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Old 11-01-2020, 05:51 AM   #10
Gardener of Gamwich
Newly Deceased
 
Join Date: Oct 2020
Location: England
Posts: 7
Gardener of Gamwich has just left Hobbiton.
Further thoughts

Mithadan thank you so much for your reply. You know I'd never thought about it like that before – the purpose of the Ring being solely to control the other Great Rings.

But of course, control of the other Great Rings is what the rhyme says and what the rhyme claims – the One Ring gives power over the Nine, Seven and Three. But that's the "One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them..." part.

I mustn't forget the second part of the rhyme and, indeed, the inscription on the One Ring itself: "One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them".

Now looking at the excerpt from Letter 131 (again thanks Mithadan) I note the One "contained the powers of all the others..." I find that a bit confusing, but is "containing the powers of all the others" what is meant in the "bind them" part of the poem?

In "Shadow of the Past" Gandalf gives further information about the nature of the One Ring:
"He only needs the One; for he made that Ring himself, it is his, and he let a great part of his own former power pass into it, so that he could rule all the others. If he recovers it, then he will command them all again, wherever they be, even the Three, and all that has been wrought with them will be laid bare, and he will be stronger than ever."

If the One Ring's purpose is indeed limited to controlling the other Great Rings, as per Gandalf's statement, it makes Sauron's whole strategy regarding rings of power very intriguing. That strategy, (as I understand it), is to deceive the Elves in Eregion into creating the rings of power, particularly the Great Rings. By forging the One Ring, Sauron could use it to ensnare the leaders of the other races and to use the combined powers of all the other Great Rings to forward his designs.

In invoking this strategy, Sauron, as one of the Maiar of Aulë, before his ensnarement by Melkor, would bring considerable skill to the forging of the rings of power and those skills, offered to the Elves by Sauron wearing the fair guise of Annatar, would be welcomed in Eregion (blinded by their thirst for knowledge, these Noldor did not have the clarity of vision of Gil-galad and Galadriel in how they perceived and dealt with "Annatar"). And Sauron's strategy starts off very well indeed doesn't it. The Nine and the Seven, and then the Three are created.

But when Sauron springs his trap by creating the One Ring, Celebrimbor senses it and hides the Three (which were made by him alone after Annatar's departure – is that correct?) , thus undermining Sauron's grand strategy. And Sauron is furious – understandably so.

Gandalf reiterates how much power Sauron poured into the One Ring in "The Last Debate",
"If [the Ring] is destroyed, then [Sauron] will fall; and his fall will be so low that none can foresee his arising ever again. For he will lose the best part of the strength that was native to him in his beginning, and all that was made or begun with that power will crumble, and he will be maimed for ever, becoming a mere spirit of malice that gnaws itself in the shadows, but cannot again grow or take shape. And so a great evil of this world will be removed."

Sauron must have had great faith in his Eregion rings of power strategy if he was willing to commit so much of his innate power to create a device solely devoted to controlling the other Great Rings. Doing so made him very vulnerable and was indeed his downfall.

And the length of time involved in the whole thing strongly reflects the huge potential victory that Sauron saw in the creation and then domination of the Great Rings – one worth the investment of that innate power in the One Ring's creation. He began to stir in c SA 500 and c SA 1000 took Mordor and began building the Barad-dûr [And an aside from that, doesn't Elrond say in "The Council of Elrond" that the foundations of the Barad-dûr were built using the power of the One Ring. Hmm.]. In c SA 1200, he begins his seduction of the Elves. It won't be until SA 1600 that the Great Rings are complete and Sauron springs the trap. So we're seeing a strategy formed somewhere over a 150-year period that then took fully 400 years to go from initiation to maturity. (A fleeting time for a Maiar or the Eldar I concede.)

We know that if another great leader in the Middle-earth – Eldar, Istari, Dúnedain – wore the One Ring and learned to control it, that they would wield immense power and could potentially dethrone Sauron. Following the theory, derived by strict interpretation of Gandalf's statement in Shadow of the Past, of the One Ring's power being solely over the other Great Rings, does this mean that had Aragorn claimed the One Ring, as Sauron suspects he has after the defeat at Pelennor, Aragorn's new power would be to control the Nazgul, any Dwarves wearing the remaining Seven (had any survived), and Elrond, Galadriel and Gandalf? Would the power he would wield against Sauron be the combined power of the other surviving Great Rings (even if Sauron physically held the Nine and the remaining Seven in the Barad-dûr)? If the keepers of the Three took their Rings off would he be denied their power?

Maybe it might clarify the matter if, instead of asking what power Sauron would have wielded wearing the One Ring during the attack on Eregion as I first did, we were to consider how the power of the One Ring would have manifested itself if it was on Aragorn's finger (after he had learned to wield the power) during the assault on the Black Gate? What could he do with the combined power of the surviving Great Rings e.g.
– Mental powers over his foes and his allies – diminishing the morale of the former and heartening the latter?
– Construction/Infrastructure – If Sauron used the One Ring to build the Barad-dûr, could Aragorn have used it to repair the gates of Minas Tirith and re-build the bridge at Osgiliath?

I realise there are no real answers to this, just conjecture. But I would be interested in any informed conjecture.

And I think I had better stop there.

As a newcomer to this forum, I would welcome any guidance about whether I'm straying off subject and should be posting this elsewhere. In a way though I think this is just building on the earlier discussion and will actually feed back to the answer to the original question regarding "Why was Sauron so powerful during his war against the Celebrimbor and the elves?"
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