Power to the People

[littlemanpoet]

Originally Posted by Lalwendë

Aragorn does have something which seems to be a 'divine right', but how can we call it that if there is no religion? I think he has something which is more of a 'blood right' to be King.

Hear hear!

Originally Posted by Lalwendë

With Tolkien being a Catholic, he would have known that in terms of being one of the 'establishment', he would still have been something of an outsider; when he went to Oxford it was not all that long after the requirement that students be CofE was abolished - 1871. I wonder how he felt about the link between church and state, and if he experienced any sense of being an 'outsider'? I cannot imagine that he would have approved of a theocracy?

I can't either. And I believe that there is an undercurrent of 'outsiderness' as described in Carpenter's biography. If everybody else is CofE, and you're Catholic, both sides of the difference are bound to be aware of it. This does seem to come through in terms of Tolkien's protagonists, too! Bilbo and Frodo were both considered to be 'eccentric', which means of course "outside the circle". So was Aragorn, for that matter! You write what you know.