Sauron has a brother in The Lord of the Rings – from a certain point of view. While the Dark Lord Sauron serves as The Lord of the Rings‘ overarching protagonist, precious little of his story before crafting the One Ring is revealed.

Everyone knows Sauron attempted to subjugate Middle-earth through jewelry-based trickery centuries before Frodo’s time, but where Mr. Mordor first came from is largely glossed over. J.R.R. Tolkien explores Sauron’s past more thoroughly in The Silmarillion and other works. At the beginning of time, Eru Ilúvatar – the God of Tolkien’s world – created the order of Valar. Beneath the Valar, he made the Maiar.

The entire epic story is set into motion when the vala known as Melkor turns evil and rebrands to “Morgoth.” The maia Mairon follows suit, joining Morgoth down the path of villainy and becoming his most trusted underling under the moniker “Sauron.”

After Morgoth’s defeat at the conclusion of the First Age, Sauron accepts the position of Middle-earth’s trouble-maker-in-chief, and wreaks havoc throughout the Second and Third Age before being crushed by the Shire’s finest. But there is another…

Why Sauron & Saruman Can Be Considered Brothers In The Lord Of The Rings

Sauron isn’t the only maia present during The Lord of the Rings. The five wizards all hail from the same order, although their powers and memories are suppressed. Tolkien’s lore bears many similarities to monotheistic mythology: Eru is akin to God, the Valar are archangels, and the Maia are standard angels.

Some depictions of the angelic order throughout fiction portray God’s angels as having a sibling-like relationship. The Lord of the Rings isn’t necessarily one of them, and while Tolkien does give the sense that the Valar are, effectively, Eru’s children, the fact that various valar marry each other creates a very different vibe.

The Maiar don’t have quite the same closeness, but this is where the situation becomes curious. Most of the maiar mentioned in The Lord of the Rings‘ legendarium are allied to a specific vala. Sauron and Saruman (originally Curumo) were the two known servants of the vala Aulë, providing them with a unique bond not shared with any other being.

Sauron and Saruman may not be brothers in the sense that they had the same parents, grew up together, and stole each other’s toys. But they are two children of Eru raised under the same banner and guided by the same mentor, which makes them the closest thing to siblings that divine, primordial spirits can be.

Tolkien says nothing about Sauron and Saruman’s relationship during their pre-evil days. They could have been inseparable, or ignored each other completely. Regardless, the Valar and the Maiar clearly function as a large, angelic family, and as the two top students of Aulë, Sauron and Saruman could certainly be viewed as siblings in a certain light.

Furthermore, The Lord of the Rings‘ two future villains share a love of smithery, crafting, creation, and order. Their personalities are not overtly dissimilar, and with Sauron the more senior of the pair, an older brother/younger brother relationship emerges.

How Sauron & Saruman’s Connection Changes The Lord Of The Rings

Viewing Saruman and Sauron as spiritual brothers puts a very different spin on the events of The Lord of the Rings. For starters, Saruman’s betrayal begins to make a lot more sense. The wizards may not have possessed their full memories of Valinor, but as a maia very much cut from the same cloth as Sauron, it makes perfect sense that Saruman would break bad.

Like many younger siblings, Saruman looked to snatch his older brother’s prized possession from beneath them – in this case, Middle-earth. One could also argue that Saruman’s turn to darkness was not necessarily corruption, greed, or military strategy. It was simply his nature to follow a destiny similar to Sauron’s.

One must then ask the obvious question. If the wizards were sent by the Valar to stop Sauron, why would they pick Saruman in the first place? Could they not have predicted Saruman’s potential for treachery? Tolkien may provide an answer for this. It is suggested that everything that transpires happens according to the design of Eru, written into fate by the “music” Eru orchestrated when creating the world.

As such, Saruman’s deceit is arguably a necessary step on the road to defeating Sauron. Maybe without Saruman switching teams, Gandalf never leads the free peoples of Middle-earth as he does in The Return of the King. Perhaps without Saruman’s Uruk-hai splitting the Fellowship at the end of The Fellowship of the Ring, Frodo never makes it to Mount Doom.

The Link To Aulë May Explain Why Both Sauron & Saruman Turned Bad

Diving deeper down the rabbit hole, the shared connection between Sauron and Saruman may reveal why both became enemies of Middle-earth.

When he wasn’t teaching two of Middle-earth’s most notorious criminals everything he knew, Aulë was famous for creating the race of dwarves. The men and elves of Middle-earth were both products of Eru himself, but Aulë fashioned the dwarves in secret against his father’s orders.

Aulë repented for his actions and all was forgiven, but the dwarves’ creation demonstrates a rebellious streak rising within the Valar’s resident blacksmith from the very beginning. This never erupted into outright wrongdoing, but it may not be a coincidence that the only vala to go against Eru (aside from Morgoth) ended up being the mentor of Sauron and Saruman.

From this angle, the brothers’ corruption begins to look like an inevitability – like it would have been a miracle if Sauron and Saruman had somehow emerged from the story with their ethical integrity still intact. Morgoth may have been the primary source of everything bad in The Lord of the Rings, but it seems that Aulë unwittingly offered a helping hand.