Aragorn's assertiveness

[Kuruharan]

Originally Posted by Leaf

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.

Personally I do find it plausible that successive generations of Chieftains of the Dunedain did feel constrained by the prophecy. I think that would be in keeping with the setting that Tolkien intended to create.

From a practical standpoint, there were a number of considerations against it. Politically, Gondor was too stable until the time of the War of the Ring for the prospect of an unknown rustic from the North to come in and claim the throne to have any appeal for the Gondorians themselves. The issue of a Northern claimant to the throne of Gondor had been decisively defeated for that epoch with the rejection of Arvedui. It is noteworthy that Aragorn emphasized being Elendil's heir rather than just Isildur's, probably to avoid the problem Arvedui experienced.

Also, for the most part the Chieftains of the Dunedain were concerned with the survival of their small people and had little time to spare for larger ambitions.

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.

Can't argue too much with that. Sometimes we just have to recall that Tolkien hadn't figured out everything by the time he wrote the books.

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

Perhaps, but it is very much in keeping with the heroic mode that was Tolkien's inspiration. Great peril arises -> hero arises to vanquish the peril -> hero sets world to rights