[Carannillion]

The orcs were corrupted elves, but they had been totally destroyed (as elves) in the process. No elegance left there...

The defeat of Sauron ws not really just pure luck. The orcs who killed each other were Sauron's servants. They acted as they had been raised to do. They were beings of chaos and evil deeds. Melkor was the one that first planted the seed of lies, and thus mistrust, hate and so on, in ME, and Sauron was his successor. Sauron brought his defeat on himself. He did not lack knowledge, he was too evil and too corrupted (as we know, he was originally one of the followers of Aulë, tricked and corrupted to "the Dark Side" by Melkor) to see that anyone might be of pure enough hart that they actually considered destroying the One Ring. He discovered it in the end, but too late.

This destruction itself is another thing. When standing before the pit, Frodo at last gave in to the succumbing power of the Ring, and claimed it for his own. We can sort of thank Gollum for destroying the Ring, in his own folly.

I actually thought of two other new topics now:

1. Would Sam have acted differntly on Mount Doom, had he been the Ringbearer (say if Frodo had died during the journey)? In other words: Would Sam, as Ringbearer, have thrown the Ring into the fire, or would he too have succumbed to the power of the Ring?

2. What happened to Gollum after he died? Did he visit the Halls of Mandos before leaving ME, did he go to Hobbit-Heaven (or Hobbit-Hell), did he go directly to Ilúvatar or was he perhaps thrown into the Void, with Melkor?

... *pondering so hard that you can actually hear the creaking of old, rusty brain cells starting to work again* ...