I have been despised by better men than you.
I never wanted to see half the things I've seen, and I've never seen half the things I wanted to. I don't think wanting comes into it. You'd best go all the same.
Sins may be forgiven. Crimes require punishment.
For they are the knights of summer, and winter is coming.
But Tolkien doesn't ask the question: What was Aragorn's tax policy?
The truth of it is, writers do have peculiar relationships with their characters. They are our children in more senses than one. They are born of our imaginations, carry much of ourselves in them, and embody whatever dreams we dream of immortality.