In the Lord of the Rings trilogy, I always regarded the title of the third book, The Return of the King, as referring to the return of Aragorn to reclaim his kingdom. However, after reading this answer I've begun questioning myself.
The full title of the Red Book of Westmarch is:
THE DOWNFALL
OF THE
LORD OF THE RINGS
AND THE
RETURN OF THE KING
Here, it's unclear if lord and king refer to the same subject (Sauron), or whether lord refers to Sauron while king refers to Aragorn.
So in the title The Return of the King, which king is being referred to? Sauron, or Aragorn?
Edit: the reason it wasn't clear to me is because grammatically, it's a little weird to have two different, unidentified antecedents for the two unnamed nouns. Normally, when people use two similar nouns (lord and king are pretty interchangeable) they refer to the same subject, not different ones. Hence the confusion. (and I wasn't the only one confused)
Edit 2: if you're downvoting, I'd appreciate it if you left a comment explaining why. Apparently this question isn't a very good fit for this community, and I'm assuming that's because it's too obvious to the rest of you, but it would be nice to confirm that assumption.
Answer
Aragorn. The Return of the King of Gondor and Arnor.
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