SPOILER ALERT if you don’t want you future LotR reading / movie watching compromised, do not read on
If these questions have been answered before I would appreciate if you would point me to the source.
Question about the Seven:
Sauron made and distributed the seven to “Dwarf Lords.” This of course didn’t go as well as the nine to the humans, but from them was amassed hoards of wealth. This is attributed to Dwarves loving riches more than power. Dwarves are portrayed as the most greedy of the races so this is no big surprise. Now to the question:
Why were any of the Seven rings passed along? I am assuming that, like the Nine and the One they would give extended “life.” So why would they not remain with the original owner?
Question about the Nine:
In Return of the King the chief Nazgûl gets offed by Merry and Eowyn but no mention is made about what happened to his ring. I’m pretty sure he was packing–what’s the use of having a ring of power if you don’t wear it? Besides in the council of Elrond Gandalf mentions in passing:
I have a hard time believing a ring of power would cease to exist that easily but where else could it have gone?
On your second question, I don’t know the reference, but I believe Sauron held the nine rings, and the Nazgul didn’t carry them around. I’ll look, and hopefully I’ll have an answer shortly.
On question one, the Dwarf Lords were surprisingly resistant to the Dark Lord’s powers of mental domination; he put on his One Ring and commanded him to submit to his bidding, to which they replied, “Bugger off.”
He sent out minions to try to get the rings back and did get several of them. Several others were lost when their wearers were eaten by dragons, one or two were buried with their dead bearers, and some were just plain lost.
On question two, I believe the kings do wear the Nine, but the lesser rings became really, really wimpy with the loss of the One Ring. As far as heat-of-the-battle searching for the Nazgul’s ring is concerned, I got the impression that Eowyn and Aragorn had had quite enough of rings of power to last them for a while, thank you very much.
I just stumbled across the above. The ‘experts’ at theonering.net say that the question of Nazgûl wearing their Rings is on par with “Do Balrogs Have Wings?” They expound a bit more but it is left to the eager student to click on the link