It’s fair to say that Tolkien was a royalist. Although he rarely discussed his political views in detail in his correspondence, in a letter to his son Christopher in 1943 he wrote, “My political opinions lean more and more to Anarchy (philosophically understood, meaning the abolition of control not whiskered men with bombs)—or to ‘unconstitutional’ Monarchy.” This apparently contradictory position reflects Tolkien’s dislike of people who felt themselves suited to “bossing others around”, as he put it. Tolkien opposed what we might today call “government overreach”, but he also liked the idea of a person holding ultimate authority who never asked for it—or better yet, never even wanted it; this, in Tolkien’s view, was the best possible qualification for a leader to possess. This formed the basis of Tolkien’s fondness for hereditary monarchy.

Do we see these ideals reflected in Tolkien’s work? One could argue that the homeland of the hobbits in Middle-Earth, the Shire, represents just about the closest thing we get in the books to Tolkien’s ideal society. Certainly, there are grander and richer civilisations, from Gondolin to Númenor to Arnor, but each of these suffers from corruption, infighting and ultimately collapse. The Shire is where Tolkien’s main heroes hail from, and as an idealised version of rural England, clearly possesses a sentimental value to Tolkien. What’s more, the Shire is governed in a manner quite similar to Tolkien’s description of his ideal government. Owing its allegiance to a far-off king who has little to do with it, the Shire has little in the way of formal government, yet it is an orderly society. The highest authority in the Shire is the king’s representative, the Thain. The Thain is very much like the king of Tolkien’s quasi-anarchist society—although the hereditary position is respected, it carries little actual power except in times of military threat.

Although this ideal of a libertarian monarchy might bear little resemblance to how most actual monarchies have functioned in history, the underlying principle is recognisable in the way Britain’s modern constitutional monarchy works. Most of the queen’s actual authority is delegated to her ministers, but she remains the theoretical source of all legitimate authority in the UK, and by simply occupying that position, denies it to anyone else. A similar parallel might be drawn with the position of the Japanese emperor, who through most of history held little real power but was still, like the Thain in the Shire, recognised as the ultimate source of all authority and a symbol of unity for the Japanese people. Japan is unusual in that it has been governed by the same patrilineal line for its whole recorded history—traditional accounts are believed, since the 7th century BC. The Japanese imperial family are regarded in Japan’s traditional religion as descendants of the Sun Goddess, Amaterasu-Omikami.

This reflects another theme regarding royalty that we see in Tolkien’s work. Royalty, in both the real world and in Arda, have historically been seen as “special” in some way that sets them apart from the ordinary subject. Japan’s emperors were not alone in being perceived as of divine heritage. As a professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford, Tolkien would have been aware that the pre-Christian kings of Essex claimed descent from the Germanic god Woden. Of course, the idea that kingship possesses a sacred or priestly element is not inherently linked to a divine bloodline. So important was the religious aspect of kingship to many ancient cultures that both Athens and Rome, having done away with monarchical rule, appointed officials whose duties were to carry out the religious role previously occupied by their kings. In Rome, this individual was the “king of the sacred”, the rex sacrorum; in Athens, he was one of the city’s three senior officials, titled as “archons” or rulers, and known as the archon basileus- roughly translated, the “kingly ruler”.

How is this special status shown in Tolkien’s depictions of royalty? The idea that royal bloodlines are in some sense special is reflected in the greatly extended lifespans of the kings of Númenor, and later of Arnor and Gondor, which result from their elven ancestry. Technically this royal line also possesses something akin to “divine” ancestry, being descended from Melian the Maia through her daughter Lúthien. The maiar are of course the lesser of the two orders of ainur, who seem modelled on the gods of Germanic mythology but are more like angelic beings in Tolkien’s monotheistic cosmology. The importance to Gondorians of the king being drawn from this traditional bloodline is highlighted in an anecdote shared by Faramir in The Two Towers; asked by his son Boromir how long a time must pass before a Steward of Gondor could become king, the Steward Denethor II replied, “a few years, maybe, in other places of less royalty … In Gondor, ten thousand years would not suffice.”

The perception of royalty as having special status did not end with the advent of Christianity. Christian rulers presented themselves as having a special mandate to rule from God, an idea that is preserved in the style of the modern British monarchy— “by grace of God of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland Queen.” However, the Christian idea of the ideal king contrasts from the semi-divine status of many pagan rulers in that Christian monarchs were recognised as human and expected to possess flaws. The most prominent example of an ideal king in Christian and Jewish tradition was King David, presented in the Bible as ruler of the United Kingdom of Israel and Judah. David is for the most part a just and wise king, and is portrayed as having been selected specifically by God to rule, giving him a supernatural mandate and special status similar to that of other rulers I’ve discussed. However, he is not perfect or superhuman. David’s flawed nature is best shown in 2 Samuel 11, where David becomes infatuated with Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite—a soldier in David’s army, which is currently fighting a war away from Jerusalem. David commits adultery with Bathsheba, and then conspires to hide the truth when Bathsheba becomes pregnant, by summoning Uriah back to Jerusalem in the hope that he will lie with his wife and consequently believe the child to be his own. When Uriah fails to do so, however, refusing to return to his home and wife whilst his fellow soldiers remain in the field, David panics and arranges for Uriah to be at the forefront of the fighting when he returns to the front. David’s plan is successful—Uriah dies in battle, along with a great many of David’s soldiers, and David subsequently marries Bathsheba.

David’s actions here are said to displease God and ultimately bring dire consequences upon David and his house, but the narrative’s inclusion in scripture demonstrates that even great rulers are subject to the same vices and flaws as ordinary people. Contrast this to, say, the divine pharaohs of Egypt; when one of Egypt’s greatest pharaohs, Ramesses II, suffered a military setback in his war against the Hittites at the Battle of Kadesh, it was recorded by the Egyptians as a great victory. This was common practice for the Egyptians. This is not to say that recognising rulers as human and fallible was a unique trait of Abrahamic religions; classical mythology, for example, is full of examples of great heroes—kings included—who are nonetheless flawed in significant ways. However, the emphasis on the humanity and fallibility of kings clearly influenced the way medieval Europeans perceived the ideal ruler. For example, when the Anglo-Saxon Bishop Asser was commissioned by King Alfred the Great to write a biography of the latter, likely intended as a propaganda piece, he generally attempted to show his patron in the most positive light possible. Yet, Asser makes a clear reference to Alfred’s lustful tendencies—“in his earliest youth, before he married his wife, he wished to establish his mind in God’s commandments, for he perceived that he could not abstain from carnal desires.”

Rather than simply omit this aspect of Alfred’s life, Asser portrays Alfred’s carnal desires as a challenge that Alfred had to overcome, in this way crafting an image of a great king who was nonetheless very human. Asser also makes reference to Alfred’s chronic illness, thought by many historians to have been Crohn’s disease, similarly portraying this as a challenge the king had to overcome in order to effectively rule his kingdom of Wessex. This contrasts with the tendency of pre-Christian rulers in the ancient Near East, such as the pharaohs, who were always portrayed as physically healthy, youthful and strong; it would not have been appropriate to portray the ruler, a semi-divine being, as being vulnerable to human afflictions such as disease.

Tolkien, as a devout Catholic, similarly presents his royal characters as mortal and fallible. Many kings in Tolkien’s works are shown as possessing great virtues associated with the ideals of kingship, such as valour, wisdom and skill in battle, but also great moral failings. No figure encapsulates this contrast better than Fëanor, High King of the Noldor, possibly the most prominent king in Tolkien’s legendarium. Fëanor is described in the Silmarillion as “the most subtle in mind and most skilled in hand” of all the Noldor, but he was also stubborn and self-centred. Fëanor’s determination to reclaim his greatest creations—the Silmarils—when they are stolen by the first Dark Lord Morgoth, drives him to lead his people out of the Undying Lands back to the elves’ original homeland of Middle-Earth. His obsession, bequeathed to his sons, ultimately drives much of the strife that occurs in the Silmarillion.

Fëanor is followed by other kings whose heroic qualities are balanced with great flaws, a prominent example being Ar-Pharazôn the Golden, the twenty-fifth and last King of Númenor. Ar-Pharazôn is responsible for defeating Sauron, the Dark Lord of Mordor, and taking him back to Númenor in chains; but whilst he is the most powerful of all Númenorean kings, his pride and avarice prove his undoing when Sauron ingratiates himself with the king and the Númenoreans. Under the fallen maia’s influence, Ar-Pharazôn turns against the valar and the supreme being, Eru Ilúvatar Himself, instead worshipping Sauron’s banished master Morgoth. Ultimately Sauron persuades Ar-Pharazôn to sail west to the Undying Lands and claim the eternal life that Sauron claims has been unjustly denied to men. This foolhardy expedition brings doom down upon Númenor, which is destroyed by Ilúvatar as punishment for their hubris. A few faithful Númenoreans escape to establish the kingdoms of Gondor and Arnor in Middle-Earth.

Despite these examples of corrupt kings, Tolkien generally treats monarchy favourably. In The Return of the King, the return of the rightful king of Gondor is treated as a positive event and heralds the dawn of a new golden age for the realms of men in Middle-Earth. Similarly, in The Hobbit two dispossessed heirs are returned to their rightful thrones, heralding a new beginning for their peoples and the return of past glories: Bard, King of Dale, and Thorin, King under the Mountain. Thorin, like his grandfather Thrór, is another example of a king who is flawed despite his many noble characteristics, but although his faults bring hardship on his people, unlike Fëanor and Ar-Pharazôn he ultimately redeems himself and leaves a positive legacy for his people—much like David in the Bible.

Meanwhile, King Bard of Dale can be contrasted with the elected Master of Laketown. The rightful heir to the Lords of Dale, Bard is duty-driven and does not himself seek power; instead he is pronounced king spontaneously by some of the people of Laketown after he slays the dragon Smaug. The Master, on the other hand, is shown as avaricious and covetous of power, which he achieves by swaying the people of Laketown with cunning words. Whilst Bard epitomises many traits Tolkien identifies with the ideal king, the Master represents many of the worst traits of elected politicians. Nonetheless it is notable that at the end of the book, whilst some of its citizens follow Bard to re-establish Dale, Laketown itself continues under its traditional form of governance, even electing a new Master who is described in far more positive terms than his predecessor. This shows that just as there are bad kings in Tolkien’s world, there are good elected leaders. Tolkien’s opposition to elected rulers is thus not doctrinaire. Tolkien’s message here seems to be that no ruling system will always result in good leadership, and Tolkien seems perfectly content for different societies to govern themselves in the way that works best for them.

To conclude, then, Tolkien’s portrayal of royalty in his work draws from his own distrust of democracy and state power. Tolkien portrays royal bloodlines as possessing a special status that sets them apart from their subjects, as has been commonly held by many real-life monarchical societies, and thus having a legitimate right to rule. However, in contrast to many pagan monarchies, kings in Tolkien’s work are not treated as divine or infallible. Instead, Tolkien’s monarchs reflect the biblical and medieval Christian understanding of monarchs as mortals subject to both physical limitations and moral flaws. Despite this, kingship is generally portrayed in a positive light in Tolkien’s works, and above all else, legitimate monarchs are presented as a source of hope and comfort to their people.