Quote:
Originally Posted by Mornorngûr
Why didn't Sauron just give Ar-Pharazôn a 'Ring of Power'? (one of 'The Nine'), or maybe he could have given out all of 'The Nine' among the 'Kings men'?. This way their lives would have been extended and he could have feigned that because of loyalty to his cause (and to Melkor), that eternal life had been granted. This of course would have been a lie. However by the time that they discovered this, they would have been to far gone and under his control (due to the One Ring) to do anything about it, and Sauron would have accomplished dominion over Númenor.
|
Apart from the practical reason that the Nine had already been dispensed by that point in time and there were no Great Rings remaining for him to give out, I think that Sauron simply did not want most of the Númenoréans to survive. He wanted, I think, to kill Ar-Pharazôn and destroy the armies and fleets of Númenor to cripple their strength and eliminate the threat they posed to his plans of domination in Middle-earth.
The entire plot, convincing Ar-Pharazôn to attack Aman, seems to be similar to the scheme with the Rings of Power to me. Gandalf observed Sauron's philosophy thus: "he that strikes the first blow, if he strikes it had enough, may need to strike no more." ("The White Rider") Sauron was always developing master plans to eliminate his enemies in a single motion. The forging of the Rings was one such scheme, to bring the Elves under his control instantaneously. This scheme failed. Númenor succeeded, to an extent, but he lost his body and the Faithful survived; by eliminating his power-rivals he granted Gil-Galad a formidable ally. The War of the Ring was a similar scheme - to let the blow fall on all of his enemies simultaneously and destroy them all at once. This was the nature of Sauron's character: impatient and ruthless. The problem with this attitude was that his plans had no contingency, and when they failed they did so disastrously.
I do not believe that ruling Númenor was ever of interest to Sauron. He just wanted to get rid of them, because he hated and feared them. Without them he only had to deal with the Noldor. Temporarily being the power behind the throne was simply the most efficient means of doing this because they could not be defeated by force of arms.