The One Ring Explained

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Artwork:

Music:

Lord of the Ring Map:

[CGPGrey]

"The Shadow that bred them can only mock, it cannot make: not real new things of its own."

[jim]

Dwarves being literally too dense for Sauron to mind control is a really funny concept

[realspacemodels]

One video to explain it all...that has a nice ring to it.

[fireemblemaddict]

So that's why elves have been reduced to cookie and toy making slaves. Oh how the mighty have fallen.

[michaelfisher]

"The end of the age of magic"...I remember reading a passage, in a book I can't recall the title of..(sorry), where the author said "the destruction of the one ring caused magic and power to bleed out from Middle earth as blood from an arterial wound." Tolkien was a master at forging a world in which victory can only come at immense cost. And as i've grown older I've come to realize, that's the price of every conflict. Well done, professor. Its a bitter lesson.

[the-chillian]

There's an oopsie right at the beginning, which wouldn't be too big a deal but it affects the graphics for the rest of the video. The Nine and the Seven are not the "lesser rings". They were Great Rings. It wasn't just to control the Three that the One needed to be exceptionally powerful, but the Seven and the Nine as well. None of the "lesser rings" Gandalf mentioned to Frodo near the beginning of FotR ever entered into the story; the Elves evidently made a crapload of them as practice for making Great Rings and they turn up often enough that Gandalf has reason to believe they too are hazardous for mortals. But only slightly, and we never actually see one.

The one visual aspect that set Great Rings apart from lesser rings is that they had gems. "The Three, the Seven and the Nine had each their proper gem, " said Gandalf to the Council of Elrond. The lesser rings did not, which is why Gandalf worried about the ring Bilbo found a _little_ bit, but not too much, since it was a lesser ring to all appearance. The One also had no gem, but how likely was it that Bilbo had found the One?

Pretty damn likely as it turned out. But the only way to tell the One from a lesser ring without actually putting it on and using it is to put it in a fire for a while to bring the inscription out. There would have been no such confusion for the Seven and the Nine, so the graphics showing them with no gems, as if they were lesser rings, are incorrect.

What made the Three unique is that, while Sauron was personally involved in making the Seven and the Nine, the Three were made by Celebrimbor on his own and Sauron never even touched them.

Another analogy that may work better than stat buffs is that Sauron's design for rings included a backdoor that allowed him to hack the minds of their users. The One Ring was his root access login.

[badman]

Oh shit! That explains why all the elves leave at the end! That always confused me, like what, Sauron is gone so why are they leaving?? And this explains why Elrond is so sad about leaving his daughter, because she will eventually lose her immortality after watching Aragorn die. Damn

[Daneki]

Me: wow CGP made a fastvideo about that Prime series that started today
Confused me: sees video release date

[Godunow]

"These books are the end of the age of magic and the beginning of the age of men."

One of major themes of the books which is completly absent in the movies. They don't even care to explain why all those elves are leaving. One simple line from the books woud be enough to explain it:

"Do you not see now wherefore your coming is to us as the footstep of Doom? For if you fail, then we are laid bare to the Enemy. Yet if you succeed, then our power is diminished, and Lothlórien will fade, and the tides of Time will sweep it away. We must depart into the West, or dwindle to a rustic folk of dell and cave, slowly to forget and to be forgotten."

[samanthafriginal]

One Ring: I can make you a mighty gardener!
Hobbit: Meh

I laughed so hard at this one I don't know why

[melontusk]

Got to love how Sauron's instructions to forge the Rings were in the form of spherical coordinates.

[bennettsnyder]

Maybe I misunderstood the lore but I always thought the implication was that someone sufficiently powerful COULD actually use the ring to defeat Sauron but they would be corrupted by it and basically replace him. Always thought that was the issue for Galadriel and Gandalf rather than being tricked by it.

[gordontaylor]

For those curious about what happened to the other rings forged with Sauron's formula:
Three Elven Rings:
* Narya - Given by Celebrimbor to Gil-galad, who passed it on to his lieutenant Cirdan. Cirdan kept it after Gil-galad died, and in turn gave it to Gandalf when Cirdan recognized Gandalf as a wizard. Gandalf took it with him when he left Middle-Earth.
* Nenya - Galadriel's ring. She took it with her when she left Middle-Earth.
* Vilya - Also given to Gil-galad by Celebrimbor, later it was given to Elrond. Elrond took it with him when he left Middle-Earth.

Seven Dwarven Rings: By the time of the "Lord of the Rings", four of the rings were destroyed by dragon-fire and the other three recovered by Sauron. An envoy of Sauron's offered to return the surviving rings to Dain Ironfoot in exchange for the Dwarves' help in seeking the One Ring. Dain sent the messenger away without giving him a straight answer. Presumably they were lost/destroyed after the One Ring was destroyed.

Nine Rings of Men: Surprisingly, it does not appear they were actually with the Ringwraiths, at least not all the time. (This is where the frustrating vagueness comes into the picture). Most notably when their leader (the Witch-King) is killed, the ring that would've belonged to him is not mentioned at all! Regardless of whether Sauron had them or not, they would've been lost/destroyed after the One Ring was destroyed.

[yosoyelqueso]

The One Ring CAN be used to overthrow Sauron. It was one of his primary fears. In fact, the idea that they would try to destroy it never even occurred to him until they were at the very cracks of doom.

[wonderfurret]

"Well, almost everybody"

Tom Bombadil laughs maniacally

[adriandelatorre]

This is the best comment section I've ever stumbled upon. I'm also a Tolkien enthusiast, so I find this really interesting. All you guys have great questions and answers. Now, back to reading the comments.

[ximecreature]

0:28
Forge the ring !
*deploys full 3D Torus formula*

[timelinedifferential]

He made a number of mistakes


1) The three, the seven and the nine are GREAT rings, not lesser. There are many lesser rings, possibly hundreds as it is not stated.
Saruman was wearing a lesser ring in FOTR as he never learned how to make a greater.


2) A person CAN overthrow Sauron using the one. The problem is they become the new Dark Lord. Gandalf and Galadriel at the very least could do it. It is suggested anyone could do it, even Frodo if they turned their minds to domination and tried long and hard enough.


3) The Three Rings are a snare themselves for the elves. They don't really belong on Middle Earth anymore and almost all the big war trace back to them. The War over the SImerals, the War of the Last Alliance and the War of the Ring all wouldn't happen if the elves remained in Valinor as they were supposed to.


The elves are only in Middle Earth because they are power-hungry and narcissistic despite their rep. Galadriel came to Middle Earth for power as she wanted to start her own kingdom. In Valinor, they are on the bottom as the angelic beings their rank over there. In Middle Earth they are towards the top as they are the most magical beings left on it. Valinor is superior to Middle Earth except for one thing. The elves are on the bottom not the top there and they don't like that.

[SpectrumAnalysis]

I only recently realised that Tolkien took a McGuffin he wrote into The Hobbit to give Bilbo plot armour and MADE IT THE MOST IMPORTANT ARTIFACT IN HIS NEXT SERIES. Like The Hobbit was a bedtime story for his kids. It was made before the ring had any importance, so all of this stemmed out of the desire to make a one-off Deus Ex Machina into an even bigger one. That's why the invisibility seems a little out of place with the ring's other powers...

[WobblesandBean]

Ohhhh, so THAT'S why all the elves fucked off to the East at the end of the story!