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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Aldarc" data-source="post: 8087995" data-attributes="member: 5142">This is kinda the whole "only those who are humble enough to think they are unworthy are actually worthy" trope. The world definitely thrusts kingship on him though. "Want to marry my daughter Arwen? Be king of Gondor and Arnor." "Want to draw Sauron out? Show Sauron that Isildur's heir lives." "Want to save Gondor? Walk the Path of the Dead as the royal wielder of Narsil/Anduril." "Want to save the lives of these injured people? Use your healing hands as foretold of the king."This comes up during the Council of Elrond. There is NEVER a "will he/won't he" with Aragorn's story becoming king. It's simply a matter that he will. And given the name of the third book, it's not exactly a surprise.Gandalf crowning Aragorn as King Elessar isn't exactly subtle. Nor are any of the other aforementioned signs of kingship. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />Aragorn actually gets Anduril soon after the Council of Elrond. As for objects and such of destiny, see above.But the entire point is that the morals we are primarily seeing him exerting are his own on those of society around him. He is the outsider. It's him imposing his values on the social values around him.I suspect that you are likely missing a not so subtle difference in scale between the characters in Middle Earth and the Dresden characters in Chicago. But if we look at characters in historical epics, there is likely a hint at the sort of characters and scale that commonly feature in epic poetry or prose: King Gilgamesh of Ur, King Beowulf of Geatland, King Odysseus of Ithaca, Prince Achilles of Phthia, and King Arthur. We are often dealing with characters who are operating on the scale of kingdoms, nations, and tribes.Going to science fiction we can similarly see this sort of scale in Space Operas such as Dune (e.g., Duke Leto Atreides, Baron Harkonnen, Padishah Emperor, etc.), Star Wars (Princess Leia, Emperor Palpatine, Queen Amidala, General Kenobi, etc.), Barsoom (Princess Dejah Thoris, Jeddak Tar Tarkas, Princess Thuvia, etc.), or even Flash Gordon (e.g., Emperor Ming the Merciless, Princess Aura, Prince Barin, Prince Vulton, etc.).Note: I am not saying this is distinct from S&S, because there are characters like King Conan, King Krull, or Emperor Elric, but there are also some important differences between this set. Conan does not become king by divine providence or fate, but takes it through his own hands. Whereas Elric was intentionally written as an anti-Conan who would lose his empire by his own hands. Yeah, it's almost as if epic fantasy has other common features that contribute to the genre, and epic scale is only one such feature. But that would require reading what other people have written and contextualizing their arguments appropriately through good faith readings. However, let's rid ourselves of the ridiculous reductionist take here that this amounts to "This story has a lot of important characters, and those characters have a backstory." Or maybe we can say that there is no difference between the noir genre and teenage monster romance genre because both feature stories with beginnings, middles, and ends. But such reductionism would obviously be intellectually dishonest. So we should likewise avoid reducing the argument about characters fitting in settings with grand historical scale to simply "The story has a lot of important characters, and those characters have a backstory." In fact, maybe one should refrain from making further bad takes on arguments in the future? They are not particularly conducive to fruitful discussions.</blockquote>

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