Once again banging my drum about absurdly long fantasy novel timelines: why does everyone in Gondor talk about how great it would be to have a king when they haven't had one in like 1000 years canonically?
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Honestly, though, its not that farfetched considering they don't have gunpowder. Tech tends to stagnate for loooooong periods of time. And plate armor lasted literal centuries, my dude. There were still soldiers in plate during the early years of WWI...
But not cannons/firearms. Like I said, tech stagnates. It's only since the start of industrialization thanks to steam power that we've been seeing large, fast advances - and ancient Greeks had primitive steam engines.
"We had a king once, so Manwë must want us to have a king again."
The stewards didn't believe there could be another king, so if they set up the kingship as the alternative to the stewardship people wouldn't think there was a third choice.
I don't disagree. I think Tolkien was doing it to kind of hint that some stuff in the legendarium might be strictly mythological before he took a late turn away from that but EVERY fantasy writer adopts it whole hog and it's like... what's wrong with something being 250 years?
tbh Tolkien probably did it because he realized that the original timeline wasn't realistic enough for the vowel shift he wanted to incorporate into southern westron or something
Literally the line that inspired the post... which like I get that it is drawing an intentional parallel between Aragon and Jesus Christ but it pulled me out of the story!
Working out how long it made logical sense to have passed between the collapse of the demigod rulers who kept things in stasis and a kind of steampunky/jazz age society made me pull my hair out.
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Plate armor lasted thirty years, guys; platform shoes lasted longer.
The Chinese had gunpowder 5000 years ago.
"We had a king once, so Manwë must want us to have a king again."
The stewards didn't believe there could be another king, so if they set up the kingship as the alternative to the stewardship people wouldn't think there was a third choice.
200 years? no, too short. 700 years? too long!