Quote:
Originally Posted by zxcvbn
As for free will, the Nazgul had it. Remember all the works of evil they did in Sauron's abscence?(Angmar, the Great Plague, Minas Morgul, running things in Mordor, sending emissaries to stir up trouble along Gondor's borders etc.)
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But that was not their will, but Sauron's. How should I describe it. As long as they were Ringwraith, and Sauron was alive - no matter that he was reduced to almost nothing, but he was there, since only at the moment he started to gain shape, the Nine started to rise as well - they had no free will of their own. Let's say the Númenorean nobleman XY was very greedy, but he would never kill anyone, also because he, for example, was sick when seeing blood. Now some Sauron gave him a Ring, he became the Witch-King, and became Sauron's slave - at the moment he "faded", i.e. became a Wraith, he lost all his free will. That means, he would no longer object to kill anyone if it was in accord to Sauron's will, nor he would be sick when seeing blood. My idea on how this worked (but only my idea, this way I see it and I'm presenting it here just as illustration, you don't have to adapt it) is that Sauron was in fact "present" (careful, don't misinterpretate this, I know it's somewhat hard to grasp this) in all the Ringwraith's minds, not in the meaning that a part of him will be inside so he will have a direct "link" with the RW or "remote control" them, but in the meaning that they had some goals set up in their minds that came from the Will of Sauron and these were superior to everything else. The Ringwraith kept some of their original skills, I don't know, let's say one of them was a good warrior, another could track, another had a large knowledge of history and so on, they kept all of this, and they were of course independant in making their choices when they were apart from Sauron, like whether to go left or right and whether to set an ambush against Frodo or whether to chase him. But above all their conscious and subconscious ideas, above all their instincts and reason, there was the will of Sauron like a "parasite program" that just kept them in line not to make anything against Sauron's will. The WK could not have suddenly said "And you know what, Glorfindel, my friend, I am going to repent, join you and overthrow Sauron", because even if he chose to, Sauron's will would block this option for him: error, you cannot access the file "repent". Password locked by the user: Sauron. That's what I meant, and I believe, most of the Tolkien readers are familiar with this.