Lore Of The Rings: Are The Nine Really Meant For Men In ‘Rings Of Power’?

The history of Middle-earth is vast but also incomplete. Where other fantasy realms have fully charted histories, author J.R.R. Tolkien never finished working out the finer details of his lore. In that gap lives a lot of choices in terms of transmedia adaptation. These are often in display on Prime Video’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power television series. In Lore of the Rings, we’ll take a look at some of the choices made in the series and how they line up (or diverge) from the Professor’s intentions, notes, and ideas.

This week’s question gets to the heart of Rings of Power as an adaptation and many of the objections its detractors bring up: its infidelity to Tolkien’s lore. As stated in the series, Sauron (Charlie Vickers) has directed Celebrimbor (Charles Edwards) to make nine Rings of Power specifically for the race of Men. But is that their true purpose? On this the lore is quite clear — emphatically no.

Per various Tolkien works and The Lord of the Rings itself, the Rings that come to be known as the Nine and the Seven were not made to be gifted to the other Free Peoples of Middle-earth. Instead, they were fashioned by Celebrimbor and the Elven-smiths of Eregion exclusively for the Elves. In fact, those gifted with the Rings are wearing them when Sauron forged his Ruling Ring in Mount Doom and were suddenly aware that he was Annatar all along, they all removed the Rings and placed them in Celebrimbor’s care. As a response, Sauron laid siege to the Elf-lord’s city, Ost-in-Edhil, to retrieve the Rings that will become the Seven and the Nine.

But that history is embedded in various places like The Lord of the Rings‘s appendices, Tolkien’s letters, and the final section of The Silmarillion, “Of The Rings of Power and the Third Age.” As previously discussed, material from outside The Lords of the Rings is only available to the production on a case-by-case basis and has, so far, only been deployed in fairly innocuous places like Armenelos, the capital city of Númenor, which is only named in The Silmarillion. Nevertheless, the original purpose of the Rings and the order in which they were created are explicitly mentioned in The Lord of the Rings and, therefore, available to the production. So if that is the case, why are the Rings depicted as purpose-built for the other races in Rings of Power?

Since the end of Season 1, when the Three Elven Rings were forged, I’ve come to believe the production chose to dramatize the creation of the Rings this way for a very simple reason: audiences not invested in the lore are aware of The Ring Poem. Tolkien’s most famous verse specifically outlines the Rings in an order and with a purpose that seemingly contradicts the history he outlined in prose. Three for the Elves. Seven for the Dwarves. And Nine for mortal men doomed to die. Since that order is known by the larger swath of the potential audience, it makes dramatic sense to depict their creation in the order and for the peoples stated in the poem. Additionally, the creation of the proper Rings of Power took Sauron and Celebrimbor centuries with many lesser rings made in the interim. Once the series chose to compress the history of the Second Age from millennia down to a handful of years, getting to certain ends quicker becomes a priority. Hence, Celebrimbor crafts the Nine specifically for Men.

But if that is the case in the series, why is Sauron so invested in delivering these Nine Rings to Men?

The lore ultimately offers an answer. While Sauron’s original scheme was to dominate the Elves, their refusal of the Rings (besides the Three Celebrimbor made without Sauron’s aid), he could use the Rings he captured to hold sway over the other major races of Middle-earth. Curiously, the Seven did not serve their purpose as, ultimately, all they did was increase the Dwarves love of precious metals and craft. The Nine, meanwhile, were more successful as he held sway over nine Men of renown.

Who they are, exactly, is a question for another day — chiefly as Tolkien only ever truly names one of the Nazgûl and never explicitly details who they were before becoming Ringwraiths — but Sauron’s aim in the lore is something the television series seems to be making more explicit. Simple put, he believes he can dominate the wills of all the Free Peoples with these Rings and their connection to the Unseen World.

He says as much to Celebrimbor in the most recent episode, although he obscures this notion by saying the Rings will allow him to create the perfect order missing from the world. In both the lore and Rings of Power, this tracts with the Sauron we know. Even before he was corrupted by Morgoth, Sauron was a servant of the Vala Aulë, the creator the Dwarves and the great smith of the Valar. As such, Sauron (then called Mairon) had an obsession with craft and the order that can be obtained via its application. Of course, in Tolkien’s cosmology, true creation is the lone province of Eru Ilúvatar (the Elvish conception of the Christian God) and the order Sauron seeks cannot be obtained by any skill he or the Valar possess. It is this conflict that allows Morgoth the opportunity to recruit Sauron to his cause, even if the character states a different ambition to Celebrimbor in the scene.

Indeed, Sauron’s wish to create perfect order is lore and stands in opposition to Morgoth’s true aim: ruining all Eru created.

One of Rings of Power‘s strengths is its opportunity to examine Sauron as a character and one idea it keeps coming back to is the possibility of an abusive dynamic between him and the original Dark Lord. He told Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) as much last season and reiterated it to Celebrimbor last week. It is a notion with some backing in lore. A specific threat of Morgoth’s violent reprisal for failure motivates Sauron to retreat during his encounter with Beren and Lúthien in the First Age. And although Tolkien wrote decades before “the cycle of abuse” became a fixture in culture, there is an implicit understanding of it in his work. Sauron, seemingly abused by Morgoth across millennia, would in turn abuse those he sought to uplift via the Rings of Power. And none receive this cruel cycle more than nine Men who become the Nazgûl.

Granted, this interpretation requires the belief that Sauron’s stated goal to create order is not just a cover for his desire to be as cruel as his master. Celebrimbor offers this exact rebuttal in last week’s episode when he says Sauron is so great a deceiver that he can even deceive himself about his true purpose.

If that’s the case, then there is a clear reason why the Nine were made for Men in the context of the series. Sauron knows he can dominate that race the most easily and that they will accept his cruelty almost as readily as he submitted to Morgoth. In terms of lore, Morgoth and Sauron always had a dependable backbench of Men in the East, so he has an understanding of Men even if it is not yet explicit on Rings of Power.

Although, I expect that knowledge will be paramount in the program’s third season as, presumably, the focus will shift away from Elves and Dwarves to the Men of the East and the Men of Númenor.

Provided, of course, Sauron successfully secures the Nine from Galadriel this week.