The palantiri= one of the main reason for Gondor's success against Mordor?
Gondor use of the palantiri for spying on the enemy and launch preemptive strikes against Sauron's forces, was one of the main reason why they could withstand him for so long?
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The one strike we see Gondor launch is Faramir's attack on the Haradrim unit marching down the road. The reason they were able to set up the successful ambush is because of good Ranger scouting, not because of information from the Palantir. In other words, Gondor has a good military which is not dependent on the presence of the Palantir. And the presence of the Palantir turned into a weakness rather than a strength in the end. |
The palantiri weren't useful as devices from a military operations standpoint. Unfinished Tales: The Palantiri is probably the most detailed and comprehensive information Tolkien wrote on the topic so I won't quote the chapter in full...but some of the main points.
They were presumably made by Feanor and their total number is unknown. But 7 were brought to Middle-earth by Elendil, Isildur and Anarion to be ways of communicating between their 2 founded Kingdoms, Arnor and Gondor. The heirs of Elendil (and eventually the Stewards of Gondor) were said to be the 'rightful possessors' of the stones brought to Middle-earth, which is important in their use. This means the vast majority of people would have had no use for the seeing stones. If they were even interested in them anyway, as their perception was described as rather 'alien' to Middle-earth and devices only Elendil and his rightful heirs would have contemplated using. There was a 'general strain' when using the stone, even for the rightful heirs. The viewer would have to concentrate a considerable amount of will to direct the visions/images they wanted to see, otherwise Tolkien describes the viewer would just see a bunch of random and unconnected images. This strain was considerable and noted why Denethor appeared older than he actually was. Sauron only used the stone he captured when taking Minas Ithil as a minor part of his plan to weaken Gondor's resistance from within and attempt to control Saruman. Overall their benefits were quite limited, yes and others could gain great knowledge but at a tremendous and dangerous cost. There were a limited number of people who could make use of them and they were still dangerous to those people who could. One of Sauron's biggest blunders was made because of the palantir when Aragorn used the Orthanc stone. |
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Unfinished Tales essentially describes them as magical telescopes: an untrained/unauthorised user would see things essentially at random, but if you knew how to point it, you could focus on a single point. The full description is quite fascinating; I recommend it if you're interested in the Stones. Would they also have been useful against Angmar? I'm not so sure. Unfinished Tales says: Quote:
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