[Pitchwife]

Originally Posted by Ivriniel

The Ring's measure in that regard needed to exceed that of the [is it combined power] of each Elf and her/his Elven wielders? Was it the Fea or the Lorewise-ness of individual Elves that was part of the base 'threshold' level Sauron needed to exceed? And did each Ring add to that measure of critical difference. The Elves took off their Rings when the echoes of the Ringspell were discerned, and Sauron was able to -- was it perceive only? the minds of the wielders of the Three when they wore their Rings.

See, I'm not sure this is a question of exceeding a given power level. If we must needs use technological metaphors I'd suggest a different angle: I imagine that the art of Ring-making as Sauron taught it to the Gwaith-i-Mírdain, the 'blueprint' for making Rings of Power, included from the beginning (unbeknownst to them) a hidden 'interface' in every ring that left it open to access from outside, and that the One was designed to access these interfaces and thus allow Sauron to hijack the other Rings and hack their functions. In other words, did the One rule the others because of its exceeding power, or because it and they had been specially designed for the purpose? If the latter, it all boils down to the difference in power between Sauron and whoever held the other Ring.

Zil and Zig (), my soul's ease doesn't depend on whether each of the Three had unique powers or properties or not, but I feel kind of vindicated by William's Letter quote. I half remembered discussing this in some forgotten thread which I managed to unearth today: Elven Rings in the 1st Age. The discussion there may be of some interest to anybody interested in Ring-Lore in general and the Three especially, as may the thread about Nenya and the Headache Jewel I linked in my post.

Anyway, here's what I thought back in 2009:

Originally Posted by Pitchwife as a young, eager and diligent wight who hadn't yet learned to space his paragraphs

Vilya was the Ring of Air, Nenya the Ring of Water. If any of the Three gave its wielder special power over water, it would have been Nenya, not Vilya.
But this leads me to another question. This thread, and the one about Nenya and the Elessar, have made me think a bit about the specific virtues of the Three, in other words the nature of the power each of them conferred on its wielder.
Each of the three is named after one of three elements - Air, Water, and Fire; at first glance, this looks like they gave their wielders power over the respective elements. Now Gandalf, who had Narya, certainly showed exceptional skill in the handling of fire (fireworks, naur an edraith ammen, wielder of the Flame of Anor etc.), but being an incarnate Maiar, he certainly didn't depend on a Ring for this; as for Elrond and Galadriel, I don't see them controlling Air and Water in any obvious way. So what does it mean?
In esoteric thought, the four elements are associated with different faculties of the human mind/soul. Applying these associations to the Three Rings, we get:
Vilya - Air - reason. The chief role of Elrond in LotR and The Hobbit (apart from his being a great healer) is offering counsel, giving advice to others based on his wisdom and knowledge.
Narya - Fire - will and passion. This is the most obvious correspondance: Círdan gave Narya to Gandalf 'for the kindling of all hearts with courage', to strengthen their hope and determination to oppose Sauron.
Nenya - Water - emotion, intuition, the subconscious. This is the least obvious, but (to me at least) it somehow resonates with Galadriel's love and yearning for timeless beauty, as well as the scrying power of her mirror.
I'm not saying any of this was on Tolkien's conscious mind, but it seems to fit, and it may be worth considering if we speculate what use 1st age elves might have made of the Three.

What d'ya think?