Is everyone sick of LOTR threads yet? I hope not.
In this thread, there are some speculations about Bombadil (it’s in one of the links) that he’s really the Witch King of Angmar in disguise. It’s insane, of course. But it got me wondering…
What if the Witch King had captured the One Ring…and kept it? How powerful would he have become if he’d just popped that sucker on his finger and went his merry way?
Well, since Sauron held the rings of the nine, they were all slaves of his will. JRRT wrote something about this somewhere, In “Letters” I think. He said (IIRC) the ringwraiths would have no choice but to turn the ring over to Sauron.
The Nine have been Sauron’s bitches for thousands of years. Remember, the Nine were just mortal men, literally no better than Faramir or Boromir. The Witch King would have had about as much luck holding off Sauron as Xander had resisting Count Dracula.
Besides.
No fingers.
Why didn’t the Nine yoink their rings back when Sauron got the dirty end of the stick from Isildur? Are they just stupid?
Well, none of that answers my question.
The Witch King was about as powerful as a human can be. Since the power one wields with the One Ring seems to be directly proportional to one’s inherent power how far could the Witch King have taken it if he’d gotten the Ring?
Yes, but the Witch King’s power was linked directly to Sauron. Plus, the One Ring is directly proportional to one’s inherent power (in this case, Sauron’s power) and their will (of which the Witch King had none).
The farthest he could have taken it would have been a straight line - from where he picked it up (point A), directly to Sauron (point B).
In trying to proceed with any behaviour that would have been contrary to the desires of his Lord and master (as has been suggested) the poor old witch King would have been hit by that self-desctruct piece of code in his Nazgul2000 cybertronic braincase which causes massive systems failure whilst simulteanously fusing all his circuits.
WAG: The rings were necessary for Sauron to enslave the Nine, but not to maintain his control.
I haven’t read the books but plan to. I will see TTT on Sunday and if this quesiton is answered just say so and I will find out then.
Anyway, in FOTR why didn’t the Nazul know were the ring was and where to go when Bilbo had it on (when he said goodbye at his party)? They had to tourture Gollum and ask for directions. But when Frodo had the ring on in Bree they know exactly where it was. A little confusing.
Was this not in the book? Were the Nazul too far away? A Peter Jackson mistake?
Sorry if its been addressed but there are too many FOTR threads to search through. This question is more in line with the OP topic anyway.
Thanks.
well here is what the fine folk at theonering.net have to say about it http://greenbooks.theonering.net/questions/files/080101.html#nazgulgetring
But quoting the relevant passagage:
“In his Letters, Tolkien states that to the Nazgûl’s point of view the Ring was “a thing that filled them with fear as an object of terror in their religious cult, by which they had been conditioned to treat one who wielded it with servility.” If they truly succeeded in killing Frodo early in the story and retrieved the Ring, they would have felt no substantial pull to it themselves.”
The birthday party scene was straight out of the book. All I can think of was that maybe Sauron wasn’t “together” enough yet to really follow much aside from “my ring is out there somewhere, and some short guy has it.” You’ll notice that he doesn’t unleash the Nazgul until YEARS after that party (at least, in the book).
Sauron was de-bodified after Isildur cut the Ring from his hand, and it took him quite a while to be able to do much of ANYTHING. Even now, he’s manifested only as a sort of giant special effect on top of his tower. He can operate pretty much only through pawns… and he could barely do THAT until fairly “recently”. I figured he was just… out of it… until such time as he finally heard the Ring’s call, and summoned the Nazgul to go out and fetch the thing. By that time, Gollum had been captured, and tortured for information, and this info was given to the Nazgul, for use in their quest.
But Sauron was already operating under the identity of “The Necromancer” waaaay back in Bilbo’s time. I believe that in “The Hobbit”, Gandalf states that he got the map of the Lonely Mountain from Thorin’s father in the dungeons of the Necromancer 100 years before the events of “The Hobbit”. Gandalf and the White Council clean out the Necromancer’s stronghold in Mirkwood, and he seems to be defeated, but of course is really only beating a strategic retreat to Mordor.
My question…where is it explicitly stated that the Nazgul don’t wear their rings? I always imagined they wore them all the time.
I remember reading that (what QtM said about Sauron holding the Nine rings), but I don’t remember where. I’m searching for it…
They were too far away - in Mordor, to be specific. In the books, about 17 years pass between Bilbo’s birthday party and the time Gandalf returns to tell Frodo about the nature of the One Ring. Peter Jackson did some significant time compression here, for dramatic sake (I guess he felt that it worked better that way on the screen than simply flashing-forward 17 years would have).
Where did it state that the Sauron was the Necromancer?
I always just assumed that Sauron was the necromancer. Wasn’t Gandalf afraid of the necromancer? Who else could Gandalf have been afraid of?
Having Sauron be the Necromancer is inconsistent with the rest of Sauron’s activity between Isildur’s kicking his ass and the events of LOTR. I just figured the Necromancer was another wizard–weren’t there two others, besides Gandalf, Saruman, and Radagast?
Sauron was “The Necromancer”. Gandalf himself discovered this when he entered Dol Gulder secretly. It is stated explicitly in JRRT’s writings.
QtM
Necromancer = Sauron
“Some here will remember that many years ago I myself dared to pass the doors of the Necromancer in Dol Guldur, and secretly explored his ways, and found thus that our fears were true: he was none other than Sauron, our Enemy of old, at length taking shape and power again.”
-The Fellowship of the Ring, p. 328.
Huh. I thought that Sauron was still too weak at the time to do much. Or had he regained a bit of power, and then lost it after his defeat?