Aragorn

The last descendant of the kings of the west, Aragorn, named Estel (Hope) by his mother, was born in the northwest of Middle Earth. (Aragorn is variously known as Strider, Thorongil, Estel and Elessar.) There his kinsmen and people had dwindled to a small clan of hardy, relatively long-lived men and women. His father was killed soon after his birth; Aragorn was raised in Rivendell, the last secret hope of his people. He has spent his adult life, like the other men of his people, as a Ranger, protecting the northwest lands of Middle Earth (particularly the Shire, since the finding of the Ring) from the threat of Sauron. He has ridden under an assumed name with the riders of Rohan and fought under an assumed name—Thorongil—in Gondor.

Aragorn is not a fairy-tale hero. His hard, hunted life has made him grim and, at times, a...