Question for the chatter: was Denethor's failure of stewardship structural or personal? You can argue the office itself rotted — too long without a king made paranoia rational. Or you can argue it was the palantír and the ego, full stop. Where do people land?

Strategic question: was the small-secret-group plan with the ring the right call, or just a moral preference for hiddenness over force? A massed escort to Mount Doom would have been catastrophic, but it's never seriously argued. Why so quickly off the table?