Huh, I suppose it depends which dictionary you read - my heinemann and OED both specify "cruelty" as a trait. Anyway, this is turning into a bit of a moot, sorry I got it all bogged down in semantics. Hoom hoom.
For me, the key factor here is that Tolkien is writing a folklore as if it was an ancient text , and is making it as realistic as possible - very little ancient literature of this sort would dare question a king, because it would result in the poet waking up very very dead, if for no other reason. Unless it was a foreign enemy king, but then they would not be endowed with Aragorn's valour and loyalty beforehand.
Finally, this is sort of stating the obvious, but it's useful to remember that The Lord Of The Rings is - supposedly - taken from Frodo's account of his own journey there and back again. Frodo is unlikely to be at all critical of Aragorn, and Tolkien is equally unlikely to distort what is written in the Red Book.
bombariffic
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The 'hum' generated by an electric car is not in fact the noise of the engine, but that of the driver's self-righteousness oscillating at a high frequency.
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