What Rings of Power’s elven rings do, and who has them by Lord of the Rings

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power makes good on its title in the remaining episode of its first season, however it additionally could have left followers with so much of questions on what occurs subsequent. What does one do with a Ring of Power after getting it? How did all this play out in the books?

And the most essential query of all: Who’s truly gonna personal this magical jewellery? They’ll have to start out planning a wardrobe replace.

[Ed. note: This piece contains spoilers for The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power episode 8.]

Photo: Ben Rothstein/Prime Video

The finale of Rings of Power’s first season dramatizes the forging of the three elven Rings of Power in succinct trend. A bit of mithril, a bit of Valnorian gold and silver, a number of gems, and increase: You’ve obtained Vilya, Nenya, and Narya, the legendary artifacts themselves.

The episode ends quickly after, nonetheless, and with it the season. If we wish to anticipate the occasions of season 2 and additional, we’ve to go to the supply: Tolkien.

What powers do the three elven rings have?

Image: New Line Cinema

There’s a bit of a bait-and-switch with the Elven Rings, for contemporary viewers no less than. Vilya (the sapphire ring), Narya (the ruby ring), and Nenya (the adamant ring, which alone of all of them was made of mithril) are all named for the elves’ “principal elements” of the world: air, fireplace, and water.

But they don’t have elemental powers in any respect.

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 domination or hoarded wealth, but understanding, making, and healing, to preserve all things unstained.”

It’s fairly near the causes for his or her forging in The Rings of Power: Celebrimbor and Elrond sought an answer to the lethal corruption their individuals confronted in Middle-earth. And, as the Silmarillion says, “those who had [an elven Ring] in their keeping could ward off the decays of time and postpone the weariness of the world […] where they abode there mirth also dwelt and all things were unstained by the griefs of time.”

But the elven Rings had a reasonably large disadvantage. Sauron’s hand of their forging left them weak to his personal One Ring. Again from The Silmarillion: “While he wore the One Ring he could perceive all the things that were done by means of the lesser rings, and he could see and govern the very thoughts of those that wore them.”

Thankfully, as a result of the energy of the elven rings and their bearers, this flaw was realized the second Sauron placed on his ring for the first time, making a window for the bearers to see into his intentions to rule them and all that was theirs. They solved this downside fairly simply by merely taking the rings off.

Once Sauron was defeated and the One Ring was misplaced, it grew to become protected to wield the elven rings once more for his or her meant use: preserving pockets of Middle-earth from the wastes of time and the world’s gradual decay. (Why was the world decaying? Tolkien was Catholic.)

How had been the elven rings made in the books?

Image: New Line Cinema

Early in the Second Age, after the defeat of Morgoth, Sauron appeared to the elves of Lindon and Eregion in a “fair-seeming” guise, calling himself Annatar and claiming to be an emissary of the Valar — so already you’ll be able to inform it is a little bit completely different from Rings of Power.

In truth, in Tolkien’s The Silmarillion, each Gil-galad and Elrond instantly distrusted Annatar, refusing him entry to Lindon. Unfortunately, Celebrimbor was completely down for it. Sauron preyed on the Noldorim elves’ love of Middle-earth, the land they’d defended for thus lengthy, and their conflicting want to return to the splendor and bliss of their homeland. The Silmarillion says that he argued, “Wherefore should Middle-earth remain for ever desolate and dark, whereas the Elves could make it as fair as Eressëa, nay even as Valinor?” and inspired them to plot methods during which to transform and protect their environment.

As Elrond tells it in The Fellowship of the Ring, the smiths of Eregion “received his aid and grew mighty in craft, whereas he learned all their secrets, and betrayed them, and forged secretly in the Mountain of Fire the One Ring to be their master. But Celebrimbor was aware of him, and hid the Three which he had made.”

Yes, you learn that proper: By the time the elven Rings had been solid, Celebrimbor had already discovered to not belief Sauron. The Silmarillion states fairly clearly that the rings “were forged by Celebrimbor alone, and the hand of Sauron had never touched them.” Still, Celebrimbor had discovered sufficient of his craft from Sauron that the elven Rings had been unavoidably topic to the One Ring.

When the bearers of the elven Rings took them off in defiance of Sauron’s will, he rallied the armies of Mordor to beat Eregion and take them by drive, and when that didn’t work he made the Seven and the Nine, dealing them out to the dwarves and males.

Rings by no means actually labored on the dwarves, as a result of they “proved tough and hard to tame,” in accordance with The Silmarillion. “[Dwarves] ill endure the domination of others, and the thoughts of their hearts are hard to fathom, nor can they be turned to shadows.” It didn’t enable Sauron to manage the seven dwarf bearers, merely to extend their base feelings, like greed, and not directly assist the nice dwarven civilizations into break and dragon-fire.

Men, howeve,r proved a lot simpler to deprave and management; everyone knows what a nazgul is.

Who retains the elven rings?

When Sauron started his battle on the elves for the elven rings, Celebrimbor cut up the rings up for safekeeping. He despatched Nenya to Galadriel, Vilya to Gil-galad, and Narya to Círdan (the chief of the faction of elves that lived on the western coast of Middle-earth, closest to Valinor, and constructed all the boats that sailed west and by no means got here again). But with the exception of Galadriel’s Nenya, the rings wouldn’t stick with these house owners.

Gil-galad ultimately gave his ring to Elrond, earlier than he perished with Elendil in Sauron’s defeat, and Círdan ultimately gave his to Gandalf for causes you’ll be able to simply examine right here.

“Thus it was,” The Silmarillion says, “that in two domains the bliss and beauty of the Elves remained still undiminished while that Age endured: in [Rivendell]; and in Lothlórien […] where the trees bore flowers of gold and no Orc or evil thing dared ever come.”

But Sauron’s hand in the creation of the elven rings signifies that their energy was, no less than partly, depending on Sauron’s existence. This was amongst the cause that Bilbo’s mere rediscovery of the One Ring was one thing of a demise knell to elves on Middle-earth. Whether Sauron discovered the ring or the Ring was destroyed, the elven Rings would have been rendered unusable.

This is why Elrond and Galadriel sail over the western sea at the finish of The Return of the King — they sacrificed their energy to carry again the tides of time and hold Middle-earth because it was throughout their youths, to protect no less than two locations in Middle-earth the place elves can stay unburdened lives, with a view to hold Sauron from gaining complete dominion.

What does this imply for Rings of Power season 2?

If issues comply with the development of Tolkien’s lore — which Rings of Power has not at all times executed! — what occurs subsequent is a interval of tense calm, as Sauron holes up in Mordor to assemble his armies and forge the One Ring. In the books, that takes a decade, however with Rings of Power condensing Sauron’s manipulation of Celebrimbor into forging the elven Rings to a mere three weeks, we will most likely count on it to occur sooner.

Then, as soon as the One Ring is on Sauron’s finger, the elves defy him — throwing Middle-earth again into battle with a darkish lord, with the males of Númenor on their facet. And that actually looks as if one thing Rings of Power will wish to have its personal cinematic tackle.