im sorry but im a shameless aragorn/denethor shipper. do you have any thoughts about how shit would have played out if both denethor and boromir had lived in a universe with past denethor/aragorn? would the old flame rekindle despite the animosity that aragorn claiming the throne would cause? would boromir ever find out that his father had a fling with aragorn, and how would he react if he did find out?
Migraines give me the time to finally sit down and reply to all my inbox but they don’t give me the skill so bare with me but FUCK I’m glad to know there are more Denethor/Aragorn shippers. ANyway, getting to it-
I’m iffy on how much of a relationship Denethor and Thorongil had all those years ago. Denethor’s married to Finduilas early on in that whole timeline, there isn’t much space for anything but a VERY hot and heavy and quick affair. But that definitely does suit them I suppose.
I think I might go for a sort of… they’ve been dancing around each other for a few years and perhaps there’s a very sudden and surprising moment where Aragorn kisses Denethor- man perhaps… just before that last siege on Umbar. They’re both miles and miles from home… this whole intense thing between them is much starker after spending all this close knit and dramatic time together, and Thorongil knows he’s going to be leaving after this, essentially abandoning Denethor.
It all gets too heavy, there’s an illicit kiss in the Captain’s quarters of Denethor’s ship, it lasts too long, they both come out of it knowing for a fact that the other feels the same way. Aragorn’s purpose is achieved, Denethor knows he loves him, and Aragorn knows he’s loved in return. But Denethor is married and this is not something he can do- it’s not even something he can explore! Think about! Despite how important Aragorn has become in his life, how oddly vital his company is, how strangely he’s stepped into this role of a confidante that understands him in a very specific way- Finduilas is also all those things, and she deserves so much better from him. They part ways, it’s more of a goodbye than anything that happens later.
Which makes a meeting between them after the siege at Minas Tirith all the more intense. In this kind of timeline it works best if Boromir was just saved at Parth Galen and followed the three hunters (meaning Denethor never even thinks Boromir’s dead), so you can also add in a juicy little nugget of ‘Aragorn actually did get there in time to save Boromir and took a few arrows for him to boot because it’s Denethor’s son of course he will! He has too!’ So now you have a great deal of emotions to get your teeth into.
Denethor’s suspicious of Aragorn first, but that gets conflicted with tales his son tells of Aragorn saving his life later. And then Aragorn goes and saves Faramir too, it makes it difficult. Aragorn hasn’t changed at all, he even looks like Denethor remembers him. Which adds another knot of discolour to this picture, Denethor does not, Denethor looks ragged, rough edged, powerful but battered and old, despite only being 2 years older than Aragorn. I think there’s a little guilt to it for Aragorn, Denethor’s given up so much of himself just in the defense of Gondor, a kind of sacrifice that Aragorn hasn’t known. Aragorn hadn’t overestimated him precisely, but he’d underestimated how much of a toll it would all take. Perhaps… he should have been here, could he have? Could he have helped? Somehow? He’s not used to doubting himself overmuch, but this…
So they start off with confusion that Denethor decides to deal with by not dealing with it. First they have to make plans for the battle at the Black Gate, which Denethor comes to by the way, ‘At the end of the world, I care little for the will of Kings’ he says. Looking Aragorn in the eye. As he shucks his robes of state and reveals the chain mail he still wears every day. And then there’s a beat where they fight and lead and battle together. Again. It’s like he never left, which is infuriating and uplifting and heartbreaking for the both of them. All this lost time. Yet they still know each other this well. Dreadful!
But it all feeds into that slow break down of barriers for them to finally start talking to each other. They have to discuss the whole kingship thing next, which is just so much time spent together and they’re arguing so much, it’s almost WORRYING, they sound like they’d get to fists at any moment but it never gets there. And Imrahil is never worried, ‘no they were always like that, it’s just how they communicate’ and he’s right, there’s more being said in these fights about policy than either of them want to admit.
So… yes I do think eventually there’s some… ‘emoting’, as much as Denethor hates it. There’s some… hurt. There’s some tenderness. There’s a little hurdling over the inherent heteronormativity. There’s even some… ‘you were missed’ (I missed you) OH it’s so slow. OH it takes so long, way into Aragorn’s kingship and their partnership as King and Steward. Long enough for Arwen to go from curious to confused to shocked to confused again to bored to frustrated and then she falls for Denethor as well to boot. But in the end it settles out, and Denethor eventually decides he’s old enough to allow the wound to his pride of being a ‘secret lover’. Though he’d never admit it.
As for Boromir’s reaction. Hm. I think it would be a shock for Denethor to realise how insightful Boromir is about him. He’ll be trying to hide the relationship, it’s his very personal life, no one needs to know and he doesn’t want them too. Not to mention he has no idea how Boromir would react. Despite the somewhat tolerant period they’re experiencing, it’s not easy, even he struggled with it. Even he’d had prejudices to reject.
But Boromir, who developed his ability to read his father as almost a survival mechanism, can tell something has changed in his life and in his relationship with the king and queen. He wouldn’t pry, but it would be on his mind, it would confuse him, and Denethor would be aware of that. And I do think probably… he would come to realise that the extent of Boromir’s loyalty to him and all the things he carried for him, this very strange relationship they fell into where the war effort was their priority to the exclusion of all else- There’s a realisation that they both know each other too much and yet not at all. Boromir knows exactly what Denethor would advise, how to support him, how to win his wars, but they don’t know how to talk about the things that matter to each other. Denethor has no idea about either of his son’s passions, Boromir least of all since Faramir does tend to be loud about what he feels. It’s wrong. And he wants to resolve it.
So I think in the end he does actually just… tell him. Submit to this mortifying ordeal in order to try and signal that he wants things to change between them. He’s aware it’s a risk, but if he wants Boromir to be open about the risky things, then this is what he has to do.
And oh BOY what a doozey of a conversation for the both of them huh? It’s made an addendum to the end of one of their debriefs, a situation they’re both very comfortable in, even if it means Boromir’s standing before Denethor’s desk in his study when he speaks. Denethor just gets it out in his clear and decisive way that doesn’t brook interruption, but Boromir is in no position to do that anyway. And despite Denethor’s apparent confidence, he begins to worry with how long Boromir has to just stand there, hands clasped behind his back, expression neutral as usual, but obviously struggling with something if his prolonged silence and micro expressions are anything to go by.
In the end Denethor has to just ask if Boromir has some issue with this. Which breaks through his knotted thicket at least, and he answers no, honestly, and yet there’s something… else… Denethor can feel behind it all. Boromir’s ability to simply withstand and rebuff Denethor’s prying has only gotten better with age but there’s still something. Boromir seems somewhat lost, things he wants to say but obviously doesn’t know how to say them to his father specifically. He wants to… comfort him, help him somehow, but there’s something else too. Which again clearly pushes home the realisation that they lost touch somewhere, they stopped knowing each other. Boromir is struggling with something and Denethor couldn’t even begin to tell you what it is. Although later, as he’s considering it, some logical answers come to mind, answers that could change a lot of how he views his son, things that are hard to see him as.
Boromir’s going through the same thing but at a different angle. He’s only surprised at Denethor’s reclamation of a romantic life, and that surprise turns to a strange kind of gladness quickly. He never imagined Denethor would ever be able to live this way again and it does change his view of Aragorn rather dramatically, but he can reconcile to all that especially if his father is actually… happy.
What’s more difficult is reconciling the father’s he’s known all these years, who’s said this and decided that, with this man he’s presented with now, in a relationship with a man, a relationship he told him about too. Quite apart from Gondor’s strict cultural disapproval of digging into people’s private romantic life, the concept of telling his father of his own relationships had never even come to mind. Boromir’d assumed he’d be dead before this would ever be in question.
BUT after a long protracted period of time where everything appears the same but there’s some frisson to Boromir and Denethor’s conversations that literally drives Faramir up the goDDAMN wall. He knows it’s there, he can’t explain it, he has no idea what it could be and he HATES it so much.
After that, Boromir does tell his dad. Surprisingly he chooses a not-professional setting, they’re just talking in Boromir’s quarters after a rare family dinner together. But woof it has to be eeked out of him still. He starts them off with just the clear acknowledgement that he’s been strange since Denethor’s revelation. And then tries to word ‘it was a shock to know we had this in common, that you were like me, though perhaps not entirely’ in as infuriatingly neutral a way as possible. But he still doesn’t look at Denethor as he says it. And the silence then isn’t so long, just a pause for a ‘ah, so I was right’ kind of sigh from Denethor. A little longer for him to let the big perspective shift start in his head. He starts running the numbers- how long had Boromir kept this secret, what was his life like because of it, what else did Denethor not know? Denethor’s mind is an analysis machine, he can’t help it.
And when he takes his shoulder and Boromir looks at him in just a little surprise at the affectionate gesture, he notices the slight tug down of Boromir’s ear lobes, where he’d used to wear the stately earrings common among young unattached noble men of wealth, but that Boromir had forsaken. Long ago, Denethor realises, when he thinks back. And he wears the more austere tunics and sashes and regalia that are usually reserved for older men, no, married men. Denethor and Gondor as a whole had assumed the slow change in style had been another mark of Boromir’s dedication to Gondor’s defense above all else, but it happened long after he’d made that commitment. Suddenly it all has a thoroughly different and more poignant meaning. Suddenly Boromir is standing there, a man with a life and a past and a family that Denethor had never even considered before. Suddenly there’s a stranger before him.
And that… is painful… it’s a painful moment, an angry moment too, Sauron’s long dead but Denethor is still finding the corpses of things that creature took from him. But then Boromir returns the touch, his wide hand gripping Denethor’s shoulder in return, quiet but meaningful and holding his gaze with some quiet kind of understanding. Yes, the war took a great deal from all of them, but they have time now, and most importantly, they are both willing to build this relationship back up again.