The Middle Earth Popularity Cup

[Ibrîniðilpathânezel]

++Gandalf

There is no contest in this for me, regardless of who he's up against. When you're a much abused kid and you have to turn to books for a proper role-model, the one who provides it will forever have a more than merely special place in your heart. That consideration aside, Gandalf is at turns rather predictable and astonishingly unpredictable. And when the war was over, though he was largely responsible for moving the free peoples toward victory, he didn't go around hogging credit. He did the job he was sent to do, and when it was done, he surrendered his stewardship without any apparent regret or complaint. "Well done, thou good and faithful servant." Would that our so-called "public servants" did their jobs half so well, with half as much humility.

That said, Elrond's a good steward, too, but he did not have to bear the weight of the future of all Middle-earth as Gandalf did. He also did what was needed (and perhaps asked) of him, and did it well. There likely would have been no king to whom Gandalf could surrender his stewardship, but for Elrond; even so, without Gandalf, there would have been no Middle-earth free of Sauron's threat for that king to rule.

Rather an unfair match-up, I think, but it does not change my vote.