frequently wanted to return to the Shire. Of course they all wanted to be off doing something else that they wanted to do. The quest was a miserable experience. But the fate of the world was literally hanging in the balance. I have no doubt that had circumstances been different, Aragorn would have gone up Mount Doom with Frodo on his back if need be.

I do agree with you and I apologize for the lax wording. I just wanted to point out that Gandalf's death was a drawback to Aragorn's initial planning.