[Kalimac]

The Ring is definitely a character, I'd say, albeit one of those slightly odd not-quite-standard characters - rather like Rebecca in "Rebecca" who although she's the title character never appears once - in the sense that it does not actually do anything of its own volition (at least, nothing that couldn't be plausibly ascribed to other things) and never speaks. Yet the whole story would exist if it weren't for the Ring.

Sorry, not very coherent tonight. Basically I just mean that while the Ring is "absent" in the sense that it doesn't physically do anything, it's the catalyst for everything else and certainly has a power of its own.