Quote:
Originally Posted by Alfirin
As far as we know all of those who took the mortal rings did so willingly, but I'm not sure this is a prerequisite for the rings power and corruption to work. If he had unlimited mortal rings it would offer him the option of forcibly bonding anyone who was too much trouble to him. Capture the individual, force a ring on his finger and then either keep him chained up until the corruption did it's job or stab him through the heart with a Morgul blade (assuming my theories are correct and 1. the blade part of a Morgul knife can be replaced for additional uses (so they aren't quite as rare and valuable as they seem) and 2. If a Morgul knife is actually inserted DIRECTLY into the heart, wraithification occurs INSTANTLY). In short the amount of uses Sauron could have put additional rings or ring re-use to are so large it's is safe to assume that if he could have, he would have and that since he didn't he couldn't.
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That's interesting about the idea of forcible "wraithification". I would think that the reason Sauron didn't use that tack was that a
willfully evil mind was more preferable for his purposes than an innocent/unwilling mind. And like I said, I think that the mere acceptance of something like a Ring of Power, which gave influence over the physical and spiritual world beyond the original measure of the wearer, was in itself a "sin", leaving the user more vulnerable to its effects. Someone having a ring forced on them might take a good deal longer to transform, as they would know from the start to be wary and to attempt to fight its effects. And those effects in the end might not have been quite the same as for a willing bearer, as maybe the difference of the influence of the One on Gollum and Bilbo might indicate.