Dr. Bret Devereaux

You could use me against Sauron.

The Ring is Sauron.

It is working to his purposes at all times.

Yeah.

And so I don't think it adds to your power one whit.

Saruman imagines that if he put the ring on, I mean, he says this to the Witch King when he shows up at the door.

He's like, if I had it, I would command you and you would obey.

And I'm like, would he though?

Right.

And you can say, well, Saruman, as the same sort of being as Sauron is, maybe he has more power in this regard.

Certainly it is the case.

You'll note that Saruman's voice works on the Witch-King in this passage as it works on everyone else.

And so he certainly has more power.

But yeah, I mean, if you're Sauron, if you thought that Gandalf could rip the ring off of Aragorn's finger and then unseat you...

you would not be quite so confident as Aragorn's army approached the Black Gate.

And he's so confident.

So my view, and I know this is not universally accepted, is that Saruman is proceeding on a false assumption about how the ring works.

And so none of his plans could be successful.

But even if he was right, like you said, every single element...

Yeah, everything has to succeed because he needs a situation where, in sequence, he needs Sauron to wreck Gondor while he defeats Rohan and gets the ring so that he doesn't then immediately get bulldozed.