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Nazgûl
Jul 19, 2007 6:39:12 GMT -6
Post by Stormrider on Jul 19, 2007 6:39:12 GMT -6
In Return of the Shadow in the "To Weathertop and Rivendell" chapter p. 364, Gandalf says this to Frodo as he wakes up in Rivendell:
At least here, JRRT has stated that the Nine have their rings. Otherwise wouldn't it be a torment for them to be without theirs as it would be for Frodo if the Necromancer took the One Ring back for himself? Why would the Nine still obey him if their rings were taken back? Maybe they would be in so much torment that they would plot against him. I think the Necromancer would not have as much control over the Nine if he took their rings back. But without the One Ring that RULES them all, how is he controlling them now anyway? And if Frodo had it on Weathertop, why didn't they acknowledge him as their master?
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Nazgûl
Jul 20, 2007 5:17:39 GMT -6
Post by Andorinha on Jul 20, 2007 5:17:39 GMT -6
Excellent observations here, Stormrider! Now it becomes vitally important for me to find the quotes that people often use when they say that (in the LotR version) the Nazgul , no longer carried their own rings, rather Sauron held them...
My own initial interpretation of LotR was that the Nazgul HAD to have their rings to keep them fully subject to Sauron's control and to allow them to maintain their invisibility. But, if Frodo might "fade" into the other dimension from the effect of the Morgul knife, perhaps there were other ways for maintaining Nazgul invisibility, perhaps once the Nine Men had faded from their ring-use, they were permanently invisible whether they had rings or not?
Your quote here, Stormrider, is very definitive that at this point, in this early version: the Nazgul do obviously have their own rings still:
"You would have become a wraith, and under the dominion of the dark Lord. But you would have had no ring of your own, as the Nine have (my emphasis); for your Ring is the Ruling Ring, and the Necromancer would have taken that, and would have tormented you for trying to keep it--if any torment greater than being robbed of it was possible." (RotS)
But, if I can find the other quotes, and IF we can agree that by the final LotR version JRRT changed his mind and had Sauron take the Nine Rings back, it will be interesting to see if we can find any explanations he might have given for making this alteration.
I think the material I'm looking for is to be found in Unfinished Tales, "The Hunt for the Ring." If it is there, and if it does really say that Sauron held the Nine himself, I suppose we are faced with opposing views from JRRT himself -- not the first time, LOL! Then we'll need to decide which version was the "latest," and which we (as readers) are meant to see as operative when the final, published version (LotR) came out...
Ah, found the quotes I need!
1. Gandalf to Frodo "So it is now; the Nine he had gathered to himself; the Seven also, or else they are destroyed. The Three are hidden still." (FotR, "The Shadow of the Past," p. 61, hb version)
2. Galadriel to Frodo: "You saw the Eye of him that holds the Seven and the Nine." (FotR, "Mirror of Galadriel," p. 382 hb version)
3. "At length he [Sauron] resolved that no others would serve him in this case but his mightiest servants, the Ringwraiths, who had no will but his own, being utterly subservient to the ring that had enslaved him, which Sauron held." (Unfinished Tales, p. 338)
4. "They were by far the most powerful of his servants, and the most suitable for such a mission, since they were entirely enslaved to their Nine Rings, which he now himself held." (Unfinished Tales, p. 343)
5. Regarding a possible confrontation of Frodo and the 8 remaining Nazgul at Mount Doom, Tolkien has this to say in one of his letters:
"Would they [the Nazgul] have been immune from its [the One Ring in Frodo's hand] power if he claimed it as an instrument of command and domination? Not wholly. I do not think they could have attacked him with violence, nor laid hold upon him or taken him captive; they would have obeyed or feigned to obey any minor command of his that did not interfere with their errand - laid upon them by Sauron, who still through their nine rings (which he held) had primary control of their wills." (Letter # 246, September 1963, p. 331)
Here, your set of ending questions becomes of paramount importance, I will think some more about them, especially:
1. "Otherwise wouldn't it be a torment for them to be without theirs as it would be for Frodo if the Necromancer took the One Ring back for himself?"
2. "I think the Necromancer would not have as much control over the Nine if he took their rings back. But without the One Ring that RULES them all, how is he controlling them now anyway?"
LOL. VERY nicely put, Stormrider! Bet we'd need to contact JRRT himself to get the answers!
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Nazgûl
Jul 20, 2007 5:57:36 GMT -6
Post by Stormrider on Jul 20, 2007 5:57:36 GMT -6
In FOTR the passage I quoted above from ROTS goes like this:
So as the final published work, there is no mention of the Nine still having their rings although it does not say that Sauron had them either. But because of your quotes above, I guess he does but it is just not reinforced in this passage.
Perhaps because Sauron does NOT have the Ruling Ring, he HAS to hold the other rings to control them. Once he gets his Ruling Ring back, he doesn't need to hold the other rings anymore and could, if he wished, give them to other fools and ensnare them likewise!
So Sauron needs his Ruling Ring to control the other rings when he first distributes the rings to people he wishes to ensnare. The Ruling Ring controls them while they are holding theirs and becoming wraiths in his command. Once they succumb, then he can take their rings and distribute them to other unsuspecting fools.
And I guess that is the whole purpose of him searching for his Ring--so he could rule others and eventually the entire Middle-earth. Muhahahahahahaha!
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Nazgûl
Jul 22, 2007 6:51:25 GMT -6
Post by Andorinha on Jul 22, 2007 6:51:25 GMT -6
RE Stormrider's: "Perhaps because Sauron does NOT have the Ruling Ring, he HAS to hold the other rings to control them. Once he gets his Ruling Ring back, he doesn't need to hold the other rings anymore and could, if he wished, give them to other fools and ensnare them likewise!"
I like this! Yes, that makes perfect sense to me. With the One Ring, Sauron has active/ imediate control over the other Rings of Power, and their holders, and could dole out (for the second time) the Nine and the remaining four of the Seven.
Some of your Ring research quotes from The Return of the Shadow suggest that at times JRRT was not sure if the rings were made for specific races, the Seven might work only on Dwarves, the Nine only on Men, the Three only on Elves. But, I wonder if early on, say 1940s first and second phases, the rings would work for any one who got one? lol, endless possibilities!
I get the feeling JRRT never had quite the amount of free time required to just thoroughly work his way through all the possible ramifications of the rings issue...
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Nazgûl
Jul 22, 2007 8:31:30 GMT -6
Post by Stormrider on Jul 22, 2007 8:31:30 GMT -6
That was the only thing that made sense to me, too. If Sauron took the rings from the Nine, he had to control them somehow since he did not have the One Ring to do that while the Nine wore theirs.
In the end from reading the finished LOTR, I believe Tolkien finally did decide that the nine rings were for men, the seven for the dwarfs, the three for the elves, and the One for him. That is the way I always understood it all the years I've been reading the story! I never questioned any of this until I started reading ROTS!
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Nazgûl
Aug 5, 2007 7:10:25 GMT -6
Post by Desi Baggins on Aug 5, 2007 7:10:25 GMT -6
Interesting....I guess I always thought that the nazgul had their rings, but it makes sense that if Sauron didn't have the One Ring that he had the nine so he could control the nazgul.
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Nazgûl
Oct 22, 2008 6:30:22 GMT -6
Post by Andorinha on Oct 22, 2008 6:30:22 GMT -6
Did the Nazgul retain their rings?
LOL, just to further muddy the waters, there is a quote from "The Council of Elrond," p. 263 hard back version, p. 328 pb version of FotR, that suggests they DID:
" 'Some, Galdor,' said Gandalf, 'would think the tidings of Golin, and the pursuit of Frodo, proof enough that the Halfling's trove is a thing of great worth to the Enemy. Yet it is a ring. What then? The Nine the Nazgul keep. The Seven are taken or destroyed.' ... 'The Three we know of. What then is this one that he desires so much?' " (emphasis mine)
Apparently, JRRT had an early scheme in RotS, as Stormrider pointed out above, whereby the Nine Nazgul kept their rings, but sometime later, by the writing of the Lothlorien material (FotR, "Mirror of Galadriel," p. 382 hb version. p. 474 pb) he had altered this arrangement, and now, Sauron holds the Seven and the Nine, and the Nazgul apparently have no rings...
It is interesting that in his revisions, JRRT seems to have missed the phrase from Gandalf at the Council, where the wizard reveals that the Nine still have their rings.
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Nazgûl
Oct 22, 2008 20:15:01 GMT -6
Post by Stormrider on Oct 22, 2008 20:15:01 GMT -6
With all the rewritten passages and the scraps of paper all over the place, I guess I can see how JRRT would have missed this passage in The Council of Elrond. After grooming his tale with a fine toothed comb, you would think everything would be untangled and set right, but I guess there is always some snarl to fowl you up somewhere.
But you know...if Sauron's body dissolved (or whatever it did) when Isildur cut The One Ring off his finger, how would Sauron have been able to hold onto any of the other rings that were in his keep?
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Nazgûl
Oct 23, 2008 0:16:57 GMT -6
Post by Andorinha on Oct 23, 2008 0:16:57 GMT -6
Hmmm, I never thought about that little problem! If he kept all the "recovered" rings on his person, why weren't they found and confiscated at the same time that they took the One? I get the feeling JRRT never quite worked that out for himself. Would they have been left in some secret storage box in Mordor while Sauron went to Numenor (where he apparently had the One), and then left in hiding while the siege took place during the first years of the Third Age? I suppose there would then have been a cache of 9 rings plus whatever number of the seven Sauron had, lying about hidden somewhere while the Dark Lord was just an unbodied spirit for some 2000 years...
LOL, I think JRRT would have needed the full life of a Numenorean (210 years) to comb out ALL the tangles left in his complicated books.
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Nazgûl
Oct 23, 2008 5:31:07 GMT -6
Post by Stormrider on Oct 23, 2008 5:31:07 GMT -6
A strong box was what I was thinking, too. What happened to Mordor after Sauron lost his Ring? It was still sitting there as usual. Didn't Elrond and Isildur go to Orodruin to destroy the Ring? (or is that PJ's movie interpretation?) Why did Sauron hole up in Dul Guldor in Mirkwood instead of going back to Mordor to recover? Was he hiding from the world so no one knew he was lurking in the shadows waiting for a come back?
Yeah, and JRRT would have been half way thru his life at this time and would still have another 100 years left to iron everything out. Let's see, he passed away in 1972 didn't he? That would have been 36 years he could have been working on and fixing The Silmarillion. But then we would not have had it to read yet! Nor any of the HoME series to further confuse us! But then we could write to him ourselves and hope for an answer.
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Nazgûl
Oct 24, 2008 11:08:44 GMT -6
Post by Andorinha on Oct 24, 2008 11:08:44 GMT -6
Lessee, as I recall it: from the book version -- Gilgalad, Elrond, Elendil, Cirdan and Isildur were all on the slopes of Orodruin with Sauron at the climactic moment, and Sauron killed both Gilgalad and Elendil; so there would have been two Elves witnessing Isildur's failure to destroy the Ring, Cirdan and Elrond. Whether others were also present as "common" footsoldiers, JRRT does not say. PJ, in the movie has Isildur and Elrond alone inside the mountain above the Fires, but the book does not actually tell us if they ever went that far, or if they remained outside on the slopes when Isildur took the Ring to keep it. I don't think the book ever mentions just how/ why Sauron went to Ordruin where the last fight took place, nor whether his Tower had already been captured. At any rate, the Dark Tower was thrown down by the victorious allies, all but its foundations which could not be removed as they were made with the power of the One Ring and endured so long as it existed.
During most of the Third Age, as I recall, Sauron's Barad Dur was still nothing more than ruins over the foundations, and the area was still patrolled by the Men of Gondor for at least two thousand years after Sauron's first fall. As Sauron recovered from his disembodied state, he settled in Dol Guldur where the fortifications were apparently still in good repair. Though, I wonder, why did not the Elves destroy Dol Guldur after Sauron's first fall? The people of Lothlorien did tear down Dol Guldur after the Ring was destroyed by Gollum/ Frodo, so why did they miss the chance to tear the place down after Sauron's first collapse?
Anyway, I suppose the Nine rings and those of the Seven that Sauron had, could have been left in some hidden basement vault in the foundations of Barad-Dur? But would this have left the Nazgul largely free of Sauron's dominion, did S. have to have the Nine rings near him, or on him, to control the Ring-wraiths? LOL...
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Nazgûl
Oct 25, 2008 5:24:33 GMT -6
Post by Stormrider on Oct 25, 2008 5:24:33 GMT -6
Unless the Nazgûl were just so subdued and dependant on Sauron at this point that it didn't matter where Sauron had their nine rings and they would follow him anyhow.
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