Saying this as a huge LotR fan... Tolkien was a crazy genius academic whose focus was on languages. Languages and writing was pretty much all he ever thought about. His political views, not surprisingly then, are just a sort of mish-mash of contradictory ideals. Like how it is for most people. He clearly had some sort of admiration for monarchy. At the same time, he definitely hated industrialization and was very skeptical of power structures. But if you sit down with him and ask him how he reconciles all this in his head, he'd probably give you a puzzled look and be like "idk man I just write stories".
From what I understand, his idea was that people should base things around personal relationships, not abstract concepts or systems.
Thus you should be loyal to the king, but you should be loyal to the concrete person and not the monarchy or the Crown or some other representation of the state. The only valid form of authority is when you follow the king because he is specifically himself a great person.
In other words,Tolkien doesn't want you to respect tthe institution or the position, he wants you to stan.
Saying this as a huge LotR fan... Tolkien was a crazy genius academic whose focus was on languages. Languages and writing was pretty much all he ever thought about. His political views, not surprisingly then, are just a sort of mish-mash of contradictory ideals. Like how it is for most people. He clearly had some sort of admiration for monarchy. At the same time, he definitely hated industrialization and was very skeptical of power structures. But if you sit down with him and ask him how he reconciles all this in his head, he'd probably give you a puzzled look and be like "idk man I just write stories".
deleted by creator
From what I understand, his idea was that people should base things around personal relationships, not abstract concepts or systems.
Thus you should be loyal to the king, but you should be loyal to the concrete person and not the monarchy or the Crown or some other representation of the state. The only valid form of authority is when you follow the king because he is specifically himself a great person.
In other words,Tolkien doesn't want you to respect tthe institution or the position, he wants you to stan.