P&CE Discussion of Tolkien, LOTR, Silmarillion, and Amazon’s Expensive Commercial Attempt at Fanfic

The canonical reading on this topic is "Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age" at the end of the Silmarillion. I've got my desk copy (*) of the Silmarillion at hand - I'll review it and get back to you with the details (gotta take kid to school first) - but you all can review your handy copies of the Silmarillion first if you want.

(*) as opposed to my bedside table copy or my bookshelf copy.

 

OK, here's a summary of what was written about the Rings of Power in the Silmarillion.

Bla bla Sauron bla bla Beleriand was broken bla bla blah. At the beginning of the Second Age, Gil-galad (the high king, hereditary, he was descended from the previous High Kings of the Noldor but was born in Middle-earth) and Elrond established themselves at Mithlond, the Grey Havens, in the northwest of what remained of Middle-earth. Other elves set up realms elsewhere, but the only other place with Noldor was Eregion, near the west gate of Moria, where Celebrimbor (son of Curufin, who was one of Feanor's asshole sons) and the jewel-smiths set up shop, cause they liked working with the Dwarves of Moria.

Bla bla men in the south and east bla bla Sauron turning them to evil bla blah. Sauron hated the Eldar - at this point just the remnants of the Noldor who stayed in Middle-earth after the First Age, and whatever number of local Elves followed them - and feared the Numenoreans. He disguised himself as someone fair and wise and called himself Annatar, the Lord of Gifts. Gil-galad and Elrond saw through that shit and he wasn't welcome in Mithlond, and they tried to send warnings to the other Elvish realms but nobody listened. It sounds like Sauron was doing the jealousy thing - a messenger comes from Gil-galad saying "hey, don't trust that stranger in the free candy van" and the stranger goes, "ah, they're just jealous that you're getting free candy. Isn't it tasty?" Somehow the Elves couldn't see through this obvious ploy - you don't trust the stranger in the free candy van! Even if you really want free candy!

So Sauron made friends with the jewel-smiths of Eregion and taught them stuff, and they made Rings of Power. Things in quotes from here on are directly from the book. The Elves made "many rings" and Sauron secretly made the One Ring. "Much of the strength and will of Sauron passed into that One Ring, for the power of the Elven-rings was very great, and that which should govern them must be a thing of surpassing potency."

Let's see, I don't want to type in the whole paragraph, so to summarize, the Elves saw what was happening as soon as Sauron put on the One Ring, and they took their rings off. All of the rings, not just the three rings for the Elves. It sounds like the rings were not designated for particular races - they were just Rings of Power, and later on, Sauron distributed them among Men and Dwarves that he wanted to control. Sauron was big mad and showed up with his army and demanded all the rings and the Elves ran away and took three of the rings with them.

There's a description of how awesome the three rings are, and to tie this back in to the show, "those who had them could ward off the decays of time and postpone the weariness of the world" which sounds like what Gil-galad in the show wanted to do. So the three rings were hidden and never used while Sauron had the One Ring, and they were "unsullied, for they were forged by Celebrimbor alone, and the hand of Sauron had never touched them; yet they also were subject to the One."

So bla bla war Eregion laid waste Celebrimbor killed (oops, spoilers for the show I guess) doors to Moria shut bla bla blah. "Sauron gathered into his hands all the remaining Rings of Power; and he dealt them out to the other peoples of Middle-earth". "Seven rings he gave to the Dwarves; but to Men he gave nine, for Men proved in this manner as in others the readiest to his will." So he tried to control the Dwarves and Men with the rings he gave to their leaders. Dwarves didn't go so well - they just got greedier but not more evil - but Men were pretty easy to corrupt and you end up with the Ringwraiths.

So, to summarize: Elves learned from Sauron in his free candy van form, and made a bunch of Rings of Power. At least 19 - possibly more that got lost or destroyed. The last three, the best of the bunch, were not made with Sauron's direct involvement, but were still subject to the One Ring that Sauron secretly made in Mount Doom. (not sure about the logistics here, Mount Doom is some distance from Eregion where the other rings were made, but that's a discussion for another day.) Sauron puts on his ring, demands all the other rings, Elves run away with the three fine Rings but many Elves are killed and Sauron recovers 16 of the rings, which he then distributes to Dwarves and Men.

 

Thanks for this. IMO it was always a bit of a plot flaw why exactly the 3 elvish rings would be subject to the one, or why they were "hidden" - as clearly Sauron would have a good idea where they were?

I'd more understood it to mean that Sauron couldn't penetrate the magic of them - which was part of the power of rivendell and lorien ... i.e they were using them.

 

I suspect the Three Rings got used heavily in the Third Age. Sauron never had the One Ring (too many words to capitalize, I'm going to stop capitalizing everything, you guys are pretty smart and probably know what I mean) in the third age - it briefly belonged to Isildur, and then spent a bunch of time at the bottom of a river, and then was in the hands of a series of grubby hobbits until it got destroyed. So the elves were free to use the power of the rings throughout the third age to spruce up Rivendell and Lorien and give the third ring to Gandalf when he showed up.

I'm guessing during the second age, Sauron didn't have the strength go take the rings from the elven strongholds. Rivendell was founded in secret, but for a guy like Sauron who has spies everywhere, he's gotta figure that whenever his ravens or wargs or trolls or whatever go near a particular spot on the map they're not heard from again, so he must have known it was there. Lindon was well protected, and Gil-galad was backed up by the Numenoreans.

Anyways, I'm preparing a lengthy discussion of what I'm calling "The Annatar Question", or how the hell did a smart guy like Celebrimbor get taken in by some asshole calling himself the Lord of Gifts who shows up in a hobo's free candy van? It's going to tie in to the show. Look for that later today.

 

Good point - I think you are right, he didn't have the one, so they didn't have to worry about that after Sauron was defeated at Barad-Dur

One of the things that mega-anorak war gaming blog points out is that the "rules of the one ring" are pretty unclear. Supposedly anyone claiming it would be revealed to the eye - although they can use it??? etc etc

This is what I was most interested in when this series was announced. I thought the only way to do it is not to hide Sauron off screen, but to have him as a transparent to the audience as a conflicted bad guy - but as BG pointed out only GOT can really pull off that kind of writing. LOTR just has good guys and bad guys.

 

Yes, should have clarified. First mentioned in Gandalf's letter to Frodo helping him ID Strider. The letter that Butterbur initially fails to give Frodo.

 

OK, so, "The Annatar Question". How does Sauron disguise himself as "one both fair and wise" and get the Elves of Eregion to listen to him?

The Noldor should be paranoid. Ever since they arrived in Middle-earth, pretty much everything has tried to kill them. OK, some of the local elves ("Avari", elves who never saw the light of the two trees in Valinor, or "green elves" because they loved them some trees) joined up, but #NotAllElves - Eöl had no love for the Noldor, and his failson Maeglin helped to destroy one of their realms in Beleriand.

Many Men joined the elves in their fight, but many more men betrayed them, and by the time of the second age, all of the "good" men had gone off to Numenor leaving the dregs, the betrayers back in Middle-earth. This gives some background to Arondir and his elf-colleagues when they were stationed at that tower in the southlands, watching over men who didn't appreciate them.

So a proper Elvish realm should be pretty suspicious of anyone who just walks up and says "Hi, I'm Annatar, in your language that means the Lord of Gifts. Wanna learn some secret magic stuff?" The response would probably involve weapons, or at least harsh language along the lines of "get the ******** out of here you creep".

If anyone is confused about my previous references to the free candy van, go ahead and do a Google image search for "free candy van" and imagine one of those parked outside your kid's school. Now, that disguise is neither fair nor wise, so we can assume that Sauron wouldn't choose that option. But, if you're an evil overlord who has to disguise yourself in order to ingratiate yourself into your enemy's stronghold, how do you do that?

First, you don't choose your own name. The text says "Sauron took to himself the name of Annatar, the Lord of Gifts" but it doesn't say that Sauron named himself that when he showed up. He may have been given that name later, and not rejected it outright. Dr. Evil can call himself that because he doesn't need to get the good guys to like him. But when Sauron first shows up to meet the Noldor, the main thing is to be non-threatening. One way of doing that is to be humble - "I am Dirt, son of Mud" kind of stuff - and then later, when they've accepted you and are busy making rings of power based your operating system (complete with the backdoor that lets your One Ring take control later), when they go "Hey, Dirt son of Mud, maybe we should call you Annatar, since you're the Lord of Gifts", you go "aw shucks, thanks guys, that really means a lot to me" while you continue to plot their doom.

Second, you need some credentials. If you just show up going "hello, I am Dirt, son of Mud, can I come in" the normal answer is "get lost you hobo" - maybe preceded by "here's a scrap of bread" if they're feeling generous. But they're not just going to let you in to their stronghold no matter how humble you are, unless you have something to offer them. And you can't be up front about it - "Hi, I'm Dirt, son of Mud. I'm really good at magical stuff, you could totally learn some things from me" isn't going to get you in. No, you need someone to vouch for you. Maybe someone you rescue, an Elf scout who got in to trouble - as an evil overlord, you should be able to arrange that - and you display some unexpected prowess from your raggedy hobo lookin ass so the Elf scout can go, yeah, he knocked those bears off me, I'm not sure how he did it, but let's let him in and give him a bath or something.

If a convenient Elf scout isn't available, use what you have. Perhaps there is a troop of helpless Harfoot nomads performing the yearly migration to their winter quarters. While it is temporarily humiliating to have to lower yourself to their status for a time, it will get you in to places where you can't get on your own. An opportunity will come up to show your powers, maybe protecting those useless dolts from a wolf attack, and feigning amnesia or pretending to not know their language will raise your humility and mystery scores. Then at some point if they come across some Elves, they can vouch for you - "we don't know where he came from, but he's good, see, he helped us" in their adorable West Country accents (*) - as they hand you over to them for further investigation, without raising their suspicions beyond the threshold where they won't let you in to their stronghold and try to find out what kind of powers you have.

(*) I don't know anything about accents. I found a post from Jitty a few weeks ago where he said "Why not give the harfoots the posh public school accents and the elves irish accents?" I don't think the Harfoots sound particularly Irish, but I've only spent about two days in Ireland in my life. I call it "West Country" because that's another place where the people of the land are found, the common clay of the new west, you know, morons. Anyways, whatever accent these guys use, it should signify hard-working, trustworthy and simple, at risk of being taken advantage of by smarter and wickeder city folk. Bonus tip - learn to speak in their accent to trick the Elves into thinking you're a good-hearted simpleton.

So once the Elves let you in to their stronghold, it's a question of gaining their trust over time, and slowly letting hints about your knowledge out, until they're showing you what they're doing and you can start to influence it.

So you see where I'm going with this. There's been speculation about tall man from the sky, that he's a previously undisclosed wizard, or Gandalf with time travel, or Tom effing Bombadil, but I think he's going to turn out to be Annatar, the Lord of Gifts, aka Sauron. (And props to @marek who was the first to mention this possibility last week in this thread.) He's taking on a disguise that is both fair and wise - all the wizards we've seen are crusty old dudes but they don't make people recoil in horror at their looks, and nobody doubts their wisdom. And he's doing it in a way that has a higher chance of getting him in to the Noldor strongholds - a mysterious sky stranger with unexplained powers who devoted himself to helping the little runt people for a while is going to get a better reception than someone who just shows up.

That's my speculation on The Annatar Question. The show moves so slowly that I don't think we'll get an answer for this in the next three episodes that remain in the first season, but there's apparently a second season already approved.

 

@Smurfquake

Sauron is already in middle earth. He was shown in one of the early scenes. It wouldn't make sense for him to arrive though nothing is really too dumb for this show.

 

For me the issue with Sauron will be the same as Galadriel - lack of stakes.

As @Belgian guy pointed out, LOTR doesn't have 3 dimensional characters like Jaime Lannister.

Sauron have to be obvious to the audience yet all the characters will have to be stupid about it because plot reasons. He will have no credible motivations except being "evil"

This is why it would all be better suited to more of a super hero genre of shows where Sauron can just be a big bad. This kind of character driven political intrigue with no characterisation is bound to fail.

 

Also they have tits and dragons

 

Yeah, I like the @Smurfquake take, especially the effort that went into it. ( ) but I'll be really surprised if the Stranger ends up being Sauron.

 

OK, episode 6 is out. The Harfoot-free episodes are significantly more watchable than the ones with Harfoots. This one was pretty good if you pretend it's a standalone action sequence.

 

Actually, this kind of stuff is why I quit watching Game of Thrones (well, along with the sex as a form of violence that was supposed to be one of the rewards for watching). They had these characters who were supposed to be smarter than everyone else but the only way they were able to depict it was by lowering the ambient IQ of the general population.