This is why I said "aside from 1E" it was not a defining feature. Yes, I've lookd at 1E.
In the case of 1E, yes, the "favored enemy" was a big character feature, but the Ranger's character features overall made no sense in relation to each other. After that, they bore more relevance to each other, but favored enemy degraded in importance.
In 1e, the default 'Giant class' bonus was vs actual giants, the DM could optionally expand it. If he didn't, and you were playing through anything other than the 'Against the Giants' series of modules, chances were that feature was not at all defining.
The Ranger's tracking features was a lot more unique and defining.
After 1e, it varied. Favored Enemy was a central feature of the 3.x ranger, arguably /among/ it's defining features (along with animal companion and the twf/archery choice). Skills were not /that/ defining, since the player could distribute ranks as he liked. In 4e, there was no favored enemy, the Ranger chose an individual enemy to focus on in each encounter.
If you want to identify a feature or feature of the ranger that was there in all editions, Favored Enemy isn't it.
Aragorn has nothing to do with D&D and that isn't a relevant commonality for purposes of designing a D&D class. "Looks like X fantasy character" is not the desired endstate for the Ranger or any other class.
It was not explicit at the time 1E was played - it was not mentioned in the PHB, and at the time that 2E succeeded it the internet as a common public facility was still several years off. Most players would have been unaware of that.
We weren't all living in caves before the internet. It was extremely common knowledge among D&Ders that D&D borrowed heavily from Tolkien - to the extent that the Tolkien estate sued TSR. The Aragorn-Ranger connection was painfully obvious.
Personally, I prefer D&D when the majority of PCs are not spellcasters.
That is the more common case in genre, for instance, yes.
I was esctatic when 4E delivered a new archetype for a mundane martial character: the warlord. It expanded the range for the first time in quite a while. I can dream of a D&D where at least half the core classes are mostly mundane: barbarian, fighter, knight, monk, ranger, rogue, warlord... I also realize that it's never been the case that most classes, or even half the classes couldn't use spells.
On release, the 4e PH1 presented 8 classes. Only two of them (Wizard & Warlock) technically cast spells (Paladins & Clerics using "Prayers" that included weapon attacks as well as implement powers that more closely resembled spells). So you had, for a little while, a D&D where half the classes were martial and didn't have magic as a class feature, at all. There were also 18 'builds' - the Warlock and Wizard had 3 each, for Six explicitly-spell-casting builds; the Cleric & Paladin each had a STR build that used weapon powers and an implement build that was more like caster, while the 4 martial classes each had two builds - so, depending on how you sliced it, there were as few as 6 spell-casting builds, or as many as 10 non-martial builds. But, 10 weapon builds and 8 implement builds would have been just as fair, and put the former in the majority.
Obviously, that state of affairs didn't last long.
But the core of the reason, to answer your question, is that when magic is rarer among PCs, then magic is a more powerful force in the story of the campaign.
Very true. The more ubiquitous magic is - the more it's available as a cheap commodity (like 3.x potions & wands), or as a renewable PC resource (like daily Vancian spells) - the less-wondrous/more-mundane it feels. In 5e, rest-recharge spell resources are so common (~30 of 38 builds), that a martial resource like the Battlemaster's maneuvers could almost be less mundane than spells (if maneuvers weren't so lackluster, that is).
