The movies lie to you, you see: the movies tell you that Théoden goes into battle yelling “death.” He doesn’t: his arrival on the field is triumphant and joyful, because even if he dies, he’s going to die the way a king of his people should die, fulfilling his oaths and fighting an enemy, in battle, unlooked for in the attempted rescue of an ally:
Tall and proud [Théoden] seemed again; and rising in his stirrups he cried in a loud voice, more clear than any there had ever heard a mortal man achieve before:
Arise, arise, Riders of Théoden!
Fell deeds awake: fire and slaughter!
Spear shall be shaken, shield be splintered,
A sword day, a red day, ere the sun rises!
Ride now, ride now! Ride to Gondor!
With that he seized a great horn from Guthláf his banner-bearer, and he blew such a blast upon it that it burst asunder [….]
Suddenly the king cried to Snowmane and he sprang away.
There’s a lot more really incredible stuff about him essentially rivalling one of the Valar of old and so forth and so on, but this is Théoden at the beginning of the Battle of the Pelennor: fierce and joyful and fey and free in what he fully intends to be the last glorious act of his life, redeeming himself in blood on the field.
No, you see, the one who hits blank screaming nihilistic rage is, as noted above, Éomer Éomund’s-son, on discovering what he thinks is the body of his sister on the field. He grieves his uncle, but he perceives his uncle’s death the way that Théoden did - his words are in fact recorded as Mourn not overmuch! Mighty was the fallen.
He stood a moment as a man who is pierced in the midst of a cry by an arrow through the heart; and then his face turned deathly white, and a cold fury rose in him, so that all speech failed him for a while. A fey mood took him.
“Éowyn, Éowyn!” he cried at last. “Éowyn, how come you here? What madness or devilry is this? Death, death, death! Death take us all!”
Then without taking counsel or waiting for the approach of the men of the City, he spurred headlong back to the front of the great host, and blew a horn, and cried aloud for the onset. Over the field rang his clear voice calling: “Death! Ride, ride to ruin and the world’s ending!”
(This almost gets him killed, as it’s a stupid reckless charge that ends up with him and his immediate knights encircled on a hill, except instead he gets the most cinematic moment in fucking ever where he gets to spit defiance at what he THINKS is the approaching Corsair fleet only to have the wind unfurl Aragorn’s white-tree-seven-stone-seven-star standard instead, and for them to get to literally cut their way through the stricken and demoralized enemy to meet on the field.
It is genuinely a fucking crime this wasn’t what was actually filmed.)
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