Meredith Mansfield, Author

Here’s where I’m going to go off and argue that some very masculine hero-type male characters are actually on Leader’s Journeys (and why I don’t want to use Heroine’s Journey as a name for this kind of story).

Let’s start with Aragorn. Breathe, I’ll wait. Okay, now that you’ve gotten over your near heart attack, let’s look at the points of his journey—including material from the Appendices.

Aragorn’s father was killed in an orc attack when Aragorn was only two. His mother worried that someone was trying to wipe out the remaining heirs of Isildur, so she took baby Aragorn to Rivendell to be raised as Elrond’s foster son. Elrond shared her fears and gave the baby a different name, Estel (meaning Hope), to protect him. Aragorn didn’t even know who he really was until he came of age. (Disguise and loss of identity.)

Shortly after he found out who he really was—and what he could become—Aragorn met Arwen, who had been away visiting her grandparents, Celeborn and Galadriel, in Lothlorien. And he fell in love with her. Arwen wasn’t immediately as impressed with a very young Aragorn.

Aragorn set about taking up his duties as Chief of the Dunedain of the North and became friends with Gandalf. He was known around Bree as Strider. He also travelled in disguise, using the name Thorongil (Eagle of the Star) to both Rohan and Gondor and even farther afield. (Disguises.) He became a very great warrior and leader. On his return, Aragorn stopped in Lothlorien, where Arwen was again visiting. With help from Galadriel, he made a much better impression this time and the two plighted their troth.

Elrond, however, was not pleased because it meant that Arwen would make the choice to be mortal, rather than go into to West when the last of the elves left. He said he would only give his blessing to the marriage if Aragorn became King of Gondor. (The only family Aragorn has left is his foster family and his foster father is trying to stop Aragorn from forming a new family. His existing support network offers no solutions.)

Time passed and Aragorn joined the Fellowship. When Gandalf fell in Moria, Aragorn took over as leader of the group and he would have gone with Frodo to the end. But Frodo (Hero/Warrior, remember?) chose to go off alone. And Aragorn, as a Leader, accepted that choice. As Boromir was dying, swore to save what was left of the civilization of the Numenoreans. “I will not let the White City fall, nor our people fail.” Boromir was the first man of Gondor to recognize Aragorn as his king.

But first, Aragorn set out to rescue Merry and Pippin. (A Leader is loyal to his team and doesn’t abandon them.)Aragorn started recruiting more team members almost immediately. Once Gandalf had broken Saruman’s hold over him, Theoden rejected the idea of helping Gondor, “Where was Gondor when the Westfold fell?” But after Aragorn (and his friends) helped to win the Battle of Helm’s Deep, his attitude changed. When Aragorn announced that the beacons were lit and Gondor called for aid, Theoden replied, “And Rohan will answer.”  (The Leader recruits new team members, sometimes by helping them first.)Aragorn even recruited the dead to help him with the Corsairs.

At the battle of the Pelennor Fields, Aragorn flew the banner Arwen had made for him—the banner of a king of Gondor—from the lead Corsair ship, which raised talk of the return of the king in the city. Following the battle, Aragorn set up his tent outside the walls, refusing to enter the city—yet. But he did enter, cloaked and hooded (another disguise), when Gandalf asked for his help with some of the injured. Aragorn was able to help those, like Merry, Eowyn, and Faramir, who were suffering from “the Black Breath”, because, as the saying in Gondor went, “the hands of the king are the hands of a healer”. Talk of the return of the king accelerated.

The power dynamic shifted at this point. Gandalf deferred to Aragorn who was the true general and leader of the combined forces from that point on.  Aragorn proposed and led the assault on the Black Gate to divert attention from Frodo. (The Leader will try to save all of his (or her) team, even the hero. They are the source of the Leader’s strength, after all.) On his return, Faramir greeted him at the gate and recognized him as king.

Finally, Aragorn’s reward is to marry Arwen. (Happy ending, reunited with family, including the new found family of his team.)

See how much easier it is to think of Aragorn as a Leader? No one denies that he was a great warrior, but his path, his journey, was not the Hero’s Journey.

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One way to define the two journeys is to look at the differences between them.

Let’s call the Heroine’s Journey the Leader’s Journey. I’ll explain that as I get more into this particular kind of heroic journey. Those are both over simplifications, of course, but so are the gendered names and these are less culturally fraught. Yes, it’s difficult to picture Frodo, who is definitely on a Hero’s Journey, as a Warrior, but no harder than picturing Samwise as a Heroine—or a Leader, for that matter. Yet that is exactly the kind of hero Sam is. And, yes, Heroines are heroic, too. They just have different motivations and methods—and tend to have better endings.

So, what makes the two journeys different?

1. What the character sets out to do.
2. What they perceive as strength/power and, conversely, when they experience vulnerability. And how this perception of strength influences their approach to the problem.
3. How their stories end.

I’ve already given examples of the heroic goals of three Warrior’s Journeys. By contrast, what starts the Leader on her (or his) journey is that someone important to them has been captured, kidnapped, or otherwise threatened and the Leader sets out to save them. Katniss Everdeen volunteers as tribute to save her sister, Prim. Samwise goes along to “take care” of Frodo and, in the process, saves him more than once.

Heroes/Warriors tend to see strength as self-reliance and solitary action against great odds. Therefore, though the Warrior may start out with a group of companions and/or acquire companions along the way, he (or she) will always go off on their own before the climax. The group represents a threat because they impede that solitary action. For Frodo, the Fellowship also represented a more direct threat because Boromir’s attempt to take the Ring revealed that its influence was working inside the group. But Frodo’s greatest struggle was even more isolating by being internal and largely invisible, fighting against the influence the Ring was trying to exert on him. He’s alone in that battle even when he’s surrounded by the Fellowship and even Gandalf couldn’t have helped him with that. And Luke Skywalker is literally always going off by himself—in his fighter to destroy the Death Star, on his tauntaun to “check something out”, off to train with Yoda, and finally to confront his father and the Emperor. He never stays with his team for long.

The Heroine/Leader, on the other hand, is at her (or his) most vulnerable when alone. The Leader may be a very powerful individual, even a great warrior, but she (or he) perceives strength in a team of people who will pool their skills and abilities and work together to solve the problem.

In other words, in a crisis, the Hero/Warrior is most likely to say “Stand back. I’ll handle this.” The Heroine/Leader is more likely to say, “Let’s do this together.”

And finally, the endings. Hero/Warriors are usually too changed by their solitary journeys to fit back into their old lives. Despite Sam’s best efforts, Frodo leaves Middle Earth entirely, going into the West with the elves. Luke seems to have come out all right at the end of “Return of the Jedi”, but just look where he’s found in “The Force Awakens”—alone on a lost planet.  Heroine/Leaders are much more likely to get happy endings, surrounded by a new or recovered family—Katniss and Peeta together, Sam with Rosie and their (thirteen!) children.

It’s important to note that not all elements will be present in every instance of either journey. Also neither journey is necessarily quite this black and white, for several reasons. First, not all stories fit into either heroic journey. Then again, in a big, epic story with multiple “heroes”, like LORD OF THE RINGS, it’s entirely possible for some characters to be on Warrior’s Journeys, while others are acting as Leaders. Or, over the course of a long series, a character may be on one journey overall, yet act, for one “episode” (or more) as if he or she were on the other journey. Sometimes, characters can change journeys, especially over the course of a series. And sometimes, it at least feels like the writer is confused and trying to force a Leader to act like a Warrior, or vice versa.

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