The Lord Of The Rings Nazgul
Lora Ceasor
The Lord of the Rings calls them Sauron's "most terrible servants". Their leader, known as the Witch-king of Angmar, the Lord of the Nazgl, or the Black Captain, had once been the King of Angmar in the north of Eriador. At the end of the Third Age, their main stronghold was the city of Minas Morgul at the entrance to Sauron's realm, Mordor. They dress entirely in black. In their early forays, they ride on black horses; later they ride flying monsters, which Tolkien described as "pterodactylic". Their main weapon is terror, though in their pursuit of the Ring-bearer Frodo Baggins, their leader uses a Morgul-knife which would reduce its victim to a wraith, and they carry ordinary swords. In his final battle, the Lord of the Nazgl attacks owyn with a mace. The hobbit Merry Brandybuck stabs him with an ancient enchanted Nmenrean blade, allowing owyn to kill him with her sword.
Those who used the Nine Rings became mighty in their day, kings, sorcerers, and warriors of old. They obtained glory and great wealth, yet it turned to their downfall. They had, as it seemed, unending life, yet life became unendurable to them. They could walk, if they would, unseen by all eyes in this world beneath the sun, and they could see things in worlds invisible to mortal men; but too often they beheld only the phantoms and delusions of Sauron. And one by one, sooner or later, according to their native strength and to the good or evil of their wills in the beginning, they fell under the thraldom of the ring that they bore and of the domination of the One which was Sauron's. And they became forever invisible save to him that wore the Ruling Ring, and they entered into the realm of shadows. The Nazgl were they, the Ringwraiths, the lairi, the Enemy's most terrible servants; darkness went with them, and they cried with the voices of death.
The Nazgl or Ringwraiths (Quenya plural: lairi) first appeared in the Second Age, according to the "Akallabth" in The Silmarillion. The Dark Lord Sauron gave nine of the Rings of Power to powerful mortal men, including "it is said"[T 2] three lords of the once-powerful island realm of Nmenor, along with kings of countries in Middle-earth.[T 2][T 3]
The Silmarillion states in "Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age" that the rings enslaved their bearers to the power of Sauron's Ring, into which he had put much of his own power. The corrupting effect of the rings extended the bearers' earthly lives far beyond their normal lifespans.[T 1][a]
The Nazgl had a sharp sense of smell.[1] The Lord of the Rings states that their sight worked differently, too: "They themselves do not see the world of light as we do, but our shapes cast shadows in their minds, which only the noon sun destroys; and in the dark they perceive many signs and forms that are hidden from us: then they are most to be feared."[T 6] Their chief weapon was terror; it was so powerful that Sauron faced one disadvantage when using them: they could not easily travel in secret.[T 3] Tolkien added, in Unfinished Tales, that the terror they spread was greater when they were unclad and invisible; and when they were gathered together.[T 7]
Few of the Nazgl are named or identified individually in Tolkien's works. Their chief, also known as the Lord of the Nazgl and the Black Captain, appears as the Witch-king of Angmar during the Third Age, instrumental in the destruction of the North-kingdom of Arnor.[T 8] In Unfinished Tales, his second-in-command is named as Khaml, the "Black Easterling" or the "Shadow of the East".[T 9] Three of the Nazgl were great Nmenrean lords;[T 2] in his notes for translators, Tolkien speculated that the Witch-king of Angmar, ruler of a northern kingdom with its capital at Carn Dm, was of Nmenrean origin.[T 10]
The nine, as Nazgl, were soon established as Sauron's principal servants.[T 11] They were dispersed after the first overthrow of Sauron late in the Second Age at the hands of the Last Alliance of Elves and Men, but their survival was assured by the power of the One Ring.[T 11]
The appendices to The Lord of the Rings state that the Nazgl re-emerged over a thousand years later in the Third Age, when the Lord of the Nazgl led Sauron's forces against the successor kingdoms of Arnor: Rhudaur, Cardolan, and Arthedain. He effectively destroyed all of these, but was eventually defeated by the Elf-lord Glorfindel, who put him to flight, and made the prophecy that "not by the hand of man will he fall".[T 12] He escaped, and returned to Mordor. There, he gathered the other Nazgl in preparation for the return of Sauron to that realm.[T 12][T 13]
The Nazgl besieged Minas Ithil, a fortress located in a valley in the Ephel Duath once belonging to the kingdom of Gondor, and, after two years, captured it and acquired its palantr for Sauron. The city thereafter became Minas Morgul, the stronghold of the Nazgl,[T 13] and the valley was henceforth known as Morgul Vale (Imlad Morgul). Sauron returned from Dol Guldur in Mirkwood to Mordor late in the Third Age and declared himself openly.[T 14] He sent two or three of the Nazgl to garrison Dol Guldur.[T 13]
By the time of the main narrative of The Lord of the Rings, Sauron had already learned from Gollum that a hobbit, Bilbo Baggins of the Shire, had acquired the One Ring.[T 15] Sauron entrusted its recovery to the Nazgl. They reappeared "west of the River", riding black horses that were bred or trained in Mordor to endure their terror.[T 14] They learned that the Ring had passed to Bilbo's heir, Frodo, and hunted him and his companions across the Shire; the hobbits heard what seemed to be snuffling, and sometimes saw them crawling or crouching.[T 16][T 17] The hobbits escaped, via Tom Bombadil's realm of the Old Forest where they were not pursued, to Bree.[T 18][T 19][T 20] A Ranger of the North, Aragorn, arrived ahead of them and for some days led the hobbits on paths not closely followed by the Ringwraiths.[T 21][T 22]
Five of the Nazgl cornered Frodo and his company at Weathertop, where the Witch-king stabbed Frodo in the shoulder with the Morgul-knife, breaking off a piece of it in the Hobbit's flesh.[T 6] During their assault, they mentally commanded Frodo to put on the One Ring; while wearing it, he saw them as pale figures robed in white, with "haggard hands", helmets and swords. The Witch-king was taller than the others, with "long and gleaming" hair and a crown on his helmet.[T 6]
When all Nine were swept away by the waters of the river Bruinen, their horses were drowned, and the Ringwraiths were forced to return to Mordor to regroup.[T 23]The nine companions of the Fellowship of the Ring left Rivendell as the "Nine Walkers", in opposition to the Nazgl, the "Nine Riders".[T 24] The latter reappeared mounted on hideous flying beasts.[T 25][T 26]
The Nazgl came again ... like vultures that expect their fill of doomed men's flesh. Out of sight and shot they flew, and yet were ever present, and their deadly voices rent the air. More unbearable they became, not less, at each new cry. At length even the stout-hearted would fling themselves to the ground as the hidden menace passed over them, or they would stand, letting their weapons fall from nerveless hands while into their minds a blackness came, and they thought no more of war, but only of hiding and of crawling, and of death.
During the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, the Lord of the Nazgl used magic, including Grond, a battering-ram engraved with evil spells, to break the gates of Minas Tirith. He was faced by owyn, a noblewoman of Rohan; and not far away, Merry, a hobbit of the Fellowship. owyn boldly called the Nazgl a "dwimmerlaik", telling him to go if he was not deathless.[b] He cast back his hood to reveal a crown, but the head that wore it was invisible. Merry's surreptitious stroke with an enchanted Barrow-blade brought the Nazgl to his knees, allowing owyn, the niece of Thoden, to drive her sword between his crown and mantle.[T 25] Thus was the Witch-king destroyed by a woman and a Hobbit, fulfilling Glorfindel's prophecy.[T 12] Both weapons that pierced him disintegrated, and both assailants were stricken with the Black Breath.[T 25]
The remaining eight Ringwraiths attacked the Army of the West during the Battle of the Morannon.[T 30] When Frodo claimed the Ring for his own in Mount Doom, Sauron, finally realizing his peril, ordered the remaining eight Nazgl to fly to intercept him. They arrived too late: Gollum seized the Ring and fell into the Cracks of Doom, destroying the Ring. That ended Sauron's power and everything he had brought into being using it, including the Nazgl.[T 31]
a winged creature: if bird, then greater than all other birds, and it was naked, and neither quill nor feather did it bear, and its vast pinions were as webs of hide between horned fingers; and it stank. A creature of an older world maybe it was ...[T 25]
It is said to attack with "beak and claw".[T 25] Tolkien wrote that he "did not intend the steed of the Witch-king to be what is now called a 'pterodactyl'", while acknowledging "obviously it is pterodactylic" and owed much to the "new ... mythology" [of the "Prehistoric"], and might even be "a last survivor of older geological eras."[T 26]
The medievalist Marjorie Burns compares the fell beast to the Poetic Edda's flying steed Sleipnir, "Odin's eight-legged otherworldly horse". She writes that whereas Gandalf's horse Shadowfax resembles Sleipnir in his miraculous speed and in almost seeming to fly, the Nazgl's mount actually flies but is a "negative image" of Odin's steed; and, she notes, both Odin and the Nazgl can cause blindness.[5]
Tolkien began writing The Lord of the Rings with no conception of Black Riders at all. The horseman in dark clothes in the early chapter "Three is Company"[T 16] was originally Gandalf; in 1938, Tolkien called the figure's transformation into a Black Rider "an unpremeditated turn".[6][T 33] Frodo's ring, too, was simply a magic ring conferring invisibility, both in The Hobbit and early drafts of The Lord of the Rings, with no link to Sauron. However, Tolkien was at the time starting to consider the true nature of the Ring, and the idea that it had been made by the Necromancer, and drew itself or its bearer back to him.[6][T 34] The Black Riders became Ringwraiths when the hobbit, at that time called Bingo rather than Frodo, discussed the Riders with the Elf Gildor, later in the same chapter. Over the next three years, Tolkien gradually developed the connections between the Nazgl, the One Ring, Sauron, and all the other Rings of Power. The pieces finally all came together when Tolkien wrote "The Mirror of Galadriel", some hundreds of pages later, around the autumn of 1941.[6][T 35][T 36]
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