·专访第九期：《武神赵子龙》手游“余η音”

Question

The One Ring corrupts its wielder with temptations of power. Sauron would be biggest obstacle to have 100% possession of the Ring. Would someone that thinks themselves strong enough to fight or train to eventually fight Sauron do so? Would the Ring always take Sauron's side, or flip if the wielder showed themselves as stronger?

Answer 1

If the One Ring loves anything, it loves being used for power and domination over others. It was forged by Sauron, who

..."made that Ring himself, it is his, and he let a great part of his own former power pass into it, so that he could rule all the others."

It's key that Sauron put much of his power into the ring, but not himself. The Ring is an instrument of power and not of loyalty or devotion. It cares for Sauron mostly because of Sauron's own lust for power. Galadriel told Frodo:

"Did not Gandalf tell you that the rings give power according to the measure of each possessor? Before you could use that power you would need to become far stronger, and to train your will to the domination of others."

At the Council of Elrond, Elrond said,

"It belongs to Sauron and was made by him alone, and is altogether evil. Its strength, Boromir, is too great for anyone to wield at will, save only those who have already a great power of their own. But for them it holds an even deadlier peril. The very desire of it corrupts the heart. Consider Saruman. If any of the Wise should with this Ring overthrow the Lord of Mordor, using his own arts, he would then set himself on Sauron's throne, and yet another Dark Lord would appear."

Gandalf earlier had pointed out to Saruman that

"only one hand at a time can wield the One, and you know that well"...

and that one hand need not be Sauron's, who

..."is in great fear, not knowing what mighty one may suddenly appear, wielding the Ring, and assailing him with war, seeking to cast him down and take his place."

If someone does, Sauron, who alone

"knows all about the Rings and their effects"

will think

..."that in such rashness [putting on the Ring and challenging him] he sees the pride of the new Ringlord: and he will say: "So! he pushes out his neck too soon and too far. Let him come on, and behold I will have him in a trap from which he cannot escape. There I will crush him, and what he has taken in his insolence shall be mine again for ever."

There is one passage which suggests otherwise. Back in Bag End, Gandalf told Frodo:

'A Ring of Power looks after itself, Frodo. It may slip off treacherously, but its keeper never abandons it. At most he plays with the idea of handing it on to someone else's care - and that only at an early stage, when it first begins to grip. But as far as I know Bilbo alone in history has ever gone beyond playing, and really done it. He needed all my help, too. And even so he would never have just forsaken it, or cast it aside. It was not Gollum, Frodo, but the Ring itself that decided things. The Ring left him.'

...

'The Ring was trying to get back to its master. It had slipped from Isildur's hand and betrayed him; then when a chance came it caught poor Déagol, and he was murdered; and after that Gollum, and it had devoured him. It could make no further use of him: he was too small and mean; and as long as it stayed with him he would never leave his deep pool again. So now, when its master was awake once more and sending out his dark thought from Mirkwood, it abandoned Gollum. Only to be picked up by the most unlikely person imaginable: Bilbo from the Shire!'

The Ring was not loyal to Sauron, but was attracted to his power. The Ring -- to the extent that it wished anything -- wished to be used to dominate others.

To answer your question directly: Gandalf and Galadriel both believed that if they held the Ring they would inevitably fall to the temptation to use it and would follow Sauron down a path to darkness in a lust for power and domination. Sauron -- who alone "knows all about the Rings and their effects" -- fears this also. Sauron did not believe that the Ring would defect back to him.

Answer 2

Facing Sauron in challenge for his power/position? - Absolutely yes - this is mentioned in the LoTR, in the chapter Mirror of Galadriel. Frodo and Sam have both looked in the Mirror and Galadriel is discussing the rings, particularly Nenya, the Ring (one of the "three rings for Elven Kings" that she wears, with Frodo.

Frodo offers Galadriel the One Ring and she has this response:

‘...For many long years I had pondered what I might do, should the Great Ring come into my hands, and behold! it was brought within my grasp. The evil that was devised long ago works on in many ways, whether Sauron himself stands or falls. Would not that have been a noble deed to set to the credit of his Ring, if I had taken it by force or fear from my guest?’

‘And now at last it comes. You will give me the Ring freely! In place of the Dark Lord you will set up a Queen. And I shall not be dark, but beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night! Fair as the Sea and the Sun and the Snow upon the Mountain! Dreadful as the Storm and the Lightning! Stronger than the foundations of the earth. All shall love me and despair!’

My understanding of this means that Galadriel could take the ring and use it for her own ends. To do so, she would need to remove the Dark Lord (Sauron) and replace him with herself.

As to whether the One Ring would "flip" allegiance, this is never fully explored in the scenario of equal or approximately equal power to Sauron (e.g. Elf Lord/Lady such as Galadriel vs Sauron), so there is no canonical evidence either way. We do know that the One Ring will betray those of lesser power (e.g. slipping off Isildur's finger (Isildur is a man, so a lesser being than Sauron who is Maiar), so that he can be seen and killed by Orcs), but, aside from Sauron, no being of greater power has ever possessed the One Ring, or even so much as touched it, so we will never know in canon.

Answer 3

How someone else who tried to claim the Ring would act would depend on how strong they already were and how effective at bending others to their will. Someone weak, like Gollum if he had regained the Ring after Sauron's return to Mordor, would quickly have been mastered utterly by its power. Gollum had been drawn to Mordor before, and the Ring would have sent him there again, where the Ring would be taken from him and Sauron's full power restored.

Someone stronger would have tried to use the Ring's power against Sauron. Boromir, had he taken the Ring from Frodo, might have succumbed like Gollum. However, he might also have had enough strength of will to return with the Ring to Minas Tirith and try to raise stronger armies with it. He might first have moved against Umbar, which had once been part of Gondor. However, he would eventually have turned his forces against Sauron, and in a war like that, Boromir's Gondor, even with the Ring, would have been defeated. Note that the plan devised by Aragorn, Gandalf, Imrahil, and the other lords in the second half of Book V was to fool Sauron into thinking this was the kind of scenario he was facing: that Aragorn had the Ring and was trying overthrow the Dark Lord with its power. Against that prospect, Sauron seems confident in his ability to destroy Aragorn's army, although the prospect does seem to daunt the Dark Lord.

With Boromir, it is not clear whether he was even strong enough to make it home and raise an army. However, Saruman also coveted the Ring, and he would certainly have been strong enough to use it to wage war against Mordor. Saruman was a Maia, like Sauron, and he knew a great deal about the Ring. However, his power was less than that of Sauron's, and the Ring was made specifically for Sauron's use. Saruman might have had a chance of defeating the Ring's original master, although he still probably would have lost the war. And had he won, it would have required using the Ring in atrocious ways, so that by the time victory had been achieved, Saruman the victor would have become as irredeemably wicked as Sauron himself.

Answer 4

Everyone corrupted by the Ring, no. Those who claimed it as the One Ruling Ring, probably yes, even if that wasn't their original intent.

To some degree, this depends on what you mean by "corrupted by the Ring". Does any level of influence count, or do you mean only people who became definitely evil?

Even Bilbo was definitely corrupted by the Ring to some degree - he had real trouble giving it up, and even after he did (with Gandalf's help) he is still clearly tempted by it in Rivendell:

I have thought several times of going back to Hobbiton for it; but I am getting old, and they would not let me: Gandalf and Elrond, I mean. They seemed to think that the Enemy was looking high and low for me, and would make mincemeat of me, if he caught me tottering about in the Wild.

‘And Gandalf said: “The Ring has passed on, Bilbo. It would do no good to you or to others, if you tried to meddle with it again.” Odd sort of remark, just like Gandalf. But he said he was looking after you, so I let things be. I am frightfully glad to see you safe and sound.’ He paused and looked at Frodo doubtfully. ‘Have you got it here?’ he asked in a whisper. ‘I can’t help feeling curious, you know, after all I’ve heard. I should very much like just to peep at it again.’

(Fellowship of the Ring Book 2 Chapter 1: Many Meetings)

Bilbo here clearly was still pulled by the Ring - to the point that he repeatedly wanted to go back to the Shire to get it back.

But if you don't consider Bilbo to be "corrupted", since he didn't turn evil, there's Gollum's case.

He was clearly heavily corrupted by the Ring, to the point that he wasn't immediately recognizable as a hobbit, yet he never tried to contest Sauron for domination. In fact, Gandalf specifically says that Gollum would never have left the caves under the Misty Mountains if he hadn't lost the Ring:

"The Ring was trying to get back to its master. It had slipped from Isildur’s hand and betrayed him; then when a chance came it caught poor Déagol, and he was murdered; and after that Gollum, and it had devoured him. It could make no further use of him: he was too small and mean; and as long as it stayed with him he would never leave his deep pool again."

(Fellowship of the Ring Book 1 Chapter 2: The Shadow of the Past)

This seems to completely exclude any possibility that the Ring would eventually have driven Gollum, if he'd kept it, to contest Sauron for power.

But there's a critical difference between merely claiming the Ring as one's own property (something that Deagol, Smeagol/Gollum, and Bilbo all did) and claiming it as the One Ring to Rule them All. Deagol, Smeagol/Gollum, and Bilbo - at the time they had the Ring - did not even know it was the One Ring (though Gollum and Bilbo learned later). When Frodo is finally broken by the Ring's mental/spiritual pressure, and claims it fully aware of what it is, Sauron is instantly aware:

And far away, as Frodo put on the Ring and claimed it for his own, even in Sammath Naur the very heart of his realm, the Power in Barad-d?r was shaken, and the Tower trembled from its foundations to its proud and bitter crown. The Dark Lord was suddenly aware of him, and his Eye piercing all shadows looked across the plain to the door that he had made; and the magnitude of his own folly was revealed to him in a blinding flash, and all the devices of his enemies were at last laid bare.

(Book 6 Chapter 3 - Mount Doom)

This is very significant. The act of wearing the Ring doesn't otherwise draw Sauron's attention (the only other similar case is on Amon Hen, but in that case Frodo is actually looking at Barad-dur before Sauron becomes aware of him) but here it is immediate.

Letter 246 goes into hypotheticals on this; if Gollum hadn't been there to accidentally destroy the Ring trying to steal it,

In any case a confrontation of Frodo and Sauron would soon have taken place, if the Ring was intact. Its result was inevitable. Frodo would have been utterly overthrown: crushed to dust, or preserved in torment as a gibbering slave. Sauron would not have feared the Ring! It was his own and under his will.

The letter then goes on to discuss how other characters that Frodo offered the Ring to or who could have taken it (Elrond, Galadriel, Gandalf) would have fared. In every case a confrontation would have happened.

So if you actually claim it as the One Ruling Ring, Sauron will know, and the confrontation with him becomes inevitable.

As for "Would the Ring always take Sauron's side, or flip if the wielder showed themselves as stronger?", the Ring's true loyalty was to Sauron. But it could be potentially forcibly taken from him by a strong enough bearer; Gandalf might have been strong enough:

One can imagine the scene in which Gandalf, say, was placed in such a position. It would be a delicate balance. On one side the true allegiance of the Ring to Sauron; on the other superior strength because Sauron was not actually in possession, and perhaps also because he was weakened by long corruption and expenditure of will in dominating inferiors. If Gandalf proved the victor, the result would have been for Sauron the same as the destruction of the Ring; for him it would have been destroyed, taken from him for ever.

So even if claimed by a sufficiently powerful being, the Ring's "true allegiance" is still to Sauron; it doesn't just flip to whoever looks strongest. But if the Ring was truly mastered by another of sufficient strength (necessarily completely corrupting the one doing it; the Ring "would have been the master in the end") Sauron would be cut off from the power within it, and thus would be reduced to helplessness as he actually was by the destruction of the Ring.