Also not to be emotional about Boromir on this fine Saturday afternoon but I feel like something people often miss is that, in terms of his Adopting Hobbits tendencies, he needs Merry and Pippin WAY more than they need him. Boromir’s spent his whole life with Gondor riding on his shoulders; you can see it in the way he talks at the Council. Cause he’s good at protecting his people! When LotR begins, Boromir is significantly responsible for Gondor standing still strong against Mordor, and so he makes it his identity. He doesn’t see himself as a three-dimensional individual, he sees himself entirely in terms of Gondor and his service to it.
But then, with the Fellowship, not only is he not in charge, he’s the weakest link. And that’s so utterly alien and terrifying to him. You spend your whole life as a public servant, your father’s favor is obviously determined by your success at war, of course you put all your self-worth into providing for others. And suddenly Boromir finds himself incapable of providing, precisely because of all his experience. To Boromir, the war is too personal to conceptualize on the large scale. His love for and desire to protect Minas Tirith, Osgiliath, the Hobbits, etc blinds him to the overarching mission of saving Middle Earth. This also manifests wrt the Ring: its draw on him is so strong because he wants so badly to use its power to protect. “This powerful weapon must not be used” is a lot harder to accept when you’ve been fighting a desperate war your whole life, y'know? And “your desire to protect is making you weaker” is hard to hear when you ascribe the entirety of your self-worth to that protectiveness.
Merry and Pippin, though certainly not battle-hardened, get by alright on their own! But protecting them gives Boromir a sense of usefulness. Teaching them a bit of swordplay, keeping them warm on Caradhras, laughing with them even under the eye of the enemy - Boromir clings to these things, because they give him a sense of worth. In the midst of his confusion and worry, taking care of someone grounds him. He may be frustrated with their mission and Aragorn’s choices, he may feel that he’d be of more use on the front lines with Gondor’s armies, but here is one small way he can do good.
And in the end, it’s what makes him such a damn good tragic hero. The man who’s kept Gondor’s lines standing for years dies failing to protect two halflings who, in the grand scheme of things, are fairly inconsequential. But could it have gone any other way? Boromir doesn’t do the grand scheme of things. His love is so personal and passionate that he’ll undercut the mission and his own life to save what’s near and dear to him - it’s the very strength of his love that brings his death.
+ I also think, in true tragic fashion, that he realizes all this in the moment between downfall and death. That war has scarred him so deeply, he doesn’t know how to live for peace. That the hands of a king must be the hands not of a warrior, who defends from what is without, but a healer, who nurtures that which is within.
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