In LOTR films everyone is scrambling for the one ring, several boast of how they will use it to win the war and enforce their own dictator like rule.
How?
We see that the ring can turn you invisible, is that the great power? I guess it could help you with assassination and such.
According the wikipedia the bearer of the one ring can mind control the other rings given to the leaders of the world powers, are you telling me they are so stupid as to still be wearing those?!:dubious:
From the way people talk you’d think the ring makes you a one man army, like it turns you into Superman or something.
You have to wrest control away from Sauron. When Frodo wore the ring, yeah, he turned invisible, which as far as elves or Gandalf were concerned was the pick a card of magic tricks but mostly it drew the attention of the Eye of Sauron. Gandalf, Galadriel or Saruman would have stood a chance at withstanding being such a cynosure. Frodo, not so much.
These days, it’s a lot simpler, since EVERYBODY knows about the Ring.
You carry it around, and show it to a guy. Say, "Got the One Ring here. “Gonna be takin’ over the world; no way to stop me. You might as well submit yourself to my dominion right now.”
Then find another guy, and repeat. Keep going until you’ve taken over the world.
Not that simple. You have to start out with a lot of power and wisdom and desire for domination to begin with, and even then it takes a long while to learn how to use the Ring effectively.
Recall that Gollum and Bilbo had the Ring in their possession for centuries and for decades, respectively, but neither of them did anything to speak of in the Dark Lord line. In Bilbo’s case, this was because his natural decent character and unassuming hobbit sense kept him from trying to boss people around (beyond the normal bossiness expected of a wealthy bachelor squire, at any rate). In Gollum’s case, the meanness and selfishness of his nature led him to focus on hiding the Ring to preserve it in his own possession rather than risking it in attempts to challenge and command the will of others.
Basically, in order to use the Ring to gain power you first have to be somebody who wants power. Then you just go on doing your usual ruthless-pursuit-of-power stuff, and the Ring makes you better at it. The more powerful you get, the more you grok the power of the Ring, and the more you can exploit it to gain more power.
OK, since you saw the film: Remember when Galadriel is talking about what would happen if she had the Ring, and she goes all freaky and intimidating? Now take that, and crank it up to eleven, and that’s the sort of thing the Ring does. The invisibility is actually just a peculiar side-effect, not the Major Power at all.
Sure, if that’s what Aragorn wanted. One of the traits of the Ring is to boost already innate capabilities. It also has a general capability for dominating people and subordinating their will to the ringbearers.
But as Gandalf did point out to Aragorn, any one of them claiming the One Ring will fall into Sauron’s trap. I can’t remember the exact chapter and passage, but Sauron was waiting for the new ring lord to overextend himself.
As I see it, the One Ring is not a WMD of sorts. In Lord of the Rings mythology, Gandalf claiming the One Ring would make him extremely charismatic and a powerful wizard, but Sauron himself was more powerful than Gandalf individually and was defeated (though by chance).
Sauron already out-numbers the forces of the Free People. None of them, by claiming the ring, could produce new armies out of nowhere in a pinch. The most probable scenario I see is Aragorn claiming the ring and persuading the other kingdoms of Men (Harad, Near Harad, Easterlings and etc.) to join him to overpower Sauron. In the hands of Elrond, Gandalf or Galadriel, I don’t think there is much they can do.
The Ring holds a substantial portion of the power of a semi-divine being, and that power supports and amplifies your abilities. If you try to intimidate someone, it makes you a scary-ass mofo. If you’re being persuasive, it silvers your tongue. It also extends your life indefinitely, though not without detrimental effects, giving you lots of time to plot.
That’s what it does passively. There are implications that it can do more active things as well. For instance, it’s stated that Sauron used it somehow to construct Barad-dûr, his fortress. As a result, the fortress could not be completely destroyed as long as the Ring survived. Just because you don’t start out with any supernatural abilities doesn’t mean you won’t learn them, especially since putting on the Ring shoves you bodily into the spirit world (turning invisible to normal eyes isn’t even a “power” of the Ring–it’s a side effect.)
Thanks to Peter Jackson, every time I think of Barad-dûr the theme music immediately starts running through my mind. Baaah BAAAH baah BAH-BAH-BAHMMM!
Also, unless you’re Sauron, the One Ring will make you think you can take over the world, but there’s a big honkin’ difference between thinking and doing.
Yes; just as the Seven made the Dwarven Kings more able to gather wealth. So to answer the thread title, it really depends on what you are good at or interested in; whatever that is, will be supernaturally amplified. If you are a businessman it would make you more able to gain wealth until you owned the world; if you’re a computer programmer you’d end up building something like Skynet under your control; if you are a politician you’d build an empire; if you’re into religion you’d become the supernaturally persuasive leader of your very own religion.
Assuming that is you actually succeed - as Koxinga says, the Ring doesn’t make you invincible, it just makes you think you are invincible.
He said that if Aragorn openly assaulted Mordor, Sauron would think that he had claimed the ring and was overextending himself, so it would draw his attention away from Frodo. It was never implied that anyone using the ring would *have *to do this.
Boromir wanted Aragorn to claim the ring, and none of the arguments against that idea involved any implication that he would overextend himself if he did. Exactly the opposite: it was suggested that he has at least a chance of ruling the world, unfortunately he woudl simply become another Sauron. Galadriel said the same thing. She was never afraid that if she took the ring she would overextend herself. She said that if she took the ring she would rise to challenge Sauron and become a despotic overlord.
It’s stated outright that if one of the wise claimed the ring, they had a shot at defeating Sauron, and *become *Sauron in the process. Sauron himself feared this.
Gandalf and Galadriel said otherwise.
The ring grants any user a large portion of Sauron’s power that he put into the ring. Sauron was a Craft Spirit, his inherent power is in creation. That includes the ability to create armies. Anyone with full control of the ring would presumably not only be able to force all their subject people to breed at phenomenal rate, they would do so.
Sure, initially Sauron had better armies, but he was still prepared for a long, drawn out war, and 10% of his armies and his highest general were wiped out in a single battle just days after his most powerful ally was disarmed and his country occupied. The war was never going to be easy or swift unless Sauron got the ring.
If his enemies had the ring, he would have been in for an extremely drawn out war, more than long enough for his enemies to produce armies. That presumably includes recruiting armies from the South and East, but it also includes getting the other races to breed like rabbits, and probably creating some form of orc themselves.
More importantly, the ring could dominate creatures created by Sauron, an ability that even Sam unsed to a limited ability. Presumably anybody using the ring would have the same ability to control Orcs and Trolls as Sauron himself had. That means they can effectively cancel out Sauron’s control. We see at the ned of LoTR what happens when Sauron’s control over Orcs snaps: they cease being and army become the cowardly rabble that they naturally are. That one ability alone means that Sauron’s army become unreliable, and he loses the ability to fight at all during daytime. That’s not a small disadvantage.
The exact powers of the ring are never enumerated. It granted invisibility as the least of its abilities. It gave the abilities of the other rings of power, meaning that it granted long life and multiplies wealth at the very least. The exact powers of the Elven rings are even more vague, but the granted power associated with air, water and fire. That seems to mean that whenever the user tries to do something associated with those elements, it multiplies their ability.
Not to be a killjoy, and definitely not to say that all the above posts aren’t completely correct, but in terms of the overall meaning of the story the rings are simply the ultimate MacGuffins. Tolkein fought in WWI so they were probably inspired by machine guns or poison gas or flamethrowers or any other new and ungodly brutal and inhumane (yet personal) weapon of war.
The above links will answer your questions in more detail than I can, but a brief summary might be useful. The film prologue is mis-leading, it simplifies the matter in order to avoid confusing the audience. It doesn’t explain the origin of the rings, but implies that Sauron created them.
This isn’t true, the Nine, Seven and Three were not intended to be weapons of war or to dominate others. The rings were created by the elves, under the tutelage of a disguised Sauron, with the goal of preserving Middle Earth. Sauron then secretly created the One, which was designed to rule the other rings, and by extension their bearers. When this plan failed (the elves became aware of him, and took off their rings), he waged war against them. Sauron took the Nine and the Seven, cursed them, and gave them to leaders of men and dwarfs. The men eventually became the Ringwraiths.
While it’s primary purpose was to control the other rings, the One also had the power to influence or even dominate others. In the case of a captain like Aragorn or Boromir, this might mean inspiring near fanatical loyalty in their allies, and fear in their enemies. This power was not total - Sauron was defeated by the last alliance while holding the One, and before that his armies deserted him when faced by Ar-Pharazon’s Numenorean forces. They might have been able to defeat Sauron militarily by building up armies, but there was no guarantee of success. The book is more subtle about this than the films, it’s made clear a bearer would need to learn how to use the ring fully. In any case, such a victory would have been hollow, as the corrupting influnce of the One would have turned them into a tyrant.
What I don’t get is why Sauron got destroyed along with the One ring. After all, he existed before the ring, so even if he’d put a substantial portion of his powers into the ring, he would surely lose only the power inside the ring, and not that which he still had within himself? (A parallel example would be Voldemort and his Horcruxes). Even the book mentions that Sauron initially thought that the ring had been destroyed – he learned that it still existed only after he captured Gollum. Doesn’t that mean that Sauron could still exist as a power even without the Ring?
The easiest answer is that Sauron put more of himself into the Ring than he knew (or understood). No one likely would purposefully put a critical amount of themselves into an artifact (even if they thought they’d never be separated from it). Sauron miscalculated.