Also, they had mayors and stuff, a VERY clear class division and were technically under the rule of Gondor after the Northern Kingdom fell but Gondor didn't really have the resources or urge to do any ruling over there. Once Aragorn was in they were essentially an autonomous zone under military protection in exchange for maintaining the local roads and bridges.
Gondor had kings, they just hadn't had one in a long time because they thought the line died out. That's why Denethor sits next to the throne and not on it, he was just the Steward. As Isildur's heir, Aragorn had the "rightful claim" to the throne. It's actually encouraging that he waited until after the evil threat was destroyed to take power.
aragorn spent his youth travelling in the east, stirring up discord against denethor. he also spent time in gondor, learning its ways.
then he used the war he stirred up to coup the rightful steward.
Rightful King > Rightful Steward
A King can't coup a Steward, that's like saying your regular teacher "got the sub fired", when all they did was come back from vacation. And besides, Denethor has only Denethor to blame for his fate, the dude was a prick and a psychopath who killed himself while trying to kill his own son.
lol who says he's the rightful king? where's the proof he's even descended from the last king? denethor can point to an unbroken line of rule from kings to ruling stewards, all in minas tirith, all witnessed and documented. aragorn? well, some scruffy old hobo says he's the direct male line descendant of the last king of arnor. which went tits up more than a thousand years ago. now, if someone walked up to your city claiming they were the rightful king cos his great-great-great-great-... granddad used to be king of some other kingdom (that he lost, lol) but he swears it was a high king, so it counts as a king of your kingdom too... uh, you'd tell them to fuck off. him and his hobo friend. and dont get me started on elrond, he's absolutely CIA. pulling strings from far away.
aragorn got to be king cos he "won" the fake war he himself instigated and his "friends" just happened to arrange the death of the current ruler. there's no proof sauron even exists, wake the fuck up.
what you have to realise is that ALL the texts we have from the period are actually from aragorn's reign, and he's obviously falsified a lot of it to make it look like he had a legit claim for his coup. it's just propaganda.
Then where's Denethor's proof of lineage? Remember, you can't reference anything in any of the texts, since they're all falsified.
i didnt say you cant trust anything. obviously stuff that ordinary citizens of gondor could verify had to be correct
Yeah, cuz I'm sure the ordinary citizens of Gondor are doing a lot of reading, lololol. However I am actually sure there were plenty of witnesses to the fucking ghost army Aragorn controlled by rite of the oath sworn to his ancestors, not to mention his unnatural age and healing abilities. Denethor couldn't even heal his own fractured psyche (another thing I'm sure many people in Gondor were actually well aware of).