We don’t know that. We only know that’s where those rings ended up. 16 more-or-less equal rings were made, 9 ended up with Men, 7 with Dwarves. But nothing in the legendarium says those specific Nine Rings were specifically intended for Men during manufacture, and those specific Seven for Dwarves.
There are a few factors at play , do people want the ring because of what power it give them, for sure, but that is a self driven desire.
Do people really really want to keep the ring once they have it because of the way it makes them feel and the power it gave , yes for sure.
Does the ring have agency itself and can it make people want it , or not want it, so it can get back to Sauron? I kind of think it does , not a powerful force it could use at a distance like mind control , but enhance feelings of power and control so it could get to the right hands and make its way back. Thus it was trying to get Boromir as it figured that was a mind that was easy to control. Stronger people with a more nuanced view ( faramir etc) could reject those suggestions.
The ring definitely left gollums for bilbo as it figured it was time to rejoin the world, so it has direction and opinions .
Would Gandalf and Galadriel and Saruman have become superpowerful and been big bad boss for a while , yes but I think the ring knows who the real boss is and would have betrayed them at some point right when they thought they were top of the heap , and continued its journey back to Sauron who would have been keeping his head down.
Huh.
Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men, doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
I always assumed each of those sets was purpose-made. The 7 for the dwarf-lords were made for the dwarves, the 9 for the mortal men made for men.
says that Tolkien was inconsistent, and in some places implied that the 16 rings were much the same, and in others that the 7 were made before the 9 and were different.
In the various writings it changes a bit , some writings indicate they were the same , the poem indicates they are different , some may have been made by the elves. The prof was making it all up as he went along and changing things to make better stories so there is, like in all of the works, a bit of inconsistency.
That part of the verse post-dates the actual making of the Rings. Only the “One Ring…” spell is actually contemporary. The rest of the verse is descriptive, not prescriptive.
As far as I’m concerned, Silmarillion is the authority here. And note that Unfinished Tales merely says they were made as two sets, not that they were intended for different peoples (And hence doesn’t contradict the Silmarillion’s implication that they were, in fact, all made for Elves - it uses the phrase “Elven-rings” more than once to refer to all the lesser Rings.)
You own cite even says “it is likely that the effects of one of the Nine on a Dwarf would be the same as those of one of the Seven, and were a Man to wield one of the Seven, he would likely still become a wraith.” My point stands.
All (except the One) were made by the Elves. that’s consistent across all the variations.
Yes I am definitely wrong on that
So reading the Silmarillion we have the elves making many rings guided by Sauron who was aware of all they did , who then he makes the one ring which “he could perceive all the things that were done by means of the lesser rings and he could see and govern the very thoughts of those that wore them”
The elevens realize as soon as the one ring is made and take off their rings and Sauron gets a bit crossspatch and demands all the rings from the elves , he makes war , the elves run and save only 3 rings which were the last to be made . Sauron wanted them most as they could fend off the decay of time etc but he couldn’t find them because the wise kept them off and never used them openly “while sauron kept the ruling ring”
It then says these three remained unsullied as only celebrimbor made them and never touched by sauron , but they were still tied to the one.
Sauron then gathered all the remaining rings and dealt out to people he wanted to control, with mixed results.
Dwarves became greedy which worked out for Sauron
The men lived a long time , became shadows and could see invisible things but what they saw was often Saurons delusions and phantoms and eventually they became under control of the ring they bore and hence under sauron . eventually becoming completely invisible except to sauron .
Anyway that’s sumarising several pages of the silmarillion.
So 3 rings made by elves using Sauron’s techniques but untouched by him.
It seams the war was largely an IP lawsuit being settled by other means . ( the first age war I guess was straight up property theft by Morgorth with further disputes as to who actually owned them in the first place)
Didn’t they have lawyers back then ?
Not even Sauron was evil enough to create lawyers. Although the Mouth of Sauron might be an early prototype…
Objection!
Hadn’t thought of it that way, but yes!
Yes, agreed. Wish the name had been used at least in the last episode of S1.
I’m sure that Prince Durin, once his wife Lady Macbeth, er, Princess Disa has brought him fully around to her way of thinking and he’s finally king, will authorize digging for mithril again and there will be (relatively) plenty for more rings to be made. Sauron might even be able to smuggle some out of Moria for his own purposes.
My son noted all the parallels between The Iron Giant and the Harfoot plotline: A very tall, powerful amnesiac stranger falls from the sky, and is found by a spunky youngster who treats him almost like a pet and initially, and comically, tries to conceal him from others. The locals, when they learn of the stranger’s existence, are scared of him, especially after he uses his powers somewhat clumsily and causes harm by mistake, but the youngster insists he’s good. The youngster also convinces the uneasy stranger that he really is good and not evil. Eventually, the stranger fights a powerful foe(s) and wins over the locals. Later, the stranger decides he has to leave and tells the youngster he/she can’t come along. (In TIG, the youngster doesn’t; in TROP, the youngster eventually does).
I wonder if after she browbeats him, the other dwarves crack jokes about her being “Durin’s Bane”.
Man the costume design for this show suxxxxxxx. Too many important characters dressed like they’re minor magistrates about to go fishing. Oh except for the Numenorean who is supposed to be nearly 8 feet tall and as important as Achilles or Perseus. Stick a breast plate on him and call it a day.
Ironically for all the crying about the queen regent being a ‘person of color’. The show would have been well served (even though it breaks lore) to have ALL the Numenoreans look like her. Tall, powerful, regal.
These guys look like they escaped a production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
I’ll just say I disagree with you strongly, especially about the Númenórean costuming, and leave it at that.
You don’t have to leave it at that. Elaborate. I feel like a race like the Numernoreans should be larger then life and their costumes reflect that. In fact, in general there’s a weird griminess to everyone but the dwarves (Who seem to be the faves of most). Not just the costumes but the casting. I usually bemoan the lack of real looking casting, but in a fantasy, I strongly feel a race of super-men like Numernoreans should be cast like “300”
I feel like we didn’t watch the same show - the Númenóreans were very colourful, and a nice Classical Mediterranean-flavoured change from the grey-brown cod-Medieval look so common in fantasy shows. I can’t say I saw any of this “griminess” you’re talking about.
That’s a different issue, but I would have absolutely hated it if they were all swole like Conan or Leonidas.
Thank you for elaborating!
I like the cut of your jib, DrDeth. Any of those changes would have been for the better.
Nice!
Agreed on all points.
Also agreed. Bezos bought The Washington Post, too, and saved it at a time when we needed it more than ever.
Hmm. I remember reference to a streetcar in the first edition but not a locomotive, and no mention of China at all. But I may be wrong.
Thanks.
I remember none of that.
Can’t find anything about trains (aside from a simile describing Gandalf’s fireworks), but there is this:
In the earliest drafts of The Hobbit , Bilbo offered to walk from The Shire “to [cancelled: Hindu Kush] the Great Desert of Gobi and fight the Wild Wire worm(s) of the Chinese.”[3] In a slightly later version, J.R.R. Tolkien altered this to say “to the last desert in the East and fight the Wild Wireworms of the Chinese”,[4] and in the final version it was altered once more to say “to the East of East and fight the wild Were-worms in the Last Desert.”[5].