Quote:
Originally Posted by Faramir Jones
Also, it's possible that he might have fought Sauron on the grounds that he had gone 'soft'.  Tolkien made it clear in Morgoth's Ring that Morgoth wanted to destroy every living thing on Arda, including his own creatures such as Orcs, once the Elves and Men were destroyed. Sauron, by comparison, didn't mind things living, as long as they acknowledged his supremacy.  |
I think this is a good point, and it's one that occurred to me as well. We know Sauron had been infected by Morgothian "nihilism", but not wholly.
Sauron was Morgoth's greatest servant, but I think Sauron's real "god" or master was the idea of order. Ultimately this just became a will to dominate all life, but I think Sauron's primal obsession with order at all costs might have been a stronger impulse, deep down, than his subservience to Morgoth, which itself arose from his desire to achieve order. Morgoth eventually focused upon disorder, chaos and destruction as his goals, which surely Sauron must have found abhorrent – an outcome of the fissiparous nature of evil being that different, even competing, evils arise. This is why I believe Sauron would have seen Morgoth as a failure; he believed that order was the only good, and according to that standard Morgoth, Manwė and indeed Eru Himself had failed to bring about good, by failing to bring about order. Thus, despite his relative "smallness", he might well see himself as "superior" to all others, regardless of their stature and potency in the hierarchy of creation.
A Balrog might well have been far more infected by Morgoth's "lust for destruction" and hatred of all reality independent of himself; thus, perhaps, a Balrog would have no use for the One Ring. To control the minds of other created beings might seem pointless to a creature which only wished for them to be annihilated.