Dr. Bret Devereaux

Oh, yeah.

That you can tell that it has just been eating away at him that these lesser beings, these men have been able to make rules for themselves while he, a higher being, has not been able to tell them what to do.

And he knows so much better than they do.

And then he gets promptly put in his place, which is brilliant.

But there's that pride and that arrogance.

But then also, right, he is he's a tinkerer and an engineer.

And he thinks in those ways, right?

Complex, elegant, clockwork solutions to problems which almost always neglect the human aspect.

It doesn't, for instance, and this comes up in The Hunt for the Ring, it doesn't occur to him that the Witch King might pick up his servant Wormtongue and pump him for information and that Wormtongue might not be an entirely reliable fellow.

So, so Saruman does this cool misdirection of like, I don't know where the Shire is, presumably as he's puffing on his pipe from the Shire and like whatever.

And it comes to nothing because he hasn't thought through like, who does in my organization know who the Shire is?

And are any of them in a position to get picked up by this undead monstrosity and then squeal?

Because if you made that list, Wormtongue would be the top name on the list.

And you might want, once you get a hold of him again, you might immediately want to be like...

Anything interesting on the trip?

OPSEC problems.

You know, he sent the whole battle plan to the Witch King on signal.

Oh, that's great.

But he neglects the human element over and over again.

He neglects this sort of the questions of personality because to him, people are easy to manipulate.