Gandalf: the Unilateral Coalition Builder

[Boromir88]

I did an interesting thread on Gandalf's manipulating ways here.

Some fine posts have been made already. Perhaps we can expand this to a discussion between Gandalf and Saruman in LOTR? How Gandalf uses his persuasion for good purposes. And he does it because it's the right thing to do, not to gain anymore power in which is the big reason Saruman manipulates.