Quote:
Originally Posted by Inziladun
I'm thinking along the lines of Gordis above- that it was not the Rings themselves that caused the wraith-state, but the lies and deceits of Sauron which he induced by the power of the One.
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I am afraid I have not been clear enough, so you have misunderstood me.
There are several different things that a Ring of Power does to a wearer.
1. A
Ring itself mentally affects the wearer. Here the greatest danger is to wear the One, because it has a large embedded ingredient of Sauron's own evilness and power. To wear the Three is not dangerous from that point of view because the Rings themselves are unsullied. To wear the Seven or Nine is something in between - of course in them Sauron-element is noticeably smaller than that in the One (less than 1/20, in fact). I think a strong and good-intentioned Man like Aragorn or Isildur or the future nazgul could well resist the inherent evilness of the Nine Rings, if Sauron had not the One.
And look at Gollum. He had worn the most powerful and the most evil Ring with a large "chunk of Sauron" inside for 500 years. Had he become Sauron's slave? No. He hated Sauron's very guts, was able to resist the Dark Lord, was able to LIE to Sauron! So, even the most evil Ring
all by itself doesn't make a Mortal Sauron's servant. Only the second factor - Sauron's DIRECT influence - could assure the enslavement.
2. While Sauron has the Ruling Ring in his possession, using the connection between the One and lesser Rings,
Sauron himself mentally affects the wearer of one of the 19, slowly turning him into a willing slave. Here no one is immune: Elves would be as vulnerable as Men, and they didn't dare to wear the Three even for a day in the Second Age. Th Nine Men became Sauron's slaves because, oblivious to the danger, they did use the Rings in the SA and were fully exposed to Sauron's influence. As for the Dwarves, they proved rather resistant due to their stubborn nature, but not wholly: we know some clans of the Dwarves fought on Sauron's side in the Last Alliance.
3. And completely
unrelated thing, IMO, is
turning mortals into wraiths. I don't think Sauron wished to do that specifically, it was simply an undesired side effect of Men's immortality. It was the effect of the wearing of the rings, unconnected to Sauron.
Sauron had promised Men immortality - and the Nine Rings ALMOST provided it, but with some draw-backs. A Ring prolongs Man's life and binds his spirit to the Circles of Arda. In a way an Elven ring
turns a Man into an Elf-like state: he doesn't age, or ages at an elven-rate, he cannot die of old age and receive the Gift of Eru, he continues living. But unlike Elven bodies, the bodies of Men are not supposed to endure for millennia, so very soon, much sooner than in Elves, a totally Elvish phenomenon occurs: the Ringbearers start to
fade. Soon they become wraiths, like the Elves-Lingerers, invisible to mortal eyes.
For mortals Elven rings are some sort of life-supporting machine. Fading occurs, IMO, because the Nine Rings are
not powerful enough life-supporting machines. The One Ring is more powerful, thus Gollum was able to live without fading much longer than an average nazgul. Perhaps, if the One Ring is indeed about 20 times more powerful than one of the Nine, Gollum would have been able to survive not only 500 years but much longer: maybe 2000-3000 years without fading. The Nine rings were less powerful, so the nazgul started fading much sooner.
For Dwarves the Rings couldn't serve as life-supporting machines, the Elven devices were too unspecific tor this species. The lives of the Dwarves were not prolonged by the Rings, they died naturally, so they had no time and no cause to fade.