[Faramir Jones]

This is a very interesting topic; but I'd first like to give my contribution to one thing that has also been discussed here:

Theoden's popularity: Tolkien wrote in the essay 'The Battles of the Fords of Isen' in Unfinished Tales that Theoden's health began to fail 'early in 3014'. Before this sickness, he had been 'much loved by all his kin and people'.

There had been unpopular kings in Rohan before. Theoden's grandfather and predecessor, Fengel, was 'not remembered with praise'. He was 'greedy of food and of gold, and at strife with his marshals, and with his children'. His son Thengel therefore went to Gondor and served the Steward. He married a Gondorian woman, and their eldest children, including Theoden, were born there.

It appears that while Fengal might have been a bad king, he was probably not a tyrant, doing things that were 'unconstitutional'. The legitimacy of his rule was not in doubt. Presumably, this was also the case regarding Theoden under Grima's influence. He, at the latter's instigation, probably gave orders that, while unpopular, were not illegal. (Grima, or rather his true master, was too clever to make such an obvious error.)

Gondorian patriotism: Looking at patriotism in general in The Lord of the Rings, I feel that Gondorians, their country being the nearest to a twentieth-century nation-state in the book, did have a sense of patriotism. They and previous generations had, after all, been fighting Sauron for millennia. Tolkien made it clear in his Letters that Sauron ‘desired to be a God-king…;if he had been victorious he would have demanded divine honour from all rational creatures and absolute temporal power over the whole world’.

Early on in the book, Boromir pointed out that by the Gondorians' valour ‘alone are peace and freedom maintained in the lands behind us, bulwark of the West.’ When Galdor spoke of the ‘waning might of Gondor’, he was rebuked by Boromir: ‘Gondor wanes, you say. But Gondor stands, and even the end of its strength is still very strong.’

This pride in Gondor is also seen in Faramir, who says that while war was necessary, he only loved what it defended, ‘the city of the Men of Númenor; and I would have her loved for her memory, her ancientry, her beauty, and her present wisdom.’ Tolkien said that Faramir was the character most like him.

This pride also existed among Gondorians in general, seen when Beregond, an ordinary soldier, told Pippin, ‘we have this honour: ever we bear the brunt of the chief hatred of the Dark Lord, for that hatred comes out of the depths of time and over the deeps of the Sea’.

Gondor was also sophisticated enough to distinguish between the kingdom and the king, still enduring as a state despite having a vacant throne, the kings’ hereditary chief ministers ruling as hereditary regents, experienced in person by Pippin in Book 5, Chapter I, when he arrives in Minas Tirith. When he agreed to swear allegiance, he first swore ‘fealty and service to Gondor’.

There also appears to be a song that resembles a national anthem, sung by Aragorn:

Gondor! Gondor, between the Mountains and the Sea!
West Wind blew there; the light upon the Silver Tree
Fell like bright rain in gardens of the Kings of old.
O proud walls! White towers! O wingéd crown and throne of gold!
O Gondor, Gondor! Shall men behold the Silver Tree,
Or West Wind blow again between the mountains and the Sea?

Among these references to Gondor’s geographical location and national symbols, there is also a reference to the Silver Tree. In 2852 T.A., the White Tree died; and because no seedling could be found, the ‘Dead Tree’ was ‘left standing’. Aragorn had earlier served in disguise King Thengel of Rohan and Ecthelion II of Gondor. The song may be a composition of Aragorn’s, or a partial and complete composition by another. If the second, the song may have been written after the death of that White Tree, looking back to happier times before the event, when Gondor was stronger, and wondering if they would return again.

While it is nowhere described as a national anthem, that song is of such a nature and Gondor is such an 'advanced' state that the possibility exists of the latter having a national anthem.