Q: How Would a Rival Use the One Ring to Defeat Sauron?
ANSWER: I have seen some interesting discussion about this topic but all the proposed explanations I have seen leave out one important point. Before I get to that, let me say up front that J.R.R. Tolkien only provided cursory information about how the Ring could have been used against Sauron. Frankly, I don’t think he ever saw any point to speculating further than he did because such a story would be untellable from his point of view.
One person on Reddit cited the following from Letter No. 246:
In any case a confrontation of Frodo and Sauron would soon have taken place, if the Ring was intact. Its result was inevitable. Frodo would have been utterly overthrown: crushed to dust, or preserved in torment as a gibbering slave. Sauron would not have feared the Ring! It was his own and under his will. Even from afar he had an effect upon it, to make it work for its return to himself. In his actual presence none but very few of equal stature could have hoped to withhold it from him. Of mortals no one, not even Aragorn. In the contest with the Palantír Aragorn was the rightful owner. Also the contest took place at a distance, and in a tale which allows the incarnation of great spirits in a physical and destructible form their power must be far greater when actually physically present. Sauron should be thought of as very terrible. The form that he took was that of a man of more than human stature, but not gigantic. In his earlier incarnation he was able to veil his power (as Gandalf did) and could appear as a commanding figure of great strength of body and supremely royal demeanour and countenance.
Of the others only Gandalf might be expected to master him – being an emissary of the Powers and a creature of the same order, an immortal spirit taking a visible physical form. In the ‘Mirror of Galadriel’, 1381, it appears that Galadriel conceived of herself as capable of wielding the Ring and supplanting the Dark Lord. If so, so also were the other guardians of the Three, especially Elrond. But this is another matter. It was part of the essential deceit of the Ring to fill minds with imaginations of supreme power. But this the Great had well considered and had rejected, as is seen in Elrond’s words at the Council. Galadriel’s rejection of the temptation was founded upon previous thought and resolve. In any case Elrond or Galadriel would have proceeded in the policy now adopted by Sauron: they would have built up an empire with great and absolutely subservient generals and armies and engines of war, until they could challenge Sauron and destroy him by force. Confrontation of Sauron alone, unaided, self to self was not contemplated. One can imagine the scene in which Gandalf, say, was placed in such a position. It would be a delicate balance. On one side the true allegiance of the Ring to Sauron; on the other superior strength because Sauron was not actually in possession, and perhaps also because he was weakened by long corruption and expenditure of will in dominating inferiors. If Gandalf proved the victor, the result would have been for Sauron the same as the destruction of the Ring; for him it would have been destroyed, taken from him for ever. But the Ring and all its works would have endured. It would have been the master in the end.
The problem with this passage is that it does not address the question directly. Tolkien was talking about what would happen in a direct confrontation between Sauron and any claimant of the Ring who had not yet mastered it.
The Ring’s chief purpose was to influence and control the wills of others. Tolkien says that Frodo never used the Ring to do that, but he did give the Ring purpose to influence the fate of Gollum. When Gollum swore by the Ring that he would do everything commanded, Frodo warned him that the Ring would hold him to that promise and that it would destroy him. When Gollum tried to seize the Ring on Mount Doom it spoke to him directly and told him that if he ever touched it again he himself would be cast into the fire, which he was. The Ring therefore exerted an influence over Gollum, which is consistent with Tolkien’s explanation of how the Ring would act against its wearer.
But imagine a great leader who took up the Ring in front of an army. They would be awed by that leader because the Ring would enhance his stature. Tolkien provided us with an example of this effect when Sam wore the Ring as he entered the fortress of Cirith Ungol. The Orc that encountered him on the stairs fled in terror because it thought Sam was some great menacing warrior. This scene implies that the Ring cannot (easily) “tone it down” in terms of enhancing its wearer’s presence. After all, what faster way to get back to Sauron than to allow some loyal Orc to tote it directly to Barad-dur? The Ring knew where Frodo was going. It spent months breaking down his will so that at the last moment it could prevent its own destruction.
Were someone like Gandalf to gain control over the Ring — actually master it — would probably only mean that a new Dark Lord would rise up to replace the old one (Cf. “[the Ring] would have been master in the end”). I don’t believe Sauron would have died had someone gained control over the Ring, but maybe he would have. He would have been stripped of its power and whatever rapport he had with it while separated from it would have ended. That is one question I would love to have asked Tolkien: what should have happened to Sauron if someone else took control over the Ring?
But the very act of mastering the One Ring is itself a deed of coercion and domination; hence, your first act would be evil. It is as evil to dominate Sauron as it is for Sauron to dominate you. I don’t think even Gandalf could have avoided a moral fall if he took control over the Ring. Also, in his case, he had been forbidden by the Valar to reveal himself in a form of majesty or to directly contest Sauron’s power (which prohibition appears to have ended with his death). Up until Gandalf died in Moria he would have been violating his commandment from the Valar if he took the Ring to wield it. Of course, after he was restored to life Gandalf never came near the Ring again. But any act of defiance, coupled with an act of domination, would be a moral fall for Gandalf which, I think, could only have left him in a similar state of rebellion as Morgoth and Sauron had declined into.
Nonetheless, assuming Gandalf took control over the Ring then he should have been able — perhaps with time and experimentation — to seize control over Sauron’s followers, diverting their mentally coerced loyalties to himself. That would mean Sauron’s armies would desert him or perhaps turn and besiege him in Barad-dur itself. If Sauron survived the seizure of the Ring by a powerful opponent like Gandalf then he might last only long enough to endure another brief siege, ultimately to be seized and executed by the new Ring lord. And this time around Sauron would not have the strength to return to life because the Ring would no longer sustain him.
A lesser opponent, like Aragorn, might only be able to rally and inspire his troops better. He would not necessarily lead them better and the Ring might influence such a leader to make tactical and strategic blunders. I don’t think even Elrond or Galadriel could have mastered the Ring, but they might be able to drive away Sauron’s forces for a time until he himself came to claim the Ring. Also, you have to consider that if Sauron knew for certain that the Ring was in the possession of someone leading an army he would lay a trap as he did for Aragorn. As long as he was still alive Sauron knew that the Ring was loyal to him.
See also:
- What Could Sauron Have Done Had He Regained the One Ring?
- How Did the One Ring Corrupt Saruman?
- Why Did Saruman Want the One Ring for Himself?
- Could Sauron Have Risen Again after the One Ring was Destroyed?
- Shhh! It’s a Secret Ring!
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Indeed, Tolkien identified domination over another’s exercise of free will to be the definition of evil.
Your observation about what would happen if Gandalf had claimed The Ring for himself – “But any act of defiance, coupled with an act of domination, would be a moral fall for Gandalf which, I think, could only have left him in a similar state of rebellion as Morgoth and Sauron had declined into.” – also provides us a glimpse into Morgoth’s and Sauron’s fall.
Thank you, Michael, for your analysis!
“A lesser opponent, like Aragorn, might only be able to rally and inspire his troops better. He would not necessarily lead them better and the Ring might influence such a leader to make tactical and strategic blunders.”
As can be seen with Isildur at the Gladden Fields, arguably. While the suddenness of the asasult may have left him with no time or terrain for a proper deployment, the entire march route up the Anduin, with such a small force, was a riskier venture than Isildur realized. And the result was that he was trapped and ambushed, even without Sauron in active command. Granted that Isildur was by that point trying to avoid direct use of the Ring, and had not mastered its powers; but even so, I think that battle was telling. Gandalf is probably making an accurate assessment in evaluating episodes like Isildur’s, and what he knows of Sauron, to argue in the Last Debate that Sauron still believes he can trap even a new Ringlord (with Aragorn plainly being the leading candidate in his mind) if he acts quickly and carefully enough.
Yet the haste with which Sauron moves after Aragorn reveals his existence in the palantir (and wrests control of it away) suggests that Sauron actually *does* fear that Aragorn had the strength to use the Ring in a decisive way, if given sufficient time. While Tolkien does not discuss this question at length, I think that the possibility that Aragorn could defeat Sauron by using the Ring cannot be excluded, even if he is not as potent a master of the Ring as the bearers of the Three would be.
Does that necessarily mean he feared Aragorn as the new ring lord. It seems Sauron could only conceive that others would use the ring rather than destroy it. This thinking of Sauron must have reflected his thoughts of how people like Gandalf might use it. He would have known about the connection between Aragorn and Gandalf so an army led by Aragorn may be announcing the true new ring lord which might be Gandalf and not Aragorn. Sauron may even have known that Gandalf had come back with greater power and less restrictions. So when he saw Aragorn he may have feared him because of his kingly history (and his own previous defeat) but the true fear may have been what Aragorn was hiding – Gandalf the new ring lord. Or perhaps not, after all, an elf and a king defeated him when he had the ring in the second age, even if there lineage was greater than that still existing in Middle Earth in the third age.
A side topic: When did Gandalf become the strongest – stronger than Galadriel and Elrond? He certainly wasn’t in the Hobbit and probably not during the first half (or so) of LOTR. His resurrection only partially explains this, and the usual comment about the Istari not being permitted to reveal their true nature isn’t completely satisfactory either. For instance, even white Gandalf describes the Ents as a power “far older than wizadry” (or words to that effect) – though he himself, Sauron and Saruman are actually the oldest characters in the story when all the material at our disposal is considered. Incidentally, we can detect similar inconsistencies in the description of Sauron as being inferior, for instance, to Feanor (iirc).
Of course, the point I am trying to make is that the Maiar origins of the Istari (and possibly also Sauron’s) might be a relatively late invention – one that wasn’t fully in place yet when Tolkien started work on the trilogy and probably not during the initial years of writing, either. Some respective inconistencies obviously escaped his notice when he submitted the final draft. But incidentally, Peter Jackson seems unaware of such inconsistency ‘the other way round’, so to speak. In the first two Hobbit movies, we see Gandalf acting as if he were of lower rank than Galadriel and Elrond (though the Unfinished Tales definitely suggest that Galadriel knew who he really was and would be prone to defer to him).
… and contradicting myself, but only to an extent: the hierarchy between the orders/species is rather permeable. Feanor obviously had talents even the Valar couldn’t match, and Faramir comes across as much wiser than Haldir (for instance). And then there is something like ‘overall stature’ – something that makes Feanor vastly less powerful than any of the Valar after all. But it also lets Aragorn surpass Legolas and even Gildor in many ways. In other words: overall stature is only sometimes tied to ‘race’. Thingol had enough of it to be attractive to Melian, while Osse is a bit of a twit. 😉 Elrond is only half-elven, but that doesn’t seem to matter. In this light of ‘overall stature’ that somehow exists alongside native power, I wonder whether Aragorn might not have been a direct threat to Sauron after all.
How much ring lore did Saruman know? Did he know enough to make his own items?
Where would he learn ring lore? Celembrimbor and (perhaps) some of his close associates had discovered or created part of it, and Sauron contributed the rest. There is no reason to suppose that anyone documented it.