This is my attempt to create an “Aaragorn-like” character, as I envision him at the beginning of Fellowship. This will be a character focused on defending, who serves as party leader and has a build similar to what I would imagine Aragorn having if we started him as a TOR character.

I started with the Barding Cultural Template and used the Wordweaver (4/6/4)
I chose this Background not so much for the fluff, but a combination of stats and I like building “Smart” combatants. This was a good all around package. (I tend to build my own lengthy character backgrounds anyway, so this just tends to give me a loose framework to start with.)
The 6 Heart pushes up Endurance and Hope nicely to 28 and 14 respectively. The endurance gets even beefier at the end of your first fellowship phase (See below)

For Barding Traits: Old-Lore + (your choice; I don't think any of them really fit Aragorn, maybe Boating?).
Background Package Traits: Lordly + Fair-Spoken
Calling Trait: Rhymes of Lore (Scholar) or Shadow-Lore (Warden)

Weapons Package goes with (Swords) 2, Spear 1, Dagger 1
For 10 prior experience, bump your (swords) to 3 (costs 6), Travel to 3 (costs 3) and Athletics to 1 (costs 1)

Calling: Your choice. Personally I like Scholar (Perc & Voc) and Warden (Pers & Surv)
Favored Skills: Inspire (heart) Riddle (wits) Healing (heart) and Hunting (wits)
So with 2 favored skills in heart and 2 in wits, I’d go F Body 5, F Heart 8, and F Wits 7

Prioritize Wisdom (2) over Valour (1), as the starting Barding Feature helps with Valour tests anyway.
Virtue: Swordmaster (Bonus to parry in defensive stance equal to your sword’s encumbrance)

Gear: Longsword and Mail Shirt. You end up with a hefty 15 fatigue, but with your high Parry you won’t get hit too much except by “Eye” rolls, anyway, in which case you’ll need that 3d armour to avoid being wounded.

Fighting Style: The idea is to ALWAYS be in Defensive stance and leverage your parry bonus with the 3 enc provided by the Longsword. This gives you a 19 parry in defensive stance. The fact that you focused early on (Swords) at rank 3 means you can effectively fight in Defensive stance right from character creation. And as you are in Defensive stance, take advantage of the Protect Companion special move EVERY round, as you will be tough to hit with Parry 19; that is where statting out with a 6 in Heart comes in to play as you have a pretty beefy hope of 14, which you’ll need if you’re going to be defending your companions every round. And of course, the for max damage output, the idea is to fight with 2 hands on the blade to maximize what you get out of 3 enc item (your weapon) and not have to crank up your encumbrance by carrying a shield in addition to everything else.

Group Role: With Travel 3, you serve as the party’s Guide. ‘nuff said. As a Barding with Inspire 2, Persuade 3 and Courtesy 2, you are pretty well positioned to be the social face of the party and leader.

Advancement: During first fellowship phase, your XP should go to advancing Wisdom to 3 and selecting Swordmaster as your next Virtue, and if you have enough XP, advance swords to 4. That will cost 15 xp (you get the discount of -1 for your sword skill), which may or may not be realistic to get packed in before your first Fellowship phase. (My group tends to go longer periods between fellowship with extended fellowship sessions). For Common Skills, I recommend Song/Craft to 2 (your choice, but eventually you’ll need to increase this to handle Shadow healing. For an “Aragorny” character I would obviously recommend Song). After that, I’d start rounding out some other personal common skills that every party member can benefit from: Awareness (1), Healing (1), Stealth (1). That will cost 20 advancement points which definitely seems high for a first fellowship phase, so you’ll have to decide what’s most important to you, and to do that I would start with what skills are missing from the party. For example, if you already have 1 decent hearler or 2, I’d make that my last priority (even though it’s somewhat “Aragorny” to have Healing).

Nice work sir. Our main melee guy in the group is a Barding with the Swordmaster virtue and a large shield. Stays in defensive and is very hard to hit!

That may be something you want to reconsider as Open and Forward stances give the Rally Comrades and Intimidate Foe combat options respectively. The Rally Comrades is very much a leader-type action.

I belief that your selected virtue for the first fellowship phase should be King´s Man as you have choosen swordmaster for your starting virtue.
Are you sure that King´s Man will reduce the cost of the skill group "sword" not only the skill "sword"?

Point taken, Rich, though the "always" was to be employed with a certain measure of Hyperbole, to be sure. I guess saying Defensive should be the "Default" stance with this character/build, as it somewhat maximizes what he's all about.

For Rally and Open, I agree with you, although it's nice to give other heroes a chance to shine too.
TOR is unique in that the mechanic does allow well-rounded characters to shine, thanks to the Feat Die and hope points. (Savage Worlds is similar in that you don't have to be uber-specialized to be successful).

Yep, editing mistake on my part. Virtue 1: should be Swordmaster, Virtue 2: King's Man

As far as how King's Man works mechanically, i'll have to recheck.
However, assuming you can't push out the whole Cultural Combat Skill: Swords, using this, you would branch off to Longsword as a solo skill, as that what gives you the most bang for buck (versaitility and the higher encumbrance for parry).