‘Rings of Power’: Whatever happened to the Dwarven rings?
“One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.” The One Ring has yet to appear in Rings of Power, but already Sauron’s plans are underway, and the dwarves are falling under his spell.
In the Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, we learn about the rings of power that were created during the Second Age. We learned how three went to the Elves, seven to the Dwarves, and nine to Men, while Sauron, the Dark Lord, created one that would rule them all. We know that the three that were created for the Elves were untouched by Sauron’s hands, and so remained out of his reach. We also know that nine went to men, lords and kings of their time, but that they were overcome by the power of their rings and fell into Sauron’s darkness, eventually becoming Nazgûl, or Ringwraiths.
But what of the dwarves? What happened to their rings? We do not learn of their fate in Peter Jackson’s trilogy, with the dwarves’ role in the rings rarely coming up. Amazon’s Rings of Power, though, shows us just how the Dwarves received their rings, with Durin III being the first. In Tolkein’s accounts, there are variations of this, with some accounts stating Celebrimbor handed the rings to the Dwarves, while others say it was Sauron himself who handed them over after taking them from a tortured Celebrimbor. But what happened to them? Where did they go?
The seven rings of the Dwarf Kings
The seven rings went to the Dwarf Kings of the Seven Houses, the most famous of which being Durin III of Khazad-dûm. Rings of Power focuses heavily on Durin III and his son Durin IV, whose home lies close to Eregion, where Celebrimbor’s forges lie. The two forged an unlikely alliance, with the Dwarves and Elves working together on occasion, such as the creation of the Door of Durin, a partnership between Celebrimbor and the talented Dwarf craftsman, Narvi.
Despite Sauron pouring his malice into the rings, the Dwarves proved rather stubborn to its effects. They are a hardy people, difficult to manipulate, and so Sauron found that his rings were not as effective as he had hoped. What did happen, though, was that the rings amplified the wearers’ skills and also their desires, pushing them to seek for more, making them exceedingly greedy, and exceedingly rich. Though Sauron’s plans didn’t work out quite as he hoped, the Dwarves’ greed would eventually work in his favor.
As the Dwarves’ quest for riches continued and they utilized the power of the rings, they dug deeper and deeper, amassing what was known as the Seven Hoards, masses of gold and jewels. This, though allowing them great prosperity for some time, would also be their downfall. The Hoards grew large enough to attract the attention of dragons. Four of the rings would end up being devoured by dragons during the wars of Third Age, when Dain I of the Durin’s Folk and his son Frór were killed by dragons. Dragon fire, at one point, was considered hot enough to melt these rings.
Sauron reportedly found two of the others before this time, and the final ring he reclaimed when he imprisoned Thráin II (father of Thorin Oakenshield from The Hobbit) in Dol Guldur in the year 2845 of the Third Age. This ring, which was known as the Ring of Thrór, was the one initially given to King Durin III and was the last one Sauron collected from the Dwarves.
The Amazon series pushes together much of the action of the Second Age, compressing events that took place over hundreds of years into one storyline. Already we can see Durin III succumbing to his greed, and we know that, when the dwarves dig too deep, they will awaken something monstrous and Khazad-dûm will be lost.
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