You’ll all be happy to know that my stepdaughter is firmly a Tolkienite now. (And people said I’d be a bad influence.) She’s been making her way through Unfinished Tales and just emailed me a question I’m not sure of the answer to. Thus I bring it to you guys and, when you supply me with a brilliant answer, steal it.
Anyway…it’s in regards to “The Quest of Erebor.” In it, Gandalf says
In this passage, Gandalf is speaking to Frodo & and faithful halfling sidekicks in a house in Minas Tirith, after the worst of the Ringwar is said and done. (Of course, the Scouring still remains, hence the qualifier.) It’s clear that the Shadow he refers to is the Necromancer, whom he later (that is, after speaking to Thorin) discovers to be Sauron himself.
Cinderella the Rhymer wonders why Gandalf was so certain that Sauron and Smaug would be of one purpose. Now that someone’s actually asked me, I have to wonder too. Smaug would certainly not have conceived as Sauron as a god or creator or anyone he was obliged to obey; if he thought that of anyone, it would be Morgoth, who had by then long since been cast out of the Circles of the World. I’m not aware of any accounts of Smaug aiding Sauron in either the Second or Third Age. I’m sure Sauron would have welcomed a dragon on his side, for obvious reasons, but it seems that the most likely reaction of the dragon to an appeal for help would be “What’s in it for me? And don’t say a magic ring. In fact stay where you are so I can eat you, you poser.” Likewise, I’m not certain why Sauron would have necessarily intervened in the Battle of Erebor other than (if he had been in command of the Orcs & Wargs participating) to tell them to stay out of it and let his enemies weaken one another by infighting.
Thoughts, anybody?
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“Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey … The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon.”
Perhaps he meant help indirectly, as in Smaug’s affect on the area around the lonely mountain would indirectly help the Necromancer/Sauron’s bid for control, and vice versa. If they two of them clashed afterwords, it still doesn’t help the rest of the world.
Think of it like his “alliance” with Shelob. Her presence guarded an entrance to his domain, but I will bet she dreamed of eating him, and he had plans for her after he got his ring back.
Given that Morgoth originally bred dragons to serve his purpose (Glaurung, Ancalagon the black to name the most famous), it would not be unreasonable to imagine an alliance of mutual interests developing between Morgoth’s Lieutenant (Sauron) and any extant dragons in Middle-earth.
Sauron would surely be able to fuel Smaug’s lust for trinkets by promising him dominion over a particular region if he only subdued it a bit, while pointing out tasty treasures to be had there.
Because the narrative requires it? Personally I think that Smaug would have nothing to do with Sauron. The flying worm rather enjoyed lounging around decade after decade on his pile of gold. Why take up work? There is no upside.
I agree with QtM. I think Gandalf knew Sauron’s mind fairly well (hence why he thought he could sneak someone up to Mt. Doom to destroy the Ring) and knew that Sauron would probably be able to persuade Smaug to go after the treasury of Rivendell, known to rival those of Nargothrond. (a lie of course but Sauron was mighty persuasive at times.) Sauron would know how to best appeal to Smaug.
Additionally just the lack of Erebor and Dale might well have meant more forces attacking Thranduil and less help for Lórien and of course far more Goblins would have been near Rivendell if the Battle of the Five Armies never happened. The Quest for Erebor saw the destruction of the largest remaining dragon, the destruction of a large goblin army and not directly but at the same time the Necromancer driven from Mirkwood. If not for all this the north may well have been destroyed as Gandalf feared.
Well, Smaug had already driven the Dwarves from the Lonely Mountain, right? From a practical standpoint, since the Dwarves were “good folk”, the dragon was already working with Sauron, I suppose. Enemy of my enemy, and all that.
How would things have played out if the Smaug had caught Bilbo and therefore acquired the ring? Would he have been able to wield its power? Would it have lead to war between Sauron and Smaug?
I feel like people are giving Smaug too much credit. I most certainly do not put it past the subtle might of Sauron to easily influence the dragon with the dragon none the wiser. The only problem with the original paragraph is that it implies that Smaug might get something out of the bargain, which is somewhat unlikely, in my estimation.
Even without possesing the Ring we have seen how Sauron as a powerful Maia is able to influence and even command lesser creatures who are themselves inclined towards evil but owe no particular allegiance to him personally.
He is able to co-opt Saruman from a distance through the Palantir, and when Gollum initially escaped from the Wood Elves he apparently headed towards Mordor because he felt some kind of summons.
So I always assumed that even a Ring-less Sauron who had regained sufficient power would be strong enough to order (or persuade, as Qadgop outlines) Smaug to do his bidding.
Good question: In my opinion, Smaug would not have been able to use the Ring in any meaningful way. It probably would have started gnawing at his brain and it might have convinced him to fly it South. It is also possible that Smaug would have sat on it until the Witch King arrived to try an convince Smaug to attack Rivendell or Thranduil or the Iron Hills and once the Witch King or any Ring Wraith was that close, he would have noticed the One Ring being nearby.
Weren’t we told dragons tended to eat Rings of Power if given the chance? That was the fate of several of the Dwarf rings IIRC. Does that mean one of them would have eaten the One Ring if it came into their possesion?
This is about what I thought. Sauron and Smaug are very powerful beings of a similar worldview and fell purpose. When the Ringwar started, I could easily see them making common cause.
Coincidentally enough, my 9-year-old son and I just finished reading The Annotated Hobbit together, and we’re now getting into “The Quest of Erebor” (which I hadn’t even known existed five years ago). Good stuff!
We also know that soem dragons were hotter than others.
Also though, I don’t think we can say that “dragons tended to eat Rings of Power if given the chance?”. That sounds a little silly. I think it’s a far safer assumption that dwarves wearing rings of power who stumbled upon dragons tended to be treated in much the same way as dwarves not wearing rings of power who stumbled upon dragons.
Which is to say that dragons didn’t specifically set out to eat rings of power, per se, but rather that said rings were incidentally consumed along with their hapless owners.
OK, but I don’t see that as substantially different than the case we are discussing, that of a hobbit wearing a ROP getting eaten by a dragon. The dwarf cases seem to indicate to me that dragons were not necessarily interested in ROPs as such. I wonder if the One Ring would have been different?
I forgot that we were specifically told dragon fire would not melt the One, thanks for the reminder Silophant.
Note that Gandalf said to Frodo, of the Seven Rings: “three he has recovered, and the remainder the Dragons have consumed”. Since we speak of fire “consuming” things, without meaning that they are literally eaten, it might mean that the four lost rings had been melted by the dragon-fire that burned their last owners.
Also we don’t necessarily assume that dragon-fire is cooler than lava - the Cracks of Doom were, specifically, the lava-flow in which the One Ring was originally forged, and it would be plausible that there was a mystical connection between it and its forging fires.
Finally I would say that just as Sauron was less than Morgoth, so Smaug was less than Glaurung and Ancalagon to name two of the mightiest of the old dragons, and since the latter two did much as Morgoth wanted, so might Smaug for Sauron - which doesn’t necessarily equate with doing what he’s told when he’s told, explicitly. And as a footnote, Bilbo only needed to talk to Smaug for ten minutes or so to dupe him into showing off his underside and revealing his weak spot, so Smaug could plainly be flattered and manipulated by a subtler mind (which Sauron certainly was in his younger days - that was how he brought about the Downfall of Numenor).
In LOTR Online, the Warrior-Skald has the ability to recite any of the Rankin/Bass Tolkien adaptations from memory. The “warrior” part allows him to survive afterward.
A dragon is avarice embodied; and lest we forget, Sauron was also Annatar, Lord of Gifts. Undoubtedly the Dark Lord would seek to manipulate the creature by catering to its pride and greed-- lavishing praise over the majesty of Morgoth’s finest work, and offering it tribute in exchange for aid; whether in payments of man-flesh or treasure. We know that Sauron coveted mithril, and quite likely had the largest hoard in Middle-Earth. What would a dragon do for mithril? I can imagine Sauron tempting the beast into his service with a cavern of truesilver. From Sauron’s perspective, he wouldn’t even really be giving the stuff away; merely protecting it with the biggest guard dog in Middle-Earth.
Of course Sauron would surely reconsider the whole idea once he noticed Smaug’s catastrophic manufacturer’s defect.
Both Kim and Cinderella the Rhymer are now laughing at me. Thanks!
Seems more likely that he’d say, “Yo, Smaugster, you got a chink in your armor. Hold on and I’ll get a couple orcs on it. I realize it’s an inconvenience, so you can eat the work-orcs afterwards.”