The Nature of the Nine

[Belegorn]

Originally Posted by TheLostPilgrim

Were the Nine--those who would become Ringwraiths--good/just people before the Rings enslaved them?

And also, in their slavery, did they have anything of a "mind" anymore? Or were they simply restless spirits? Had their beings become truly evil, or simply bound to an evil will? Did they have any sort of will of their own that is known--did they wish in some way to escape their servitude? Did they have any sort of true loyalty to Sauron, or only the mindless subservience of a zombie to it's necromancer?

And in the end, after Sauron's defeat, were they freed? Were their spirits made whole and allowed to go into "Heaven"--Or were their spirits totally extinguished or cast into the Void?

I actually feel bad for the Nine, in a sense, because they were unwittingly enslaved and kept as such for millenia, and died as villains. It's not as if they voluntarily fell to evil, they feel simply to weakness and perhaps false promises by Sauron.

I do think they had their own thoughts. Like the Witch-king's feelings to certain Dúnedain of the South Kingdom like the Steward Boromir who he feared, and he hated King Eärnur who he taunted while he was King about their earlier meeting when his horse ran from the approach of the Witch-king. When searching for the Ring there is this passage from Unfinished Tales, "they met messengers from Barad-dûr conveying threats from their Master that filled even the Morgul-lord with dismay." [p. 354]

Regarding their will in relation to Sauron's and the Rings of Power, "they were entirely enslaved to their Nine Rings, which he now himself held; they were quite incapable of acting against his will, and if one of them, even the Witch-king their captain, had seized the One Ring, he would have brought it back to his Master." [p. 358] Think about that. The One which could tempt about anyone and confer powers on people, even the Witch-king if he found it would bring it back to Sauron rather than keep it as his own and try to master it. They were slaves to their own Rings. This was really the purpose of the Rings of Power as Sauron had planned. To make the free peoples of M-E subservient to him through them. This is why when the One was complete, and he put it on the Elves took off their Rings after hearing Sauron's chant.

Aragorn describes the Nine, "In dark and loneliness they are strongest... their power is in terror." [FotR, p. 216] He later on goes into detail about how they see they world and their weakness [233-234]. We are shown how strong they really are as Gandalf was "hard put to it indeed" [317] when he faced them on Weathertop and, "On foot even Glorfindel and Aragorn together could not withstand all the Nine at once." [270] However, it appears that if Sauron were to wield the One they would be even stronger, "they are only shadows yet of the power and terror they would possess if the Ruling Ring was on their master's hand again." [352]

I do not think they were wholly good or evil. It is said, "according to their native strength and to the good or evil of their wills in the beginning, they fell under the thraldom of the ring that they bore and under the domination of the One" [Sil, p. 358] So the immediacy of their complete domination by Sauron depended in part on the balance of the good/evil of their wills.