When did Saruman turn evil?

in the lord of the rings movies gandalf pointedly asked sarah mann when he abandoned reason for madness it's a good question when did he become evil and why hi everyone this is robert welcome to in deep geek on this channel we cover lord of the rings a song of ice and fire and other great fantasy books and tv shows if you're interested in that please click on the subscribe button in the bottom right of your screen sarah man the wise was the leader of the astari one of the maya sworn to guide and protect the people of middle earth but by the time we meet him in the lord of the rings he is clearly not a good guy so what happened and why it may be tempting to suggest that he was just overtaken by a desire for the ring and the power it would bring him and that certainly was a major part in what happened later on but i want to start much earlier than that for the seeds of his falls seemed to have been planted before he even reached middle-earth sarah man was a maya one of the five chosen to journey to middle-earth to work against the machinations of sauron and guide and support the good peoples of the land the five became known as the astari the order of wizards but it's important to note that that collegiate feel of an order of like-minded people was never actually there the blue wizards headed off east and never returned sarah mann was with them for most of that time radagast largely kept to himself and gandalf tended to work best as a traveler moving from place to place the five may have shared a commission from the valar but they didn't really work as a team at all they hardly ever even met in middle earth and even traveled there separately and the jealousies and divisions were apparent right from the time of their choosing sarah mann volunteered to go and clearly thought himself the leader of the expedition whereas gandalf did not want to go and had to be ordered to nevertheless even though he was the third to depart vardar said that he was not the third in precedence sarah mann became jealous of gandalf and rather disdainful of radagast who only came along because ivana begged sarah man to take him that jealousy and discontent festered over long periods of time but there was also a long distance between sarah mann and gandalf with sarah mann being off in the east so it probably didn't matter so much then but when he did return to the west and have to be in contact with gandalf again on a frequent-ish basis something happened that will definitely have stirred those old feelings up again galadriel had formed the white council a council of the wise and good in middle earth dedicated to opposing the shadow and she wanted gandalf to lead it this is perhaps understandable he was we're told mightier than sarah mann and more beloved by the peoples of middle earth particularly the elves gandalf though refused he didn't want to be tied down so sarah man was given the role instead the damage was done though sarah mann was angry and jealous he was the leader of the astari not gandalf was sarah mann fallen by this point well it certainly seems that he was falling we're told in the silmarillion that his pride and desire of mastery was grown great by this point so something had been happening perhaps slowly during that millennium and a half he was gone with the blue wizards that made his pride and desire of mastery grow great but what well we don't have any detailed accounts of what the three of them were up to at that point although it does appear that the blue wizards also fell from being some of sauron's most implacable foes having a very great influence tolkien tells us in causing dissension and disarray to sauron's would-be forces but eventually they failed in different ways to sarah man ending up founding cults and magic traditions after sauron's fall sarah mann will have been with them for at least the start of that fall perhaps influencing his own slide or perhaps he was influencing theirs i did another video on exactly what happened to the blue wizards if you're interested but what we do know sarah mann was doing was studying the devices of sauron of old that's quite a vague sentence but it's clear that what he was doing during that period included looking into dark things and we're told time and time again that studying such things is dangerous and after the forming of the white council is moving back from the west he doubled down on this he began studying the law of the rings of power their making and history his studies into dark things now had a focus and that study seems to have been his focus for 300 years before he was given the key of orthanc and established a permanent home base for perhaps the first time in middle-earth he probably knew that he would find a palantir there an extremely powerful seeing stone from ancient times that he could use to spy on friends and allies alike this would be extremely important later in the final stages of his fall but we'll return to that in a moment nearly another century passed sarah mann continued to study sauron and the one ring in his heart darkened if we were to pick a turning point for him this was surely it the silmarillion picks up the story gandalf had discovered that sauron had returned and was hiding in dolgodur in murkwood he implored the white council to attack but sarah mann vetoed it we're told why sarah man had turned to dark thoughts and was already a traitor in heart for he desired that he and no other should find the great rings that he might wield it himself and order all the world to his will too long he had studied the ways of sauron and hope to defeat him and now he envied him as a rival rather than hated his works and he deemed that the ring which was sauron's would seek for its master as he became manifest once more but if he were driven out again then it would lie hid therefore he was willing to play with peril and let sauron be for a time hoping by his craft to forestall both his friends and the enemy when the ring should appear so sarah mann was already secretly working against the rest of the white council and plotting to take the ring for himself nearly two centuries before the events of the lord of the rings what followed was really just a working through of that truth in the year 2941 of the third age a full 90 years after gandalf had revealed sauron's presence in dolgodur sarah man finally authorized an attack his thinking this time seems to have been that sauron was now growing in power and sending his forces to search the river anduin where the ring had been lost all that time ago and might actually find it so sarah mann now wanted sauron pushed back out of murkwood so he couldn't find the ring before sarah mann himself did so the white council attacked and sauron withdrew all the way back to mordor sarah mann retreated back to orthanc and continued his own search but i said we would return to that palantir salaman found in orthanc sauron being back in mordor meant that he could use his own palantir and communicating with sarah mann came to dominate him sarah man's corruption was therefore complete around the year 3000 of the third age he had probably already started building his army at all thanks some time before we're told that he started fortifying it in 2953 and it's probably true that he was never completely enthralled of sauron his plan until just days before the end seems to have been to have claimed the ring for his own and ruled with it or if that didn't work join sauron's side and act as his lieutenant he tried to play both sides for a long time and did so successfully for a long time gandalf had been suspicious of him for a while but clearly didn't expect to be walking into a trap when he visited orthank near the start of the lord of the rings and sauron thought sarah man was fully working for him until the nazgul captured some of his spies on route to the shire so when did sarah man turn evil i guess it's a matter of perspective the annexes to the lord of the rings pinpoint the year 3000 of the third age as the moment he became ensnared by sauron and a traitor to the white council that's 18 years before the main story of the lord of the rings but he had clearly been working in his own self-interest for a lot longer than that hunting for the one ring and preventing attacks on sauron for hundreds of years we're told that he was already a traitor in heart around 200 years before the lord of the rings as far back as 2463 over half a millennium before the lord of the rings we're told that his prize and desire of mastery had grown great and the roots of this go back even further jealousy and disdain were parts of his character even before he arrived in middle earth sometimes i feel that critics of the world of j.r.r tolkien are too eager to categorize characters as either good or evil because they see the whole story as just an existential battle between good and evil but that is not how tolkien wrote characters sarah man like all the other characters in this huge world is a multi-layered he wasn't a good guy until suddenly one day he woke up a bad guy he was all these things and more slowly descending from being an admirable figure with flaws to a detestable figure with some redeeming features perhaps by the very end even those redeeming features had gone but to paint sarah mann as a binary good or evil character is to miss the point the greatest among us has the potential to fall to terrible depths and the humblest has the potential to rise to majestic heights so foul sarah man and so rose the shire that home of the humblest that we're told sarah mann himself considered beneath his notice if you'd like to see more lord of the rings videos please click on the link on the left of your screen or if you'd like to support this channel or get access to some content i produce exclusively for my patrons please click on the link on the right of your screen that's all for this time thanks for watching i'll see you again soon

Channel: In Deep Geek

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Keywords: in deep geek, deep geek, lord of the rings, the lord of the rings, lotr, tolkien, middle earth, history, lore, saruman, when did saruman the wise abandon reason for madness, when did saruman turn evil, why did saruman join sauron, why did saruman turn, when did saruman, why did saruman, saruman turned towards evil, saruman turn

Id: ypgYte5XxWs

Length: 10min 49sec (649 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 21 2020