What do the Rings of Power Elven Rings do and who has them? by The Lord of the Rings

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power lived up to its title in the final episode of its first season, but it may have also left fans with a lot of questions about what happens next. What does one do? do With a Ring of Power once you have it? How did all this play out in the books?

And the most important question of all: Who will be the true owner of these magical jewels? They will have to start planning a wardrobe renewal.

(Editor's note: This piece contains spoilers for the first three episodes of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 2.)

The first few episodes of season two answer some of these questions, and give viewers a better sense of why the elves bothered to wear their rings at all, considering how involved Sauron was in their creation. The answer, as with many of Tolkien's stories, has to do with the limits of nature and their own shifting place in it.

The elven rings have a hint of deception, at least to modern viewers. Vilya (the sapphire ring), Narya (the ruby ​​ring), and Nenya (the diamond ring, the only one of them made of mithril) are named after the “chief elements” of the elven world: air, fire, and water.

But they have no elemental powers at all.

As Elrond explains in The Fellowship of the Ring“They were not made as weapons of war or conquest: that is not their power. Those who made them did not desire strength or dominion or accumulated riches, but understanding, creation and healing, to keep all things blameless.”

It is quite close to the reasons for its forging in The rings of power:Celebrimbor and Elrond sought a solution to the deadly corruption their people faced in Middle-earth. And, as The Silmarillion says, “those who had[an Elven-ring]in their keeping could protect themselves from the decays of time and postpone the weariness of the world (…) where they dwelt, there dwelt joy, and all things were free from the woes of time.”

But the Elven rings had one major drawback: Sauron's hand in their forging made them vulnerable to his own One Ring. The Silmarillion:“While he wore the One Ring he could perceive all things that were done through the lesser rings, and he could see and govern the very thoughts of those who wore them.”

Fortunately, due to the power of the Elven rings and their bearers, this flaw became apparent the moment Sauron set out. his ring for the first time, creating a window for wearers to see in his They had intentions of ruling them and everything that was theirs. They solved this problem quite easily, simply by taking off their rings.

Once Sauron was defeated and the One Ring was lost, it became safe to use the Elven rings again for their intended use: preserving parts of Middle-earth from the losses of time and the slow decay of the world. (Why was the world decaying? Tolkien was Catholic.)

Early in the Second Age, after the defeat of Morgoth, Sauron appeared to the Elves of Lindon and Eregion in a guise of “fair appearance”, calling himself Annatar and claiming to be an emissary of the Valar, so you can already tell that this is a bit different from The rings of power, Sauron first wore the guise of Halbrand in Season 1, and only appeared to Celebrimbor as Annatar in Season 2.

In fact, in Tolkien The SilmarillionBoth Gil-galad and Elrond immediately distrusted Annatar and refused him entry to Lindon. Unfortunately, Celebrimbor was all for it. Sauron took advantage of the Noldorim Elves' love for Middle-earth, the land they had defended for so long, and their conflicting desire to return to the splendour and joy of their homeland. The Silmarillion He says he argued: “Why should Middle-earth remain forever desolate and dark, while the Elves might make it as beautiful as Eressëa, or even as Valinor?” and encouraged them to devise ways to convert and preserve their environment.

As Elrond tells it in The Fellowship of the RingThe smiths of Eregion “were aided by him and became mighty in their craft, while he learned all their secrets, and betrayed them, and forged secretly in the Mountain of Fire the One Ring for his master. But Celebrimbor knew of this, and hid the Three that he had made.”

Yes, you read that right: when the Elven Rings were forged, Celebrimbor had already decided that he should not trust Sauron. The Silmarillion states quite clearly that the rings “were forged by Celebrimbor alone, and the hand of Sauron had never touched them.” Still, Celebrimbor had learned enough of his craft from Sauron that the Elven rings were inevitably tied to the One Ring.

This is fundamentally different from Rings of powerThe Sauron timeline, with Galadriel well aware of Sauron's trickery (or at least the possibility of the baneful influence he wielded as “Halbrand”) before the rings were made, and Celebrimbor well unaware of Sauron's trickery during the making of the Elven rings. With Sauron now appearing to Celebrimbor as The “Lord of Gifts” Annatarthe other rings still seem to be closer to Sauron's influence. Although Galadriel—along with, now, Elrond, Gil-galad, Círdan, and a handful of other elves present in Lothlorien—is aware that the rings contain some Sauron's influence, they're not quite sure how yet. (More on that below.)

When the bearers of the Elven Rings took them from him in defiance of Sauron's will, he gathered the armies of Mordor to conquer Eregion and take it by force, and when that failed, he created the Seven and the Nine, dividing them among the Dwarves and Men.

The rings never really worked on the dwarves, because they “proved hard and difficult to tame,” according to The Silmarillion. “(Dwarves) endure the domination of others poorly, and the thoughts of their hearts are hard to understand, nor can they be turned into shadows.” It did not allow Sauron to control the seven dwarven bearers, only to increase their base emotions, such as greed, and indirectly help the great dwarven civilizations to ruin and dragonfire.

Men, however, proved much easier to corrupt and control; we all know what a Nazgul is.

When Sauron began his war against the Elves over the Elven-rings in the books, Celebrimbor divided the rings up for safekeeping. He sent Nenya to Galadriel, Vilya to Gil-galad, and Narya to Círdan (who, as the series also states, is the leader of the faction of Elves who lived on the western coast of Middle-earth, closest to Valinor, and built all of the ships that sailed west and never returned). But with the exception of Galadriel's Nenya, the rings would not stay with those owners.

Gil-galad eventually gave his ring to Elrond, before dying with Elendil in Sauron's defeat, and Círdan eventually gave his to Gandalf for reasons You can read it here.

“That's how it was” The Silmarillion He says, “that in two realms the joy and beauty of the Elves remained unbroken while that Age lasted: in (Rivendell); and in Lothlórien (…) where the trees bore golden blossoms and no Orc or evil creature ever dared to come.”

But Sauron's involvement in the creation of the Elven-rings meant that their power depended, at least in part, on Sauron's existence. This was one reason why Bilbo's mere rediscovery of the One Ring was something of a death sentence for the Elves of Middle-earth. Whether Sauron found the Ring or it was destroyed, the Elven-rings would have been rendered useless.

This is why Elrond and Galadriel sail the Western Sea at the end of The return of the king —sacrificed their power to stem the tides of time and keep Middle-earth as it was in their youth, to preserve at least two places in Middle-earth where elves can live unburdened lives, in order to prevent Sauron from gaining total dominance.

In Tolkien's lore, there is a 10-year period of tense calm, as Sauron takes refuge in Mordor to gather his armies and forge the One Ring. But it was then that Sauron's deception was revealed much later in the process; Rings of power In the second season, the elves are already struggling to fully understand what power they now control, or if it is in fact Sauron's power that controls them.

Galadriel is already having strange and ominous visions, and when she tells King Gil-galad about them she also tells him that she fears they are visions of the future. Unfortunately, Gil-galad has had similar premonitions: “I have seen mountains crumbling; waters drying up; and black clouds gathering over white towers.”

So far, at least, Círdan isn’t all that worried; to him, the rings seem more like a unique opportunity, a power they can “wield over all life” that they need not fear. “It is wise for you to fear this power,” Círdan tells Elrond. “But do not let that fear blind you to the ways it can be used for good.”

This is the conflict Payne and McKay hoped to explore by teasing the creation of the Elven rings in the plot. “We’re talking about a nuclear age,” McKay told Polygon in a press conference ahead of the season two premiere. “Nuclear energy can be used for good, but it’s very dangerous, and it can also be used for evil. And it can be incredibly creative or incredibly destructive. And the rings are all of those things.”

“I think there are things that seem really timeless and relatable, like when a new power comes into the world and you don’t know how it’s going to change you or me.”

Considering Rings of power He condensed Sauron's manipulation of Celebrimbor to forge the Elven rings to a mere three weeksThere will likely be a handful of other parts of Tolkien's timeline that will accelerate as we explore exactly what the consequences of that decision are. But theoretically, the bones of the world (if not the season) will be the same from here: once the One Ring is on Sauron's finger, the elves defy him, throwing Middle-earth back into war with a dark lord, with the men of Númenor on their side. And that certainly seems like something Rings of power He'll want to have his own movie version.