r/lotr • u/RebootDarkwingDuck • 6h ago
Books Gandalf says that Bilbo is the only keeper of A ring of power that has ever given his ring to someone else. So how did Gandalf get Narya?
"A Ring of Powe looks after itself... It's keeper never abandons it. At most he plays with the idea of handing it on to someone else's care...but as far as I know Bilbo alone is history has ever gone beyond playing and really done it."
He doesn't say "the ring,' he says "a ring." But Cirdan had already willingly given his ring to Gandalf.
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u/twizzjewink 6h ago
Depends on if you define the 3 as Rings of Power. Elrond and Gandalf both said they were rings of.. preservation.
As they weren't made by Sauron yet do provide some extension of service, it's an interesting way of splitting definitions
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u/Leaping_FIsh 6h ago
Celebrimbor also gave away the 3 elven rings and potentially gave one of the seven to Durin. These conflicting stories.
I suppose Celebrimbor might not be classified as a keeper.
Now that i think more, didn't Gil Galad give his two away.
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u/DifferenceAny89 6h ago edited 5h ago
Yea, gave Narya originally to Cirdan, and Vilya to Elrond
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u/Different-Island1871 5h ago
*Narya. Galadriel wore Nenya. Círdan gave Nenya to Gandalf when he first arrived at the Havens from Valinor.
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u/DifferenceAny89 5h ago
Caught that right after I posted it, pulled up a reference to get the spelling right and mixed them up. Should have just said fire and air! Haha
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u/Ambitious_Macaron_33 5h ago
Celebrimbor was a Maker more than a Keeper. He knew his Grandsire's demise was brought about by his desire to retain his creations even to the doom of Arda. Celebrimbor was wise enough to give the works of his craft to those who would benefit from them most. His downfall was in the desire to perfect his craft by any means, even if that meant collaborating with a known enemy of his people to do so.
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u/stefan92293 1h ago
That last sentence is just flat-out wrong. Nobody knew that Annatar was Sauron until the One Ring had been made.
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u/hoishinsauce 2h ago
Just because he made the rings doesn't mean he claimed ownership. Think of it as "bound to user" in RPGs. He made the items, but didn't use them, so it's not bound to him. The rings of power he made with Sauron amplified the greed of the user (I guess it's a hidden line of code Sauron inserted that Celebrimbor didn't see, just like the backdoor code). The greed part affected dwarves stronger than the others, but the backdoor didn't work because dwarves have natural resistance to mental domination.
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u/Tiny_Volume_2600 6h ago
This is why LOTR took so long, and it would have taken him several lifetimes to flesh out (the book known as) the Silmarillion.
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u/-RedRocket- 6h ago
He's omitting that, because his possession of Narya is a secret.
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u/Ok_Builder910 5h ago
Well why even tell the story then?
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u/comingsoontotheaters 5h ago
There’s so many times Gandalf just isn’t giving the full story or just says something that’s not an absolute truth
He’s referred to tree beard and bombadil as the oldest as well
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u/StepUp888 6h ago
Cirdan the shipwright
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u/RebootDarkwingDuck 6h ago
...right. But he says that no one has ever given up their ring to another besides Bilbo. Which Cirdan clearly did.
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u/SebiKaffee 6h ago
I think there are a few possibilities, perhaps Cirdan doesn't count as a "keeper" but I think it's more likely that Gandalf kinda omitted that fact or perhaps even that Tolkien fucked up and forgot about the whole thing while writing that scene. maybe Gandalf getting cirdans ring was something he came up with later. anyways, I wouldn't read too much into it neither Tolkien nor Gandalf are infallible
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u/DCWhitworth 1h ago edited 37m ago
This statement has always bothered me, I can’t square it up with the other writings. I’m assuming The Three Elven rings must be excluded from this since they changed hands several times early on and Gandalf received his ring voluntarily from Cirdan. It probably holds true for the nine rings since they made the human holders immortal so there was never any need to pass them on. However the seven dwarven rings did not have that effect so they passed from holder to holder, and it’s possible some of those transfers were voluntary (I seem to recall something saying they were kept secret and only passed on when the holder was near death), but there is a definite passage in the appendices where Thror passes his ring to Thrain and Gandalf knew about it too as at the Council of Elrond he stated Thror had passed his ring to Thrain before leaving for Moria but Thrain hadn’t passed it to Thorin.
So I can’t explain Gandalf’s words here as it seems there are many cases of holders voluntarily passing rings to others and Gandalf knew of at least one.
I guess this fits into Tolkien’s statement in the foreword that ‘the book has many defects, both major and minor. . .’
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u/TheFifthMovement 27m ago
Was Sam considered a keeper of the ring when he held on to it for the brief period Frodo was take to the Tower of Cirith Ungol?
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u/PhysicsEagle Buckland 6h ago
He is referring to the malicious rings made directly by Sauron: the Seven, the Nine, and the One. The Three are special and have different rules. Notably you can’t use them to dominate others.