[The Saucepan Man]

Originally Posted by Fordim Hedgethistle

I do remember reading at one point that Tolkien actually plotted out four different endings for the climax at the Crack of Doom.

I think that there was an addiitonal scenario, mentioned in the Letter which Kransha referenced. One where Gollum ends up throwing himself into Mount Doom. I have to say, however, that it was one that did not ring true to my impression of Gollum.

As to the question at hand, Galadriel tells Frodo (in The Mirror of Galadriel):

Only thrice have you possessed the Ring upon your finger since you knew what you possessed. Do not try! It would destroy you. Did not Gandalf tell you that the rings give power according to the measure of each possessor. Before you could use that power you would need to become far stronger, and to train your will to the domination of others.

I am pretty sure that Frodo was not sufficiently powerful at Sammath Naur, even having claimed the Ring as his own, to bend it to his will. Certainly, he had not trained his will for the purpose of domination. So, I suspect that the will of the Ring would have superseded Frodo's own will giving him no dominion over the Nazgul, even though their own servitude, through the Nine Rings, was governed by the One Ring. And since the Ring's will was Sauron's will, it is doubtful that Frodo would have had any dominion over them. So, as the Letter suggests, they would only have feigned subservience to him.

What is interesting is that the Letter first referenced suggests that Frodo would only have had the capability of controlling the Ring once he claimed it as his own. Until that point, despite using it and deriving some of its benefits (invivibility, for example), he had no possibility of using it to his own ends because his intention was to destroy it. It is only once he claimed it as his own that this became a possibility, although Frodo was ill-equipped (thankfully) to bend it to his own will. But it does suggest that someone with the power to wield the Ring (Saruman, for example) would have been in a pretty good position to use it against Sauron almost as soon as it came into his possession - provided that he took the precaution to claim it, rather than simply bear it. But someone in possession of it but not prepared to claim it as his own, Gandalf for example, would perhaps have been in a far more vulnerable position as far as Sauron's will was concerned, because if he did not claim it, then the Ring would still be working primarily for Sauron.