I don’t suppose that Saruman fell under Sauron’s sway due to his ring-making activities?
But I wonder who would prevail in a fight between Sauron + Ring and Gandalf + Silmaril? How about Elrond + Silmaril?
The Silmarils didn’t have any actual powers beyond their beauty and the fact that Elbereth blessing them made them burn those unpure of heart. Gandalf’s or Elrond’s power wouldn’t have been augmented by a Silmaril.
And Saruman fell under Sauron’s sway through the Palantir, mostly.
Well it’s always fun to talk about him though. 
So in that vein… ever since reading Kipling’s Puck of Pook’s Hill I’ve seen Bombadil as Puck, the incarnated spirit of the land. “I came into England with Oak, Ash and Thorn, and when Oak, Ash and Thorn are gone I shall go too.”
I like this pithy MME-style analogy.
Also, see Boromir vs. Frodo+Ring, where both parties know that Boromir is “too strong for you, Halfling”. Until Frodo turns invisible. Fortunately somehow his clothes and gear go invisible too (when he’s got his backpack on), so Boromir couldn’t just tackle an apparently empty pair of pants running away from him, yet not the elven boat that he was in when he attempted to leave without Sam.
(I’m sure THAT’S been discussed before…)
I see others have mentioned how the Ring and Morgoth’s power is “corrupting”. I think corruption needs to be explained more. What does it mean in this context?
Take Galadriel, for example. Say she claims the Ring and wields it. Along with her own ring, scrying pool and other powers, she will have an instant connection to the other ring wielders (Gandalf and Cirdan, I think?). They can communicate quickly. The forces of Men and Elves become coordinated. She can see the weaknesses in the armies arrayed against them. Easily, they defeat Sauron, pull down Barad-dur and break any remaining sources of power he had.
So where is the corruption? The good guys have won! It comes from the lingering power of Morgoth. Middle Earth is still not perfect. Galadriel will be tempted to destroy other lingering evils. After things like Shelob and barrow-wights and orcs and trolls are destroyed, there will be things like the Men who invaded from the East and South. They will need to be brought under more enlightened rule.
All the while, Galdriel will be coordinating the forces of Men and Elves. They’re at war; they need to keep working together to successfully to fight evil. Eventually (remember, she’s immortal), there will be fewer external enemies and more internal enemies. But with Galadriel’s guidance, such bad influences can be countered.
So instead of Middle Earth being remade to meet Sauron’s vision, it is slowly but surely remade into Galadriel’s. But the result is just as bad–a static world absolutely controlled by a single individual. Perhaps the inhabitants of Galadriel’s Middle Earth lead more pleasant lives than those in Sauron’s, but they are slaves just the same.
The point I hope I illustrated is that the Ring corrupts by focusing its wearer’s ego onto itself and potentially gives the means for imposing it on others. Ultimately, the wearer loses the ability to make moral judgements with respect to anyone else’s viewpoint.
The Ring doesn’t make the wearer invisible as much as it makes it impossible for others to see him. Remember, the Ring is all about influencing the minds of others–eyes are only the first step in seeing something.
Actually no; the Ring makes the wearer invisible by partially shifting them into the spirit world, which is why it makes the wearer more visible to things with a presence there like Sauron and the Ringwraiths (and more able to see them, for that matter). The Ringwraiths are permanently partly shifted, thus the permanent invisibility. And that’s likely why it didn’t make Sauron invisible; as a Maia, he’s already both present in the physical and spirit worlds.
I don’t think our explanations are contradictory.
That was my understanding. And lo!, one sees the Ringwraiths wrapped in cloaks with no faces visible within them, and the Witch King at one point actually throws back his hood to reveal a kingly crown seemingly set on nothing (his invisible head).
So being “partially shifted into the spirit world” doesn’t mean you take your clothes and accessories along with you. At least not for the Nine. The One, I suppose, being Badder Ass, has some kind of aura extending at least a few millimeters beyond the flesh.
Actually, no. The Ringwraiths weren’t wearing the Nine; Sauron was. They were invisible because they were wraiths, permanently shifted with or without a Ring; their clothes were just clothes and therefore were visible.
Sauron was wearing their nine rings?
He “held” them. I always thought there was some room for interpretation as to whether that was literal or figurative… Personally I like the idea that the Ringwraiths had their rings on them but apparently that’s not what Dr. T. had in mind. There is some Letter of the professor where he makes this more clear, the same way he specifies off-camera that yes, Sauron had his Ring with him in Numenor and literally spirited it up out of the oceanic abyss (whereas I always liked the idea of him “taking up once again his Ruling Ring” after the Fall of Numenor as indicating he stuffed it in the armrest padding of his throne in Barad-dur).
In any case, their wills were utterly enslaved to his even without him wearing the Ruling Ring. On the other hand, if the work was done in making them enslaved to him, why wouldn’t he redistribute the Nine among more men, like spreading a zombie disease?
And if the rings only worked once (to enwraith a particular individual), why take the rings back? Though with Sauron, “just to be a possessive dick” is certainly plausible; see how avidly he sought to lay his hands on the Seven even though they didn’t really work as he’d hoped on Dwarves.
Finally, Saruman claims that the Nazgul that comes to him at Isengard after the Adventure Of Peregrin And The Palantir “would know if I held this thing, for you would bow and call me master” (or something to that effect). Meaning, if Saruman had taken possession of the One Ring he could extend his will through it to control the Nine – which I would think logically means that the (One => Nine) line of control would work because the Bearers of the Nine are wired to obey the (last) Bearer of the One. (Alternatively, this is what Sauron let Saruman think, so that if Saruman did get his paws on it and claimed it, Sauron could still send Nine Bad-Asses to whup his surprised ass and bring him back his trinket.)
Should you be able find a cite, I’d like to see it. I have always imagined them wearing the rings.
And what is this in the film when the white water magic horses come at them? They don’t ride towards the shore, they ride down river! I wouldn’t trust those clowns to rob a 7-11!
Was wearing, at least keeping them from the ringwraiths to help keep them in line until he regained the one.
I concede defeat.
One reason Sauron might’ve wanted to hold onto the Lesser Rings:
The rings had an inherent ppower of their own and a strong will can use it to dominate, although on a smaller scale than its Big Brother. The mind control aspect is basically an insurance policy to make sure that those Sauron bought off stayed bought. If Sauron’s attention fades, or he “misplaces” the ring(and/ or the finger that bore it) Much like the elves, who were able to use their rings when Sauron went noncorporeal, you would have ambitios creatures with powerful toys who may decide they don’t want to be second banana anymore. So, before going after each other, they gang up on their former benefactor and give him what for.
Although, it’s doubtful they’d ultimately win, there remains a small chance, and Sauron doesn’t like to leave anything to chance. Better to control their minds, wraithify them, and yoink their toys, so that however much they terrorize the normals, they’ll never pose a threat to him, personally.
The lesser Rings also weren’t as hard to destroy as the One, and destroying his Ring may well destroy or greatly weaken the Nazgul in question. So Sauron keeping the Rings may have made them harder to permanently eliminate. Or someone else might have been able to control a Ringwraith through the Ring that enslaved him if Sauron didn’t have it or the One.
As I understand it, one Ring, one Ringwraith; he could have made replacements if one was destroyed, but no more than Nine at once.
Not necessarily. He’d have to “master” the Ring, not just take hold of it, and that apparently takes time. I’m sure he could have mastered the Ring a lot faster than Frodo though.
As I understand it, what would happen if held it but hadn’t mastered it yet is that the Ringwraiths wouldn’t be able to attack him, but they’d still primarily be under Sauron’s control via the Nine he wears. They would likely suck up to Saruman, call him “lord” and act all subservient until the alerted Sauron showed up in person and took his Ring back.
Sauron doesn’t physically wear the Nine rings. The only appearance of Sauron in LOTR is when Gollum describes his nine black fingers. Gollum certainly would have described a Lesser Precious on each finger.
Silmarils have light and the power to inspire. When confronting Shelob, Frodo uses the light of a Silmaril to hurt Shelob’s eyes, and inspire himself.
That was a bottle of elf juice.
In which the light of Eärendil (a silmaril) is caught. The elf juice got used up in Moria.