Hey, it could be worse. How many names did Turin have, again?
Do I mock YOUR typos?
I SAID I missed at least one name.
I never had these problems before I demobbed the bees.
“White-knighting” is not a Rhymerian activity, everybody knows that. Anyway, you’re approaching the issue from a fundamentally moral mindset, while I of course am not. 
I think the more interesting scenario is that Faramir, not Boromir is sent to the council of Elrond and joins the fellowship.
a) Faramir was never tempted by the ring (I would not pick it up if it were on the side of the road)
b) Boromir stays behind to defend Minas Tirith - it never falls
c) The fellowhip has no reason to break up - Merry and Pippen (having never been captured) never convince treebeard to fight Isengard (I’m assuming that part of the reason they were taken by surprise by the orcs is due to Frodo heading off to get away from Boromir - causing the fellowship to be in several locations instead of working togeher)
Nah, Simster, that just means Gimli or Legolas is the one tempted by the ring.
In the first place, in the book Boromir was not “sent to the council of Elrond.” That’s a movieism, and a stupid one. The council wasn’t planned in advance. It couldn’t be. This was before cell phones, email, telegraphs, even the Pony Express. The only thing it wasn’t before was stew. Boromir and Faramir both had a prophetic dream; Boromir was sent to ask for an Elvish interpretation. The fact that he arrived more or less contemporaneously with the various other visitors just Manwe [del]fucking with fate[/del] [del]benevolently and subtly intervening for the good of man-the-kind[/del] fucking with fate.
Wait, I take that back. It was probably Ulmo. Manwe’s useless.
More timportantly: I think Faramir and everyone else overestimate his ability to resist to the Ring. Yes, even after deducing what Frodo’s burden was, he didn’t succumb to any desire for it – but that was without ever seeing it (I believe Frodo wore on a chain under his shirt) and after being in Frodo’s company only for a day or two. Boromir was around it for weeks, and as I wrote upthread, I suspect the Ring was concentrating its mojo on him specifically. I suspect that, had Faramir been the one sent to tug on Elrond’s ear and consequently had joined the Fellowship, the Ring would have started working on him, and his pride at being above its influence would have been its inroad.
doh - you’re right - about the book vs movie and Boromir - in any event - Faramir was not drawn to power/glory in the same way Boromir was, so I think he would still have outlasted Boromir in the same time frame.
Sure Faramir wasn’t drawn to power & glory. He wouldn’t have responded to Aragorn the way he did otherwise. But he WAS motivated by the desire to save Gondor. A noble end, obviously, but still one that the Ring could have used to worm its way inside him. And his confidence that he was immune to the Ring wouldn’t help.
Gandalf and Galadriel knew the ring was working on them. Aragorn realized that he was ultimately going to endanger Frodo & Sam if he tried to accompany them into Mordor. I don’t know why you think Faramir was better than those three.
Not that he was better than those three - that he would have simply outlasted Boromir - the dynamic of the splitting up (@ the orc attack) would have been changed - that would have changed several options at that point.
Secondly - point (b) - Boromir is on station @ Minas Tirith - and assuming that Denethor was right - that would not have fallen.
I wonder: If there another realistic path to victory for the Free Peoples other than the path taken in the book?
Did Aragorn have to destroy the Corsairs for Pelennor Fields to fall to Gondor?
Did the Witch King have to be killed for them to win?
Did Gollum have to accidentally fall into the volcano for it to be destroyed? Was there no one strong enough to cast it freely into the inferno?
And how big a help would Isengard be to Mordor if it was left unopposed?
How much swapping could we do to achieve all those ends with different people in the same roles?
Do you mean “Osgiliath”? Anyway, you have more confidence in Denethor’s – even BOOK!Denethor’s – judgment than I. While I don’t think Faramir was so great as to be immune to the Ring’s lure, I think he was as competent a captain of war as his brother. Unless the X-Men tumbled through a space warp or something, Osgiliath was gonna fall.
at work so can’t really respond except to say I love LOTR speculation threads. Hope I didn’t work my anti-magic as a thread killer by popping in to say that.
yeah - I really shouldn’t post while I am supposed to be working - Osgiliath.
again - my point is only that if Farimir had been part of the fellowhip - that the battle where Merry and Pippen are captured may have gone very different - as I believe that Faramir would have held out longer against the ring as compared to Boromir.
Yes. Well, very probably yes. If you’ll recall, when Gondor saw the black sails coming up the river, they were just about ready to throw in the towel then and there.
Pelennor Fields wasn’t Helm’s Deep - it was a battle on an open field, hence the name :). On open fields, god’s proverbially on the side of the big battalions. Aragorn not only took Blücher entirely out of the fight, he brought a second Ney along with him.
But the thing is, Pelennor Fields was barely a skirmish as far as Sauron was concerned. When Team Ruggedly Handsome sets out for the gates of Mordor to maybe buy Frodo some time and distract the Eye, they fully expect to get obliterated. It was very much a last ditch gambit.
It was certainly a huge morale booster, and IIRC his death also caused the other 8 Nazgûl to flee. Without leadership, an army doesn’t remain a coherent fighting force for very long.
And if you don’t take out the leadership, it tends to come down to attrition. Orcs win out there, hands down. If not today, then tomorrow - their breed cycle is much faster, and while Minas Tirith could probably have held for a while it would have been a doomed siege. At least that’s what they reckoned back in Rivendell when they set out on their harebrained Hail Mary pass of a “plan” to send 9 blokes into the heart of Mordor. Because why not at this point ?
Well, as I said even Gandalf doesn’t trust himself around that thing. Nor Galadrielle.
It’s like asking whether there’s someone strong enough to strike it very, very rich then opt to give away everything they own and walk the Earth like Caine in Kung Fu.
It’s possible there *could *be such a person, it’s fiction lit after all. But it wouldn’t really be plausible or narratively satisfying. We’re in Nordic saga land, not the Bible 
Isengard triggered a massive exodus of the whole population of Rohan, topped by a hopeless siege that in the “real continuity” was only won by de facto deus ex machina. That’s like one quarter of the Coalition of the Willing right there.
The Ents would still have fucked Saruman’s shit up if prodded (though not necessarily by the hobbits - Gandalf or the elves could have done it I think) and stopped his conquests there for a long time, but that still leaves Team Gandalf severely undermanned, not to mention underhorsed, at Pelennor Fields.
While the Ring certainly could have worked on Faramir’s desire to do good, it’s much more effective at working on a desire for glory like Boromir’s. And I wouldn’t say that Faramir was arrogant about being above the Ring’s temptation: He wouldn’t take it by the side of the road precisely because he knows how dangerous it is. There’s a reason he never actually saw the thing, and it’s not because Frodo kept it hidden from him. If he wanted to see it, he could have.
Whether Faramir would have resisted it for longer than Aragorn, Legolas, or Gimli is an open question, but I’m pretty confident in saying that he would have resisted longer than Boromir.
Yes, Gollum had to fall into the volcano. A good portion of the story is built around the ring having this horrible power - It just about drove Frodo mad. If he, or Sam, or Gollum or some other character could have just chucked it in - well, that destroys a lot of the power of the tale. It’s a big part of what makes LOTR unique.
Sam gave it up once willingly, I think he would have trashed it.
In order:
No.
Yes, or the Free never get their reinforcements - and probably the bad guys do - which is enough to see the battle go the other way. It was hard enough as it was.
Probably. He’d just killed Theoden, and he could have killed other important leaders too - Eomer and Aragorn for a start. He was untouchable by most normal means. The Barrow-blade was forged specially to kill Ring-Wraiths.
Gollum probably had to do it. Frodo couldn’t, and couldn’t even have given it up to Sam even if Sam could throw it in, and no-one else could have resisted the Ring’s lure for long enough to get to Mount Doom.
If the Ents don’t turn up, Helm’s Deep goes to the bad guys, and six thousand Knights of Rohan don’t make it to Pelennor Fields. Saruman probably doesn’t plan to be any more helpful than he has to, but he’s already done enough harm to the Free.
Either Pippin or Merry could kill the Witch-King, but Pippin is needed to save Faramir if Denethor goes mad on schedule. Only Aragorn can release the Dead from their oath as Elendil’s blood-heir - also, only he can look in the Orthanc-stone to challenge Sauron; Gandalf admits it would have been disaster if he had been the one to do it, but Aragorn affirmed that he had the right and the strength, again resting on being the descendent and the rightful King.
Ahhh, all the comforts–a Skald LOTR thread with all y’all usual suspects. Who said you can never go home or come in out of the cold?
If you swap Faramir for Boromir, the fellowship never splits up and they have a decent guide–Faramir knows how to walk into Mordor.
What if…Tom Bombadil joins the Fellowship? How does that change things? Or does he just get drunk and wander off somewhere singing a jolly tune?
Sam didn’t have it long, nor did he have to face the idea of destroying it while in the very heart of its power–the center of iniquitous magic on Middle-earth. I don’t think ANY mortal or Elf could have willed the ring’s destruction there, any more than any mortal or Elf could have dragged a 10-ton boulder up the slopes of Orodruin by hand.