The One Ring explained

what actually is the one ring what powers does it have other than turning people invisible and why is it so important hi everyone this is Robert welcome to in deep key this video is brought to you by my wonderful patreon community I am now creating regular junior our token and Lord of the Rings content on this channel that's as well as the usual Game of Thrones Westworld and black mirror videos the One Ring is the main focus of the Lord of the Rings and is set up as being the one artifact whose ownership determines the fate of all middle-earth but despite making people invisible and giving them a kind of view of the astral plane and obviously turning people greedy we never actually see why or how it's so powerful so what is the One Ring and what makes it so important let's start with the history at the end of the first age Morgoth or milk or as he has first known the big baddie in Tolkien's legendarium was defeated he was cast down into the void the victorious faithful were rewarded and all was well with the world but morgoth's most trusted lieutenant Sauron did not heed the call to surrender instead he fled and hid in middle-earth eventually building himself an empire in Mordor keeping his true identity secret and after a long long time he emerged into the world with the masterplan a slow-burning master plan it has to be said but a master plan nonetheless Sauron is patient if nothing else positive he re-entered society in disguise as an ATAR meaning the Lord of gifts an emissary of the Valar and tried to ingratiate himself with the elves who he had a massive grudge against most of the elves we've heard of gil-galad Galadriel and so on also Elrond were suspicious and so sarin an ATAR went to the elven Smith's of irregular telling them that he had knowledge of how to make magic rings and he did and he shared his knowledge with them for maybe three centuries he worked with them to produce lesser magic rings and they're like gaining their trust we don't know what happened to those rings but they're out there somewhere then Sauron an ATAR worked with the elven Smith's to forge some things and much greater the nine rings and the seven in truth we don't have huge amounts of direct detail about the powers of either of these sets of rings Tolkien didn't write a definitive list of powers for example but we have a lot of history about them and can see their impacts the nine rings that ended up with mortal men gave them great power and wealth people followed these nine men and they each gained a reputation as powerful Kings and sorcerers they didn't age either there was another side to that power of course but we'll get on to that in a moment three of these ring holders were apparently númenóreans so perhaps we'll see them in the TV show but these rings seem to amplify magical abilities make people charismatic so others will follow them basically it was all about power and control the seven rings which went to the Dwarven Lords seem to have had similar powers in that they led to their bearers becoming hugely wealthy however the dwarves were already quite long-lived and their newfound wealth simply attracted dragons and the like eager to take what the dwarfs had mined indeed four of the seven rings were destroyed by dragon fire so the holders didn't really get to enjoy their longevity and the dwarves seemed immune to other powers the Rings might have had there's no record of them ever turning their wearer's invisible and they all seemed completely impervious to Sirhan's control later so well it does make you wonder where the Gimli might have been a good person to entrust the ring to but that's another video entirely because at this point Sauron made what with hindsight was a bit of a strategic error what he had been doing secretly all this time with the nine rings and the seven was to make sure that each of these rings was magically linked to him what he now needed to do was create the master ring that controlled them and he obviously wanted to do that in secret so he left the elven Smith's and went to Mordor to go about forging that Ring of Power for sarens master plan was to forge a master ring that gave him all of the advantages of those lesser rings more magical power and ability to control others and so on but in particular control over those who wore those lesser rings the 9 rings worn by mortal men the seven 1by dwarven Lords and the three he left the elves forging that would be worn by the elven Lords he intended to control the minds of the most powerful people in the land and in one fell swoop take control of all of middle-earth but this is where Saren strategic error seems to have come in because yes he seems to have underestimated the Dwarven Lords ability to resist his controlling influence but the bigger error seems to have been to leave before the making of those three rings for the Elven Lords it meant that he had no part in their manufacture this was all done by Kellan burden bore the elven master jewel Smith when Sauron put on the One Ring that he had forged hoping it would gain him control of the nine the seven and the three rings all of which at the time was still in eroge on the elven stronghold it only succeeded in alerting the elves to his presence Saren had not been involved in the creation of the three rings of the elven Lords so although they still seemed to have sensed the link to Saren his controlling influence wasn't there in short his plan hit a massive snag his cover was blown his hopes of controlling the elves shot to pieces and on a very practical level he didn't even have control of any of the Rings he had tricked the elves into forging just the one he had forged for himself so he had to decide what to do and what he decided was to just go all-out attack he sent his forces out from Mordor westward and northward abandoning any pretense of anonymity he was Sauron disciple of Morgoth and he didn't care who knew it his forces over an eroge on which was the part of middle-earth just to the west of Qasr doom and the Misty Mountains he got there just too late he managed to salvage the nine rings and the seven rings but not the three rings for the Elven Lords they made their way eventually to Galadriel Elrond and Gandalf each were powerful and each had their own distinctive powers Columbian board did a good job with them we'll talk about what each of those Rings powers were in a future video but for now it's enough to know that they were out of Saran's reach physically and magically Saren had absolutely no control over the holders of those three rings the nine however are a very different story Saren gave them to nine humans who with the power of the Rings became kings and sorcerers again I'll do a full video on those nine rings later because they each had names and seemingly different powers much like the three elven rings but the upshot was the same the wearers gained long life but it felt stretched and thin and eventually they became race undead in popular terminology and completely under the power of Saren and his One Ring so enough history let's talk about the One Ring clearly its main role was to control the other rings or those who wore them but as we've seen this wasn't a complete success the nine mortal men yes but the Seven Dwarfs and the three elves no and this wasn't just a generalized control it's not just that whoever wore the ring could control the ring wraiths this was specific to Sauron and the reason for that was because in forging this one ring Sauron poured himself into it whatever word you use here his soul his spirit his essence it's the same Sauron poured himself into that ring for those raised on Harry Potter it's a reasonable approximation to view this as a Horcrux in fact that may be where JK Rowling got some of her inspiration from the ring is not Sauron but it contains his soul when Sauron has the ring his power is amplified hugely when he doesn't he is weakened hugely that's why when the ring is destroyed Sauron is too we don't know for a fact exactly what that means for those wearing the other rings under its control the nine ring wraiths for example but the clear implication is that with that link to Sauron and the One Ring gone the power that keeps them animate is gone to an early draft of Lord of the Rings talks about the dissolution of the ring wraiths after the one rings destruction and I think that's as close as we're going to get to understanding the technicalities of what was going on there the less technical version was that when the One Ring went so did they have sauron soul in it also explains the way that and this came out strongly in the films it almost seems to have a mind of its own the ring wants to make its way back to sarin it slips off of Isildur s finger and evades ghullam sarang's soul wants to be reunited with him incidentally this is why Frodo wears it on a chain around his neck Bilbo warned him of its ability to slip off at inopportune moments the fact that the One Ring is tied so closely to Sauron also means that when other people wear it or have it in their control it doesn't have quite the same effect as when Sauron wears it it does do some things as we saw it can make people long live it can make them invisible and so on but these are tainted gifts Bilbo lives a long life but he starts to feel that in his words I feel thin sort of stretched like butter spread over too much bread this sounds very much like what happened to the ring wraiths stretched and thinned until they were no longer there and putting the ring on and being invisible also seems to be double-edged yes people can't see you but it heightens the ability to sense you of those who can see the non-physical world like the ring wraiths at which point we should note one of the most curious but important elements of how the ring works its power and efficacy is seemingly contextual meaning that it is more powerful when held by those who are already powerful or magical and is also more powerful the closer it gets to Sauron or perhaps the place of its forging in Mordor it's not a hundred percent clear when we encounter the ring in the main stories it is always held by hobbits Bilbo Frodo and briefly Sam or Gollum who was apparently originally a hobbit like creature hobbits are simple folk not powerful and not magical and also not particularly power-hungry so when they have the ring they aren't as affected as much as others might be we see a couple of times how truly powerful people react to when offered the ring Gandalf recoils from it and Galadriel considers the temptation to take it a great challenge a test of her that determines her fate both know just how powerful they would be with the ring we see hints of what this would be dotted around the text Galadriel hints to Frodo that perhaps ring bearers can read other people's minds and then even more impressively Sam and Frodo both start taking on a more imposing appearance when they carry the ring Frodo is once described as appearing like a figure clothed in white holding a ring of fire and saram humble Sam appears to an orc in Mordor as a powerful warrior cloaked in shadow holding some nameless Menace of power and doom that Sam the gardener from the Shire appearing to a hardened orc as having a nameless Menace of power and do so scary and intimidating was Sam with the ring that the orc ran away so in the control of an already powerful person the One Ring would not just render them invisible and long-lived but also make them appear fearsome able to read people's minds have power and control of thousands and tens of thousands if Sauron a hugely powerful entity in his own right had got hold of the ring he would have been unstoppable with humans divided the elves diminished and the dwarves unwilling to engage in alliances all of middle-earth would have fallen which isn't to say that the ring makes its owner invulnerable Sauron lost three wars while it was still in his possession after all and of course there are some who are completely unaffected by its power Tom Bombadil for example who put it on and took it off and made it disappear and reappear without it seemed to affect him in the slightest but Tom Bombadil is the exception to almost every rule I'll do a video on him at some point so that's how the One Ring can be simultaneously the most powerful magical artifact in middle-earth and seemed to have relatively few powers in Frodo's hands it makes the already powerful moreso and more evil but its effect on the least powerful is small it's why Gandalf was so keen for the humble and not at all powerful hobbits to have the ring it kept its power which would always and everywhere turn to evil dampened down as much as possible for as long as possible we talked earlier about sarang's strategic error in leaving to forge the one ring before the three rings for the Elven lords were forged but this perhaps was his greatest error he made the One Ring to make the mighty mightier he knew that other mighty warriors and sorcerers could wear it and challenge his power it never even crossed his mind that it could be carried and destroyed not by the mighty but by the power less that's why he left the path to Mount Doom so open a complete inability to fathom the idea that some do not seek power if you'd like to see more videos on the world of junior are talking and Lord of the Rings please click on the link to the playlist on the left of your screen or if you'd like to support this channel or get access to some content I produced just for my patrons please click on the link to my patreon page on the right of the screen thanks for watching that's all for this time and I'll see you again see

Channel: In Deep Geek

Views: 208,058

Rating: 4.9486132 out of 5

Keywords: in deep geek, lotr, lord of the rings, the lord of the rings, the ring, the one ring, saurons ring, one ring to rule them all, one ring to bind them, one ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them, sauron, frodo, sam, ringbearer, ringbearers, powers, how powerful is the one ring, one ring powers, magic

Id: y1MMXDIZ8TM

Length: 16min 5sec (965 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 25 2019