Magic The Gathering recently revealed the featured art for Aragorn in its upcoming The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle Earth set, which caused a huge divide on social media. Now, angry The Lord of the Rings fans is using this opportunity to bring out a popular Marvel character as an argument as to why this Aragorn shouldn’t have a darker complexion.
The argument “we may as well make Black Panther white” was used to condemn Wizards of the Coasts’ decision for Aragorn’s appearance It was also argued that just because “we can’t make Black Panther white” doesn’t mean we can change another character’s appearance from another franchise.
Unfortunately for them, using the “make Black Panther white” argument really misses the mark. That’s because T’Challa is a descendant of African royalty and his culture plays a strong role in his character, so it’s pretty much a prerequisite for him to be Black. Meanwhile, Aragorn’s skin color doesn’t have any kind of significant impact on his character, so the pigmentation of his skin shouldn’t matter.
Naturally, this serve was returned with the example of Cleopatra, an Egyptian pharaoh who was heavily described by historians to have light skin. In fact, when Netflix cast a Black actress in Queen Cleopatra, it made the Egyptian government so upset it called for a nationwide ban. People argued that “if Cleopatra is light skin and is of African Royalty, then T’challa can also be white.”
Here’s the thing, Cleopatra isn’t a fictional character. Aragorn and Black Panther are. Secondly, historians claimed that Cleopatra is said to be of Macedonian Greek/Eastern European descent. So comparing a fictional character to a real person of history doesn’t help.
The argument got even more extreme. While there was a general consensus that people are ‘cool with’ Black Panther being Black, they also argued that Aragorn is a “fantasy European,” just as Wakanda is a fictional African location. Consequently, he has to be white because he’s “the king of white people.” It seems like people are grasping at as many straws as possible to make their argument valid, but they’re missing the point.
It seems like angry Lord of the Rings fans who only saw the films seemed to miss the point of Aragorn’s character and why it doesn’t matter what skin color he has. Aragorn skin color doesn’t play an integral role in his character. Meanwhile, Black Panther’s culture plays a role in his character. There were old depictions of the character where Aragorn had darker skin and it’s perhaps due to the love of the ever-popular Peter Jackson films that people have a strong attachment to Viggo Mortensen’s portrayal of the character.