The White Council

Re: that's one stupid dark lord

Tolkien and Inklings Discussion

: : You also have time feed your rage and hatred against those who defeated you. Rage and hatred can warp one's thoughts, and cloud one's memories.

: OK, so let's reconstruct. Let's imagine that for the first 1000 years of the third age, while Sauron is reshaping, he's not really in condition to think things out clearly. Now he's back, and he tries to take stock of things. He has to wonder about the status of his ring. Two options:

: (1) It was destroyed : (2) It's lost

: What's the evidence for each?

: For (2) there are whatever suspicions Sauron might have had that destroying the ring would have destroyed him too. But maybe he really could have thought that the result of losing his ring was becoming a misshapen shadow for 1000 years. OK, so that could point toward (1) as well. Fine. : For (2) there's also the continued existence of the ring-wraiths. That, it seems to me, doesn't point toward (1) at all.

This assumes that the existence of the ring-waiths was tied entirely to the one ring. I believe they were tied to both the ring and Sauron. If this is the case, their existence would point to neither (1) or (2).

: But let's just say that the evidence is uncertain -- it doesn't clearly point toward either (1) or (2). Fair enough.

: That is still nowhere near enough to suggest that Sauron would have ASSUMED that the ring had been destroyed. I don't care how upset you think he was, the idea that for nearly 2000 he just took it for granted that his ring was gone is hardly credible. It's just too important -- what, after all, if someone else gets a hold of it? A Galadriel, for instance. It would worry me, if I were Sauron.

Gandalf, I belive, stated that Sauron could not concieve of someone possessing the ring, and not using its power. This, I think, is the key to Sauron believing that the ring had been destroyed. He would belive that, if the ring still existed, someone would claim it and use its power. If someone had claimed the ring, the ringwaiths would no longer serve him. They still served him. Therefore, no one had claimed and was using the ring. The ring must have been destroyed.

: snip