[Eonwe]

what about when gandalf says to whichever hobbit merry, or pippin, that sauron is the one true Lord of teh Ring (council of elrond, i believer, when said hobbit says something to the effect of "hail frodo, lord of the ring".)

i think looking at it in a practical manner is best. sauron makes the ring for one purpose: to dominate The Three. he has to put enough of himself in the Ring to effectively accomplish this. its his will. your will is what dominates you. of course he was being run by his ring, because it had a great portion of his will, or potency or whatever. but the idea of the ring mastering him i don't agree with. the ring is just a projection of whatever he is trying to do in the first place.

that is why the ring is always trying to get back to sauron.

however, i think that that will (in this case it swiches to potency) could be highjacked by someone else, if they were stong enough. in the end, whoever ends up weilding the ring will duke it out with sauron, and the winner would dominate the ring (ei, kill the other, so win the mastery of the ring by default). in this case, i think the ring would acknowledge its new master and become an outgrowth of whatever he was trying to do (which would enevitably become evil, by the evil nature of the will in the ring).

one more thing. that bit about sauron not wanting to destroy the ring is kind of self-evident. that would in effect be committing suicide. sauron isn't really going to repent (the only senario i can think of when he would have reason to destroy the ring). he already tried that and failed, even without the tempting of the ring. so i think he kind of like being evil and dominating the world.

hopefully that wasn't to confusing...