Middle-earth What-ifs

[Zigûr]

Originally Posted by Kuruharan

However, it also provided an instant self-destruct tool (although, I can't recall, was that clearly understood at the time?) If I had been Sauron, I think I would have opted against the creation of the Ring and tried to avoid being defeated in the first place.

It's a good point. It seems that Sauron knew the Ring could be destroyed at Mount Doom. Presumably otherwise he wouldn't have panicked so much when Frodo put the Ring on at the Sammath Naur. On the other hand, given that Sauron never imagined his enemies trying to destroy the Ring before that moment, I'd argue that even if he knew "academically" that the Ring could be destroyed in that manner, presumably the idea of it actually being destroyed never crossed his mind.

It reminds me of that existentialist thought experiment: "Technically there's nothing stopping me from jumping off this cliff, but why would I?" Technically the Ring could be destroyed by melting it in the Fires of Doom, but to Sauron I imagine such an idea would be completely absurd, not just for him but for anyone: "Why would anyone destroy the Ring when they could use it?" So presumably, in Sauron's mind, the vulnerability of the Ring was so absurdly unlikely to be a problem that he didn't consider it to be a problem at all.

EDIT: It also occurs to me that this is a good additional counterargument to the idea that Sauron left the Ring behind in Mordor when he went to Númenor (which is kind of implied in "Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age" but refuted by Letter 211). Letter 211 aside, it seems incredibly unlikely to me that Sauron would ever have voluntarily taken the Ring off for any reason ever. I imagine that, essentially, he expected to be wearing it forever.

Originally Posted by Kuruharan

Second, to pose a silly question, could even the Ring have worked in this manner indefinitely? Say Sauron gets defeated repeatedly but the Ring still exists? Would the power provided by the existence of the Ring allow Sauron to keep coming back until he wins? In thinking about it, my belief is that it wouldn't have. Even in his origins, Sauron was not an infinite being and neither was the Ring an object of infinite power as it was created by a finite being. Given those limitations, I believe eventually one and or both of them could be depleted to the point of final impotence. Not that I think this is a particularly likely scenario, but I'm deliberately posing a hypothetical.

I think you have a point. On the one hand, it isn't clear how the Ring could eventually "run out of power" because it seems like the whole point of it was to operate in a way which didn't involve the expenditure of power. I feel as if the power imbued in it was "transformed", in a sense, which made its existence static. That doesn't mean the power is "infinite" - it could only do a certain amount of "work" within the bounds of the power bound in it and its wielder - but the power it did have was contained indefinitely. I think it makes sense to an extent to think of the Ring as a "machine" (albeit one without moving parts) which gives some kind of mechanical advantage, although the "Ring as amplifier" explanation is a bit problematic in my opinion.

At the same time, so much of Arda is entropic. I can't help but imagine that if Sauron's body continued to be destroyed, for instance, he would have severe trouble rebuilding it eventually, Ring or no Ring, because the Ring probably couldn't be used in that way. Then another might claim the Ring and wield it. Perhaps the Ring might eventually wear down and lose its potency, but I believe that Sauron himself would first.

I suppose that's the thing, though. The Ring was made for a very specific purpose which was never properly fulfilled. In Sauron's perfect world, the original Ringbearers would have fallen under his control, with everything else to follow. Instead that didn't work, he had to fight a war for the other Rings, he lost a body in Númenor, he lost another body against the Last Alliance, and he lost the Ring. If none of that had happened, maybe Sauron and the Ring would have kept each other "alive" for a very, very long time.