If Denethor hadn't committed suicide

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by PrinceOfTheHalflings

Maybe if it was obvious to Denethor that everybody else supported Aragorn then Denethor might have chosen suicide. He clearly didn't want to be Aragorn's Steward and I'm not sure the Aragorn would have wanted him either.

Why such a drastic solution? Even from the brief outline above, I could very well see a possible outcome: Denethor simply resigning and, bitterly, retreating into hiding, an old man forgotten by everyone. Aragorn would have probably offered him at least a nice house in the mountains, maybe in Ithilien, but whether Denethor would have accepted or not is another thing. I imagine him a bit like Saruman, in the sense of a broken man whose world has been shaken and destroyed utterly and who does not know what to do, with the difference that Denethor would not really hate Aragorn, or be so full of hate, after all, it's been victory. He would be just old and sad and bitter, one of those to whom the end of an Age would seem like the end of the world they knew and the beginning of something they do not understand. He will pass into shadows and eventually just disappear, die maybe a few years later, somewhat forgotten. I can already see Aragorn at his funeral and Gandalf giving speech to the Hobbits about him on the way home, something like "he was a great man, but his time has passed and he was bitterly aware of that, yet his wisdom (etc...) after all it was his strength which held Mordor at bay for for half a century..." or something like that. Just try to imagine it, if I try, it's almost appearing in front of my eyes!