J. R. R. Tolkien’s classic The Lord of the Rings, and all its many adaptations, is one of the greatest epic fantasy sagas ever written, and part of that is because of the insidious nature of Middle-earth’s greatest threat, the Dark Lord Sauron. One of the mighty spirits known as Maiar, born before the beginning of Time, Sauron sided with the fallen Valar Morgoth in the First Age, fighting for dominance over all creation.
While Morgoth failed in his war against the Valar and their children, the Elves, Sauron escaped and began to form his own plan to gain dominion over the world of Arda and its inhabitants. The central part of this plan was the forging of the Rings of Power, which would be subject to the control of Sauron’s masterpiece, the One Ring. This small, unadorned band of gold would eventually become the most pivotal object in all Middle-earth’s history.
Sauron Crafts The One Ring In The Fires Of Mount Doom During Middle-earth’s Second Age
The Forging Of The One Ring Is The Culmination Of Sauron’s Centuries Of Scheming To Control Middle-Earth
The looming volcanic spire of Mount Doom – “Amon Amarth” in the Elvish tongue of Sindarin, originally called “Orodruin” – first emerged from the southeastern plains of Middle-earth in the First Age, when the Dark Lord Morgoth held sway. It wasn’t until after his defeat that Sauron, hoping to succeed where his master failed, turned his gaze to the fiery mountain and the lands surrounding it. It was in the year 1000 of the Second Age that Sauron began the construction of his fortress of Barad-dûr near Mount Doom, in order to ensure his control over the land of Mordor.
Amazon’s series The Rings of Power condenses Middle-earth’s timeline, and shows the Southlands of Middle-earth as a pastoral, beautiful region that only reveals itself to be Mordor after Waldreg caused the dormant Mount Doom to erupt.
In S. A. 1200, Sauron infiltrated the Elven land of Eregion by disguising himself as a messenger from the deific Valar, taking the name “Annatar.” There, he ingratiated himself to the master-smith Celebrimbor, and in S. A. 1500 they began to work together on crafting the Rings of Power. In S. A. 1600, Sauron returned to Mordor and descended into the Cracks of Doom at Mount Doom’s fiery heart, and there he forged his most insidious creation – the One Ring – and in doing so, revealed his evil designs to the Elves that he had so masterfully betrayed.
What The Lord Of The Rings’ One Ring Is Made Of & Why It Can’t Be Destroyed
The Ring Itself Is Only Made Of Gold, But It Has Been Reinforced With
J. R. R. Tolkien’s legendarium is full of powerful and magical substances, such as mithril, the metal from the Mines of Moria that was used to make the mail-coat famously worn by Frodo Baggins, as well as Nenya, the Elven Ring of Adamant. Silima, the crystalline substance from which the great Fëanor made the mythical Silmarils, was even more durable, but the secret of its making pᴀssed from the world with Fëanor in the last days of the First Age.
Sauron made his Ruling Ring a simple band of gold.
Yet with all the materials available to him, and all the finery displayed by the other 20 Rings of Power, Sauron made his Ruling Ring a simple band of gold. Deep in the Cracks of Doom, Sauron “used the fire that welled there from the heart of the earth in his sorceries and his forging” (The Silmarillion, “Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age”) and imbued it not only with the greater portion of his own power, but also linked it to the other Rings so that he could influence their bearers and bend them to his will.
The inscription on the One Ring is the only complete example of the Black Speech of Mordor, one of J. R. R. Tolkien’s mulтιтude of constructed languages. The text, which only appears when the ring has been exposed to flame, translates to: “One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.”
Although the One Ring was merely a plain band of gold, adorned only by an inscription in Sauron’s own Black Speech, the sheer amount of power and will infused into the metal made it invulnerable, even to dragonfire. After all, Sauron was one of the Maiar, even after betraying them, and so by linking himself to the Ring, he made its plain gold band into something essentially divine. Destroying the One Ring, therefore, could only be accomplished by returning it to the fires of Orodruin from whence it was born.
How The One Ring Works & Why It Can Control The Other Rings Of Power
Sauron’s Spiritual Connection To The One Ring Linked Him To All The Others
As a physical reservoir of Sauron’s own power, the One Ring gave him unmatched physical strength – as seen in the prologue of the film adaptation of The Fellowship of the Ring, where the Ring infused Sauron’s blows with such power as to sunder entire ranks of soldiers with every strike – and made him more able to impose his will on others, especially those who wore any of the other Rings. It was for that latter reason that Celebrimbor hid away the three Elven-Rings, so that Sauron could not use the Ruling Ring to spy on them.
While Amazon’s Rings of Power has its second season conclude with Celebrimbor discovering Sauron tricked him into using the Dark Lord’s blood to forge the Nine, followed swiftly by Sauron killing the Elven smith, this is a construction unique to the Amazon series. The Rings had all been forged by S. A. 1590, but Celebrimbor did not die until the Sack of Eregion in S. A. 1697.
It was the connection between the One Ring and the Nine Rings made for Men that let Sauron corrupt their bearers and enslave them as the dread Nazgûl. While Sauron tried to do the same with the Seven he had given to the Dwarves, their natural hardiness insulated them from his influence, and their Rings only served to inflame their lust for hoarding gold.
Yet for all his power, Sauron was parted from his precious creation by the strength of Isildur, son of the King of Gondor, who used his father’s shattered sword Narsil to sever the finger Sauron wore the Ring on during the Siege of Barad-dûr in S. A. 3441, destroying the Dark Lord’s physical form and forcing him into hiding for another two millennia. And of course, as seen in The Lord of the Rings, before Sauron was able to recover the One Ring, it fell into the possession of that most unlikely of creatures – the hobbit named Bilbo Baggins.
