Why didn't Denethor...

[Måns]

CROTTE! I just posted a long and good post on Denethor and for once, I hadn't misplaced any letters. Well, got ot try to write what I remember.

I don't think that he felt unworthy, only that he had made the wrong decisions, he was too proud to see any such basic fault in himself. He sure recognized and admitted when he had been wrong, hence the talk about the drink he had made himself after Boromir's death. I think it was a sense of having failed, eh saw, in light of the past, that his government had been a failure, refering to Gondor's waning strength and unability to effectively reply to the blatant offences of Mordor. He thoguht that he and the preceding Stewards had been wisemen to a too great degree nad not decisive enoguh, but he always believed in military victory until the end. Thus he speaks about leaving the Stewards crown to his elder son, which I interpret as a wish of preserving the realm for Boromir who was a strengthy man who he thought could handle Mordor. He was, as we know, wrong, Sauron could not be defeated by force, and if it was so, the victory would have been no good since it could only have been with methods alien to good. He did not see that the preservation of Gondor and the Steward's reign could not come at any price. Denethor saw his fundamental failure as a failure of character only in some ways, he did not think himself unworthy, What he did was "realizing" that he was not the right kind of Steward fro these tiems and hoped for his son who was unlike him. While Faramir, who did posess an undoubtable courage and skill in leadership, was not the military commander his brother was, nor was he as confident. This deficit was "made up" by the fact that he was a totally superior scholar and wiseman. In Aragron, these virtues were combined, no wonder he was the one that became King!

Måns (This time with a not as good post or as few misplacements [img]smilies/rolleyes.gif[/img] )