Q: Would the Nazgûl Have Been Immortal if Sauron Prevailed?
For example, when the Mouth of Sauron approached the Lords of the West Tolkien differentiated him from the ringwraiths:
At its head there rode a tall and evil shape, mounted upon a black horse, if horse it was; for it was huge and hideous, and its face was a frightful mask, more like a skull than a living head, and in the sockets of its eyes and in its nostrils there burned a flame. The rider was robed all in black, and black was his lofty helm; yet this was no Ringwraith but a living man. The Lieutenant of the Tower of Barad-dûr he was, and his name is remembered in no tale; for he himself had forgotten it, and he said: ‘I am the Mouth of Sauron.’…
As an aside, I do not recall anyone ever asking me what that mount was supposed to be (and I have no idea). Gandalf describes the wraiths have having no physical shape when they are uncloaked in his discussion with Frodo at Rivendell: “`Because they are real horses; just as the black robes are real robes that they wear to give shape to their nothingness when they have dealings with the living.'”
Living men have physical shapes, and they do not live for four thousand years, which is approximately how long the Nazgûl were enslaved by Sauron.
To answer your question directly, since the Nazgûl were already dead (or as dead as they need be for Sauron to trap their spirits in Middle-earth) they probably would have remained with him in Middle-earth indefinitely had he recovered the One Ring and won the war.
Of course, such an eventuality would be contrary to Ilúvatar’s will. Had Tolkien wanted to extend the story through a Sauronic victory he would have found a way for Sauron to be defeated, even though Elrond and others did not foresee it. It would have required an intervention from Ilúvatar in some form, if not necessarily another invasion by the Valar.
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Every time I think that through about the Nazgul it gives me the shivers. The very idea of stuck at the point of dying or just past the point of death and unable to move on for 4000 years. That has to be as close a concept of hell as a human can imagine.
I never thought of the Nazgûl as not having physical forms. I mean, they had to have some physicality about them to apply a sword blow to, otherwise why swing a sword at them? Granted, Tolkien seems to be of two minds about them: Gandalf says they are composed of “nothingness” but Merry is described as “cleaving the undead flesh.” I almost hate to use the term but I think of them as zombies, dead flesh rendered invisible and mobile by the power of Sauron.
“As an aside, I do not recall anyone ever asking me what that mount was supposed to be (and I have no idea).”
I was always interested what the hell was that 🙂 hehe, a truly hellish horse, or rather huge black hideous looking horse-like thing with flames burning in it’s nostrils and eyesockets (in a head looking like a scull) last I checked horses even black ones did not sprout fire from their nostrils 🙂 :). Well Tolkien always gives us so many exciting hints towards existance of other monsters and creatures not named or enumerated among his works. After all there are ‘nameless things’ below Moria and unnamed mysterios creatures living underground often in Orc tunnels or natural caves, there is Watcher in the Water, there are flying fell-beasts/hell-hawks ‘creatures from the older world’, and such:
“And there were murmured hints of creatures more terrible than all these, but they had no name.”
“He could not swim; and he thought, too, of nasty slimy things, with big bulging blind eyes, wriggling in the water. There are strange things living in the pools and lakes in the hearts of mountains: fish whose fathers swam in, goodness only knows how many years ago, and never swam out again, while their eyes grew bigger and bigger and bigger from trying to see in the blackness; also there are other things more slimy than fish. Even in the tunnels and caves the goblins have made for themselves there are other things living unbeknown to them that have sneaked in from outside to lie up in the dark. Some of these caves, too, go back in their beginnings to ages before the goblins, who only widened them and joined them up with passages, and the original owners are still there in odd comers, slinking and nosing about.”
It’s a nice extension of the bestiary 🙂 heheh, well it’s quite good because all the sapient races adn creatures like Men, Elves, Dwarves, Halflings, Orcs, Trolls, Wargs, Ents, Huorns, Great Eagles, also werewolves and hypotetically bat-like vampires as well, Stone Giants, various sorts of undead like lesser wraiths, Barrow-wights, evil spirits and ghosts haunting places or possessing things, corpses or the living, usually wicked elvish spirits, also divine kind of godlike Ainur, giant spiders of Ungoliant’s spawn and Shelob’s demonic brood, various ‘special’ or talking animals like ravens of Erebor or thrushes of Dale and possibly various others, are all and well but some mysteries in form of Tom Bombadil and Goldberry and possibly River-woman of Whitywindle :):) and unnamed sorts of “monsters of diverse kinds” bred by Dark Lords are needed and just add richness to the world. I wonder if the seas in Arda also have some sort of creatures not ordrinary kind like Middle-earth’s version of mermaids or sea monsters? I wonder if there can be some truth to folklore about mythical things like Mewlips, Were-worms of the Last Desert in the East, Lintips or badger-folk can be ‘real’ well they say each legend has a grain of truth so why not?!
As for Nazgul whatever their ‘status’ they are certainly under the power of the Ring and so their life would be extended indefinitely. After all power to preserve things is chieft property of the Rings of Power (which for mortals means form of immortality through mere continuation and stopping change though the specifics of process of fading, being consumed by the Unsee the wraith world, this mysterious second layer of reality is largely unclear).
I agree with Michael, that the Ringwraiths were “dead’ or ‘undead’. One example of this is shown, in that they apparently could not use the Ring. Surely, the Witch king and the others knew how to use it, but they could not use it to overthrow their Master(they would have had no ‘moral’ issues with doing so.) The Ringwraiths could not even use It to free themselves, thus they were the perfect agents to seize the Ring for Sauron. Other servants(like Saruman) could not be trusted with such power.