‘Weariness, grief for his father’s mood, a wound, and over all the Black Breath,’ said Aragorn. ‘He is a man of staunch will, for already he had come close under the Shadow before ever he rode to battle on the out-walls. Slowly the dark must have crept on him, even as he fought and strove to hold his outpost.

‘Would that Elrond were here, for he is the eldest of all our race, and has the greater power.’

Of course, one is certainly entitled to disbelieve what Aragorn says. But then one is no longer responding to Tolkien's work.

the unnamed man described in Come Together is actually none other than... wait for it... the Marquis de Sade

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This is the Reading Room, so presumably we're talking about the book.

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Sure, and any given Shakespeare play can be set in Las Vegas in the 70s and often is, but everyone realizes this is mostly just to be playful. Or maybe to jar the audience into a sort of fresh and experimental mindset about the play, at least in some cases, but in no event is this sort of caper to be confused with earnest literary analysis.

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All your examples compare his symptoms to the two other patients checked in with the Black Breath on the same day. Faramir's corps has been facing the Nazgûl now and again for something like a year, no? There will have been other cases. We are not in a position to declare that Faramir's presentation is outside the scope of what's usual for this little-known sorcerous affliction.

But now their art and knowledge were baffled; for there were many sick of a malady that would not be healed; and they called in the Black Shadow, for it came from the Nazgûl. And those who were stricken with it fell slowly into an ever deeper dream, and then passed to silence and a deadly cold, and so died. And it seemed to the tenders of the sick that on the Halfling and on the Lady of Rohan this malady lay heavily. Still at whiles as the morning wore away they would speak, murmuring in their dreams; and the watchers listened to all that they said, hoping perhaps to learn something to understand their hurts. But soon they began to fall down into the darkness, and as the sun turned west a grey shadow crept over their faces. But Faramir burned with a fever that would not abate.

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He doesn't seem any too trusting, though, does he? We don't need to invent secret reasoning on Denethor's part, his last son is dying and he's howling his reasons at anyone who will listen. We already know from real-world history that when the man in charge barks an order, plenty of servants and soldiers will snap to and execute the order, no matter how morally abominable it may be.

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Naturally you do. But in reading the book we've seen Aragorn perform healing feats repeatedly, apparently by means of some magical power, assisted by some informed herbalism, with strong emphasis on one invented magical herb. So even if people say this for reasons that were originally allegorical—sheer invention on your part, but supposing it—that oral tradition is still in place, and when the people hear that the new king was seen to do feats of healing, they will probably regard that as supportive of his claim, not cause for suspicion.

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No. This change is not in the pages of the book. You're inventing it to match your Saruman story.

(You never have explained, as to that, why Denethor should see through this charade when nobody else does, or why he doesn't just clap the bastard in irons the second he sets foot in the city. But I suppose I should raise that in the relevant thread rather than here.)

But to bring it back for a moment to Galadriel, do we ever have any indication that she stands ready to bar one of the Fellowship from continuing with the others? If indeed Boromir's temptation, or slim loyalty to the quest, is laid bare to her, she still lets him proceed; what worse finding could her test of faith have given?

Glass, in all seriousness, are you taking the position that the right thing for Beregond to have done was to stand aside and let Denethor burn Faramir alive? Or that Aragorn should have put him to death whether he did right or not?

(There is, of course, zero textual support for the idea that Beregond randomly attacked nonviolent servants, let alone that he was a hit man for Aragorn, offing some ruvals so Aragorn can steal the throne. I understand it can be fun to take an unlikely stance and make a case for it, but this one is simply not coming together.)

There were "many" patients showing the same symptoms. Faramir was the only exceptional case.

I don't think when Denethor allowed Gandalf the access to the archives of Minas Tirith they had battles of wills with their eyes. Denethor even offered to help personally, even if Gandalf didn't accept.

1. Denethor's spiritual power is among the highest tier of all the characters on the side of good in the entire book, allowing him to resist and see through Saruman's mental influence,
2. he has access to much information through the palantír, and
3. he had known the old Gandalf.

The idea is that:
1. Galadriel in her Mirror sees Boromir falling in a possible future.

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When was this? I find no such offer. As to their staredowns in Book V, Gandalf wasn't sitting in on witness examinations when he swung by asking to hang out in the library; there was no particular opposition between them, and yet Denethor was crusty enough for Gandalf to remark on it.

As for "spiritual power," I don't know if the professor would have used that language, but certainly Denethor has more force of character than most of the humans on the stage. I don't think that amounts to much on a scale of the elves we meet, though, and the idea that Celeborn and Elrond and most of their senior retainers would likely have been hoodwinked more easily than Denethor, let alone unanimously decided to cover up Saruman's caper.

Your steps 3 and 4 don't quite match up, you're suggesting that the idea of just grabbing the Ring was first planted in his head by Galadriel's explicit telepathic scenario, but he already all but named it in Rivendell, it was his very first thought, so any effect Galadriel may have had can't have been a matter of introducing this new idea to his innocent mind.

What I'm finding more interesting is just that I haven't really examined the ins and outs of the trial of faith she subjects the Fellowship to, and it raises questions. For one, to what extent was this a technicolor mind-meld in which she could see every detail of the temptation scenarios of each subject? Did she even create and tailor them? Or did they just take form in each mind, as a private embodiment of her underlying query, which is something like "what if you could run away from this quest?"

And secondly, what does she learn by it? The only thing she ever reports back is that Sam held firm, and that's the easiest case for the reader to guess anyway.

I looked back at the relevant passage at the Council of Elrond, and it was more ambiguous than I remembered...
Denethor's comments in RotK reveal that he had figured out Isildur's bane...
If Gandalf hadn't acted so cagey, he could have found his answer much sooner by collaborating with Denethor, and the entire plot would have been different.

Galadriel's appearance at Aragorn's wedding takes Saruman by surprise.

Galadriel may have been the one to mention the term "Power of Command" to Boromir and suggest that he'd gain it if if he took the Ring while showing him what it would entail.
...
I think she was engaging in a form of telepathy that was more intimate and invasive than just a conversation that other people couldn't hear. I think she was peeking into souls and aware of what she sent.

Gandalf didn't learn from the scroll what Isildur's bane was; Isildur wrote the scroll himself and hadn't been baned as yet. It is a little unclear how broadly known the history of the Rings is generally, but the learned seem to know at least something about them; Faramir understands what the Ring is when it's mentioned, even if he's not clear what Isildur's Bane means (what other magically potent heirloom he has in mind as a guess, I never have known). But it's no terrible shock that his father has thought of the possibility, enough to recognize what Gandalf is about, as he seems to do.

But that's by the by. What's really instructive to me here is that you are, in fact, perfectly willing to jump ship when one of your madcap theories is caught unsupported by the text—as long as you can leap to a new madcap theory that is also unflattering to the central protagonists.

Is your impending, as-yet-unrevealed grand unifying theory one that deconstructs the good character of Frodo? You haven't messed with the hobbits so far.

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But Elrond's shouldn't have, since the father of the bride has exactly the same journey to make that Arwen has herself (and is keeping the king's sceptre from the king). Even Galadriel isn't all that surprising given the occasion.

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She may have been, and you think so, but all this is being injected into the story without textual support.

I'm starting to feel pretty done here.

The hobbits have POV sections. You get to know the true thoughts of Bilbo, Frodo, Sam, Pippin, and Merry. In contrast, the parts about Aragorn when no hobbit is nearby maintain a certain distance, not really getting inside anyone's head, and of Gandalf's thoughts very little is shown - and of Gandalf the White's, nothing at all. All passages about Gandalf alone without the other main characters are explicitly narrated by himself after the fact rather than shown.

When you become older you start to be able to consider different viewpoints than that of the designated hero.