XPost: rec.arts.books.tolkien   
   From: jon.lennart.beck.its.my.name@mail.its.in.danmark   
      
   "Steuard Jensen"  skrev i meddelelsen   
   news:slrnkj06pr.18q0.steuard@steuard.local...   
      
   > Ah, excellent, you've spotted part of my underlying motivation in   
   > asking this question. :) We have *so* little evidence for what all the   
   > Ring was capable of! I figure that puzzling out what Sauron was   
   > expecting could give us insight from a new angle. (New to me, anyway.)   
      
      It may be that even Sauron was uncertain of precisely what his Ring was   
   capable of.  It depends on how accurate Gandalf's assessment was of Sauron's   
   knowledge.  Gandalf seems to have believed that Sauron may not have known if   
   the Ring had been destroyed or not until late in the Third Age.  And yet the   
   continued existence of the Ring seems to have been what maintained Sauron's   
   ability to deal with the world.   
      *If* the destruction of the Ring would at any time have meant the   
   immediate diminishment of Sauron into impotence, and *if* Sauron was for a   
   while uncertain if the Ring had been destroyed, then it is clear that Sauron   
   did not know everything about the Ring.  He made it, if course, but he may   
   not have fully understood the Morgoth element that he had used in the   
   making, any more than the Mírdain fully understood the lore that Sauron   
   shared with them that enabled Celebrimbor to make the Three without Sauron's   
   knowledge and supervision.   
      *If* so, he would be uncertain of what precisely to expect if Aragorn had   
   it and tried to wield it.  But then again, Gandalf probably did not know   
   everything about Sauron and Sauron's knowledge.   
      
   > [...] (Or to reverse their targeting! What exactly was it that made   
   > Gondor's armies quail in fear from   
   > the Nazgul while Sauron's were emboldened instead?)   
      
      I think the armies on both sides quailed in fear of the Nazgûl.   
   Grishnákh hardly reported rosy comradeship with them, nor did Gorbag.  But   
   while one side was driven into attack-frenzy, or perhas somewhat similar to   
   the prisoners that Stalin sometimes used as shock troops against the   
   Germans - force them to rush against the enemy with heavy machine guns   
   behind to drive them forward - the other side was panicked towards   
   inactivity or flight.   
      
   Hræfn.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)