One of the most popular concepts in fantasy franchises is the idea of magical and enchanted objects that bring out the traits or characteristics already existing within a character and simply heighten them. This can be seen across things like the Super Soldier Serum in the MCU’s follow-up series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and in the Mirror of Erised in the Harry Potter series.

In many ways, the one ring from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings works in this way too, bringing out all of the greed and the lust for power that already exists inside the hearts of elves, dwarves and men. The ring manipulates its wearer into doing exactly what it wishes, and the recent Rings of Power series demonstrated that this is a skill the ring inherited from its master and creator Sauron. During the finale, Sauron manages to trap Galadriel inside her own memories so that she doesn’t tell the others Halbrand’s secret, which gives him time to make his grand escape.

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What is interesting though, is that whilst he is psychologically manipulating her into joining him to rule Middle Earth, he picks some very specific memories to take her back to. He chooses moments in her life that make her question herself and her motives, and tempts her heart into bringing out the worst qualities inside her, the darkness and the rage that she feels. These are qualities that he can use to turn her into the tyrannical cruel queen he wants to have at his side, who will help him obliterate the world and rebuild it in his own image of order and perfection.

Galadriel (2)

In choosing memories that bring out her worst motivations and desires, Sauron hopes to convince her that they are more alike than she believes, and that they could have the whole world at their feet if she simply lets go of the goodness and the moral resistance that is screaming inside her not to trust him, and gives in to temptation and desire.

It is a terrible power that Sauron possesses, to be able to root through her psyche and select particular memories to re-write and alter. In many ways, it is the worst form of mental torture, taking something so precious and so personal and warping it to the point where you can longer remember what is real and what’s not. It’s the deepest violation and betrayal he could have committed against her at that moment when she was already vulnerable from the realization that she had trusted him, and he had duped her.

Sauron could have picked any number of memories in her mind, any number of times when she was happy and safe, like her wedding day to her husband Celeborn for example, or the first time she met Elrond as a child on the beach. Both of these memories are incredibly significant moments in her past, and ones that she carries with her in her heart always. So why did Sauron choose to take her back to the memory from the introduction, with her brother Finrod? There could be several answers to the question, but they all have in some way to do with bringing out that evil and that darkness that has been growing inside her since the War of Wrath.

The first reason is that this memory underpins everything she has been through in her hunt for Sauron in the last thousand years. This was a time when she was so young and naive she never believed that a war would happen, and that she would lose her brother. In the worst moments, when she is full of thought of revenge and anger and a will to dominate and obliterate, this is the memory that she comes back to, in order to fuel that dangerous fire: the memory of her brother still alive, how he loved her, and how much she wishes she could go back to that.

Finrod’s dagger symbolizes this devastation inside her, this utter re-writing of the purity she once knew by a much crueler emotion, and that’s why Sauron chooses this memory, in order to bring those awful feelings further to the surface, and convince her that he has them too, and that they’re not so different as she would like to think. In this memory, Sauron uses Finrod’s words “sometimes we cannot know the light until we have touched the darkness” to try to convert Galadriel, twisting her own brother’s love against her and undoing everything she believes she knows about the world.

Sauron as Finrod

The second reason is that it was actually Finrod who sparked her hatred of Sauron to begin with, so if he can convince Galadriel inside her own psyche that Finrod wants her to forgive the dark lord, then maybe she will actually do so, and then he would be able to channel all that rage and evil inside her towards Middle Earth, instead of it being aimed at him. He tries to gaslight her into believing that he actually wants to heal the world rather than destroy it, and that Finrod’s sacrifice was a terrible tragedy, because they actually want the same things, so therefore Galadriel should help him to respect the memory of her brother by achieving Sauron’s demands.

Finrod’s is the one death that goes against everything Tolkien believed because there is no heroic honor or justice for him, in fact just the opposite, it sends his sister on a path of destruction and enmity that leaves her vulnerable to the exact manipulation that Sauron is capable of.

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