I was just watching the extended version of LOTR: Return of the King and came across the part (not in the original release) where a Ringwraith confronts Gandalf as he is running to save Faramir. The Ringwraith shatters Gandalf’s staff and proceeds to tell Gandalf that he has failed and looks to be about to kill Gandalf when he is distracted and leaves for more pressing matters (although what could be more pressing than killing Gandalf in a Ringwraith’s eyes is beyond me…the 6,000 Rohan could wait a few minutes I’d think).
Now, we know Gandalf is of the Maiar and knocks Balrogs around. The Ringwraiths, badass as they are, are derived from men. I would think Gandalf wouldn’t be overly worried by one. Indeed, he chases three of them off earlier as they are harrying the defenders retreating from Osgiliath to Minas Tirith. Perhaps the Witch King of Angmar is a lot meaner than the other 8 (if that is the one who faced Gandalf) but again I would think Gandalf should be able to hold him off.
It has been ages since I read the books and forget this part so do not remember if this was in the book.
In the book, when they armies of Mordor break through the gate of the city, the witch king rides in, and Gandalf is there facing him, riding Shadowfax. Gandalf tells him to go back, you cannot enter here.
The Nazgul answers:
Right at that moment, horns blow, signalling the arrival of Rohan’s armies. So after a chapter catching us up on the Rohirrim arriving, the next chapter “Battle of Pelennor Fields” begins, and right at the beginning of that one, the Nazgul leaves the gate to turn his attention to the Rohirrim.
The book doesn’t describe any physical fight between the Nazgul and Gandalf in that scene – just the face-off that looks like it’s about to come to a Gandalf/Ringwraith smack-down.
I haven’t had the pleasure yet of reading through some of Tolkein’s big materials, but I don’t recall him answering this in anything I’ve seen before. I imagine that with enough work (and the Witch King certainly had Fell Power coming out of his non-existent-ears) it might well have been done. It probably would have taken more than a single blow to fell Big G, either.
As for the Balrog, don’t worry too much. As Tolkein had it, the Balrogs were pretty butch, but they had been killed by Elves (and one human?) in the past. Indeed, some of the early elves were mean enough to require multiple Balrogs to put them down! The WItch King could very well have been more dangerous, at least right then, than one; size isn’t the only measure of power.
In TTT when Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli meet Gandalf for the first time after his plummet, the trio try to attack Gandalf thinking he’s Saruman. After they fail, Gandalf says something along the lines of ‘Don’t worry, none of you have weapons that could harm me’. If memory serves me correct (which it should as I only finished the book last night) Aragorn is carrying the sword Anduril at this point so if that can’t hurt Big G, what’s the Nazgul carrying that can?
I could imagine its because Anduril is “merely” (for a given value of merely) a very well-made sword. Supremely sharp, well-balanced, the best sword a smith could hope to make and a powerful symbol… but still metal forged by fire. The Witch-King carries one thing in spades that Aragorn does not: fell magic. It’s what keeps him together, regenerates him second to second… I’d imagine he’s pretty good at slinging spells around. Surely as Sauron’s right hand he’d know plenty of powerful tricks that might even be enough to vanquish a Maia or at least throw one out of the fight for a time.
It would appear that, at times of great necessity, Gandalf could “reveal the power that was in him”, power which, unless I’m mistaken, only Sauron Himself could have surmount, if weilded in full. It may be that Gandalf, in the guise of a Man, would not be able to destroy the Witch King; but I find the idea that the Witch King could slay the resurrected Gandalf to be difficult to swallow. When Gandalf told the Balrog “you cannot pass,” he meant it. I assume he was equally certain when he told the Lord of the Nazgûl “You cannot enter here…Go back to the abyss prepared for you!” Only this time, no great chasm spanned by a narrow, brittle stone bridge separated Gandalf from his foe.
The Witch King’s blade has flame running along it, so there’s some sort of ensorcelment. And remember he’s on his fell beast, facing Gandalf on Shadowfax – a worthy horse, but still just a horse (of course.)
It’s not clear to me who would have won an actual fight. Bit Nazguls are not above bragging, and being drunk with power (or imagined power.) The line “This is my hour” is not necessarily a statement that he can kill Gandalf, but a statement that he thinks his Master’s victory is at hand. And remember that Gandalf cannot hinder him, according to the prophecy that no man will slay him. So, in a battle with Gandalf, he’s confident that Gandalf can’t hurt him and thus he can be somewhat arrogant in asserting that he will destroy Gandalf.
I did NOT like the breaking of Gandalf’s staff in the movie. Gandalf can break Saruman’s staff, because Gandalf is now the White and head of the Council, and can cast Saruman from the Order of Wizards. The Nazgul has no such power over Gandalf, and it is very awkward to imply a parallel as the movie does.
I’ve always been a bit unclear on what that prophecy implies. No male of the race of men can kill the Witch King? No male of any race? Strictly speaking I didn’t think Gandlaf was a man…as a Maia I thought they picked their forms upon entering Middle Earth and were even capable of changing forms (didn’t the books somewhere say that some things such as the Balrog were stuck in their forms?). So while Gandalf looks like an old man taking him at face value as such would be a mistake.
And as for actually killing the Witch King it seems there is an allowance for beat-up, go back 20 spaces and start again and actually fully dead. In the Fellowship of the Ring the Nazgul get stomped by the river and while not dead it certainly put them off for a bit.
Given all that I wonder if the Witch King should have been as cocksure as he was. If he WAS that sure of himself I think, despite the Rohirrim showing up, he’d have taken the time to finish off Gandalf as few things in Middle Earth were a bigger threat…even 6,000 horsemen.
Gandalf was a maia incarnated as a mortal man. As such he aged (albeit slowly), grew weary, hungered, and suffered all the pangs of the flesh. He could be slain, and could only reveal bits of his true power at need. Functionally the only mortality he lacked was the ability to leave Ea after bodily death. And this because when he went into Ea to being with, he was committed to staying in it until the end.
However, when Gandalf came back as the White, his body was strengthened, and he was allowed to use far more of his powers. One draft passage suggests he considered himself equal in might to about anything save Sauron himself.
Even so, one could hypothesize that the Witch-King (who was originally conceived by JRRT as the ‘wizard-king’, a peer of Gandalf who turned to evil ages ago) acting as an agent of Sauron, could have posed a threat even to Gandalf. What powers the Nazgul had came thru Sauron, and Sauron’s own powers were greatly enhanced in that he grounded the One Ring itself into Arda, which JRRT considered “Morgoth’s Ring”. Thus one could say that the Nazgul could act as a channel for the power of Melkor himself, Morgoth Bauglir, to be used against Gandalf. Yes, it’s a stretch, and I would not have bet against Gandalf. But a case can be made for it.
I didn’t like Gandalf’s staff being broken either. Definitely non-canon.
First of all, it’s not ever clear that he meant it as a bit of prophecy; as a practical mater, he couldn’t be killed by any man. The fell power that kept him half alive meant that no normal blade, and possibly none at all except something specifically made to harm an immaterial being, could hurt him. And even then, he wasn’t actyually killed, but made vulnerable to normal weaponry.
Am I wrong in that the central question of the OP appears to be:
I.e. can Maiar be hurt by non-Maia? Clearly the answer is yes: cf. Isildur vs. Sauron, Wormtongue vs. Sharkey. Of course, you could claim that the second was a case of divine intervention to strip Maia-hood from Saruman, but one of the themes is hey, sometimes Iluvatar just wills things happen like that.
And when you get down to it, everything happens by the power of Iluvatar.
Because it wasn’t his hour, remember? He clearly notified his foe (Gandalf) when his hour came around!
Seriously, the Nazgul seemed less powerful early on, and grew somewhat explicably more powerful as the tale progressed. Annoying the gaffer by hissing at him to begin with, then ready to take on Gandalf less than a year later does tend to puzzle me a bit.
The Nazgul accomplished their goal on Weathertop. They assumed that once Frodo fell to the poison of the Morgul blade, he would willingly take the Ring to Sauron. What they didn’t plan on was how resilient the hobbit was.
That, and being fooled by the old “pillows in the bed” trick: let’s face it, the Nazgul in Fellowship were seriously incompetent, and seem to have only grown in strength as the later books required. Oh yeah, and Macbeth ought to be required reading for any uberfiend who thinks he’s invulnerable to mortal man.
The book is very clear that the power of the Nazgul (what’s the plural? Nazgulim?)grow as Sauron’s power grows. Yes, they start out not so powerful, they get dehorsed and washed downstream. They regroup in Morder as Sauron’s power starts to grow, to the point that the WitchKing feels able to challenge Gandalf.
I always thought of Sauron “feeding” on the fears and hatreds and strife that he caused, and probably gaining strength from the worship of his followers as well. Yes, his growth is pretty rapid, but he’d been simmering and planning this return for a lonnnnnnng time.
Quite probably true; Sauron himself was reawakening and growing, to the point where he had very nearly reclaimed all of his native strength. In fact, the Ringwraiths acted much like the Maiar themselves; they had to be ‘clothed’ in a body, much like we would wear a coat. Like Balrogs, their body gave them some seeming strength.
