Sympathy for the Devil?

[Hakon]

I think he would have known that destroying the ring would destroy him. The ring is him, he made the ring so it seems obvious that he would have known that if the ring was destroyed he would lose his power. He poured all of his power, cruelty and more into that ring. It makes sense that he would know that he would either lose all his power or lose a lot of his power if the ring was destroyed. He still had a link with the ring once it was lost but he needed someone to put the ring on to sort of activate that link.