Sauron intended it to be the most powerful of all Rings, able to rule and control those who wore the others. He then forged the One Ring in the fires of Mount Doom. In disguise as Annatar, or 'Lord of Gifts', he aided the Elven smiths of Eregion and their leader Celebrimbor in the making of the Rings of Power. The One Ring was forged by the Dark Lord Sauron during the Second Age to gain dominion over the free peoples of Middle-earth.

Other parallels have been drawn with the Ring of Gyges in Plato's Republic, which conferred invisibility, though there is no suggestion that Tolkien borrowed from the story.įictional description Purpose Tolkien rejected the idea that the story was an allegory, saying that applicability to situations such as the Second World War and the atomic bomb was a matter for readers. Another source is Tolkien's analysis of Nodens, an obscure pagan god with a temple at Lydney Park, where he studied the Latin inscriptions, one containing a curse on the thief of a ring.

Scholars have compared the story with the ring-based plot of Richard Wagner's opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen Tolkien denied any connection, but at the least, both men drew on the same mythology. The Lord of the Rings describes the hobbit Frodo Baggins's quest to destroy the Ring. Tolkien changed it into a malevolent Ring of Power and re-wrote parts of The Hobbit to fit in with the expanded narrative. It first appeared in the earlier story The Hobbit (1937) as a magic ring that grants the wearer invisibility. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings (1954–55). The One Ring, also called the Ruling Ring and Isildur's Bane, is a central plot element in J.

Plain gold ring glowing inscription appears when ring is placed in flames can change in size by its own will

Lord of the rings gollum origin