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1 day agoThe line of stewards were kings in all but name as a hereditary monarchical position with all the duties and authority of the king. They theoretically had to give up power if a member of the royal family ever came back to claim the throne, but Aragorn wasn’t exactly chomping at the bit to do so and only took over after Denethor killed himself with his two heirs being either dead or too injured to lead. The stewards had ruled Gondor for over a thousand years and a well liked one could have easily gotten the people behind them to reject Aragorn’s claim and formally taken the title of king.
This is a much bigger part of it than a lot of people in this thread seem to think. A lot of these diseases were extinct or close to it in the US and people have forgotten how deadly they are. The worst viral infection a lot of these people have ever seen is either a bad cold or a mild case of influenza. A good number of the younger ones have never even seen chickenpox.
It’s like people who try to pet wild animals because they’ve only ever interacted with domesticated ones and thought they were all like that.