: Why would Saruman's ring be under the sway of the One Ring?

Err... why wouldn't it be? The ruling ring was devised so that it bound up the power of all other rings of power with itself. If Saruman's ring was indeed an essay in the lost craft (and if he wasn't just blustering) and was indeed a ring of power, well then by definition, it is subject to the fate and power of the ruling ring.

Think of walkie-talkies. If your have a bunch of low powered walkie-talkies that have limited frequency ranges, and then you have one master walkie-talkie that covers all the possible frequency ranges, then it can overhear everything. If you create another low powered walkie-talkie, then it still falls under the sway of the master one. To have it be outside the power of the one, the new walkie-talkie would have to communicate in a completely new way, unimagined before, or it would have to have advanced beyond the others and have encryption and such things.

Likewise (if my analogy holds true), Saruman's ring would be subject to the power of the Ruling ring. To imagine that Saruman's ring wouldn't be subject to the One, would be to say that Saruman had devised a new and better and more advanced way of creating rings of power. And yet I think that Tolkien implies that his ring is an attempt to recover the lost art of ring making, and is generally insignificant compared to the power of the three or even the nine (Saruman fears the Nazgul), let alone the one.

Sauron couldn't have "keyed" the One to the other 19 rings of power individually, because he didn't know anything about the making and creation of the three. He didn't have a hand in making them, and he didn't know what they were designed for; and yet they were subject to the One's power.

Am I making sense? Or am I missing something obvious? Why do you think Saruman's ring wouldn't be subject to the One's?

Cheers.

Dave C-Q