Denethor and Faramir

Denethor II, the last Ruling Steward of Gondor, and his younger son Faramir share one of the most painful and consequential father-son relationships in the War of the Ring. Denethor openly loved his elder son Boromir above all others and never concealed his disappointment that Faramir, not Boromir, had returned from the errand to Rivendell. The Steward's grief at Boromir's death curdled into a corrosive bitterness toward the son who still lived, and this bitterness poisoned every exchange between them during the siege of Minas Tirith.

The Father's Unrelenting Preference for Boromir

Denethor made no secret of his conviction that Boromir would have acted differently—and, in his eyes, better—than Faramir in every crisis. When Faramir reported sparing Frodo and Samwise in Ithilien rather than seizing the Ring for Gondor, Denethor's response was savage: "Your bearing is lowly in my presence, yet it is long now since you turned from your own way at my counsel" . He accused Faramir of being a "wizard's pupil" whose heart belonged to Gandalf, not to his father or his city. "Boromir was loyal to me," Denethor declared, "He would have remembered his father's need, and would not have squandered what fortune gave. He would have brought me a mighty gift" . Faramir, stung, reminded his father that it was Denethor himself who had sent Boromir on the fatal errand to Rivendell, but Denethor refused to accept any blame, saying only that he had tasted the bitterness he mixed for himself (E06729–E06730).

The Accusation of Weakness and the Command to Osgiliath

Denethor's contempt for Faramir's temperament—his gentleness, his love of lore and music, his willingness to show mercy—was not a private opinion but a public wound. At the Council of the City, when the captains debated whether to hold the outer defences of Osgiliath, Denethor deliberately singled out Faramir: "I will not yield the River and the Pelennor unfought—not if there is a captain here who has still the courage to do his lord's will" . The implication was unmistakable: Denethor questioned Faramir's courage. Faramir accepted the command, though he knew it was near-suicidal, saying only: "Since you are robbed of Boromir, I will go and do what I can in his stead—if you command it" . Denethor's cold reply—"That depends on the manner of your return" —made clear that he expected no return at all, and that even a heroic death might not earn his approval.

The Pyre: Denethor's Final Betrayal

When Faramir was carried back to the City gravely wounded by a Southron dart and the Black Breath, Denethor's mind finally broke under the combined weight of grief, despair, and the corrupting influence of the palantír. Convinced that all was lost, he ordered his servants to build a pyre in the House of the Stewards in Rath Dínen, intending to burn himself and his still-living son together. "Why should we wish to live longer?" he demanded of Gandalf. "Why should we not go to death side by side?" . Gandalf rebuked him: "Authority is not given to you, Steward of Gondor, to order the hour of your death. And only the heathen kings, under the domination of the Dark Power, did thus, slaying themselves in pride and despair, murdering their kin to ease their own death" . Denethor was unmoved. He accused Gandalf of plotting to supplant him with Aragorn, seized a torch, and set the pyre ablaze, leaping upon the table to die clasping the palantír to his breast (E07056–E07057). Faramir was saved only by the swift intervention of Beregond, who killed the porter and held the door against Denethor's servants until Gandalf could carry the wounded man out.

The Roots of the Rift: Pride, Despair, and the Palantír

Gandalf later explained that Denethor's fall was not merely personal grief but the direct result of his secret use of the palantír of Minas Tirith. "In the days of his wisdom Denethor would not presume to use it to challenge Sauron, knowing the limits of his own strength. But his wisdom failed; and I fear that as the peril of his realm grew he looked in the Stone and was deceived" . The visions Sauron permitted Denethor to see—the vast armies of Mordor, the black fleet sailing from Umbar—fed his despair until it overthrew his mind. Yet even before the palantír's corruption, Denethor's treatment of Faramir was shaped by a deeper flaw: he could not forgive his younger son for being unlike Boromir, and he could not see that Faramir's mercy and wisdom were strengths, not weaknesses. In his final madness, Denethor revealed the full measure of his contempt, telling Gandalf that he would rather have nothing—"neither life diminished, nor love halved, nor honour abated"—than accept a diminished Gondor under a restored king . That refusal to accept a world changed by forces beyond his control was the same refusal that led him to condemn his own son to death.

Aftermath: Faramir's Grief and the King's Justice

Faramir survived, but the wound of his father's rejection never fully healed. When he learned of Denethor's death and the manner of it, he bore the news in silence, and Aragorn later counselled that the full tale of Denethor's madness should not be told to him until he was fully healed . In the end, Faramir found a different kind of father-figure in Aragorn, who appointed him Prince of Ithilien and Steward to the King, and a different kind of love in Éowyn of Rohan. But the shadow of Denethor's last words—"I would have things as they were in all the days of my life" —remained a measure of how completely the Steward's pride had consumed not only his own life but his relationship with the son who had always, in secret, been the more worthy heir.