Dr. Bret Devereaux

By Sauron, yeah.

By Sauron.

And, of course, we get sort of beautifully in The Lord of the Rings, or horrifyingly, depending on how you want to think of it,

The scale difference between what Helm's Deep looks like and what the Siege of Minas Tirith looks like.

And you're like, oh, wow, this guy was not even playing the same game.

No.

We don't get numbers put on the Witch King's army, but it is at least an order of magnitude larger.

It's also the Witch King shows up with a giant magic battering ram, elephants, catapults, siege engines, boats, an entire Corsair fleet.

In addition to his main force, there's like all of these bells and whistles that Saruman does not have.

And that's it.

And some ladders.

And one bomb.

One.

One.

Yeah, he does.

One bomb.

And for Saruman, right, from a strategic perspective, the question or the fancy strategic term that we break out here is we call optionality.

How late do you preserve your decision-making ability?

And Saruman, as a weaker third power, attempting to navigate two stronger powers, the free people on one side and Saruman on the other, optionality is really important.

It's unlikely that he's going to be able to remain fully independent, so you want to preserve your ability to leap one way or the other as long as you can.