Witch-king of Angmar

• 1. Introduction

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  The Lord of the Nazgûl is a king who has lost his name, and in J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings he is known by borrowed titles instead. He is the Witch-king of Angmar, the Pale King, the Black Captain. At the broken gate of Minas Tirith, he faces the wizard Gandalf and announces himself with a single word. According to the scholar Tom Shippey, the speech runs: "Old fool! This is my hour. Do you not know Death when you see it?" The speaker is one of the Nine Men who became the Nazgûl, also called Ringwraiths. Each took a Ring of Power from the Dark Lord Sauron, and each paid for it. His ring gives him enormous strength, yet it makes him invisible and ties him to his master. Who was he before the ring? Why does a figure with no visible face frighten even Gandalf? How does a being who calls himself Death meet his end? And what did Tolkien first imagine him to be, before settling on the answer?

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• 2. Nine Rings, One Kingdom

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  In the Second Age of Middle-earth, Sauron handed Rings of Power to mighty Men, among them kings of whole countries. The gifts carried magic, but they also bound each wearer to whoever held the One Ring, which was Sauron himself.

  The Lord of the Nazgûl was one of those kings. When the Last Alliance of Elves and Men overthrew Sauron late in that age, the histories say nothing about him. He survived anyway, because the power of the One Ring kept him in being.

  In the Third Age he resurfaces as the Witch-king of Angmar, ruler of a northern realm whose capital was Carn Dûm. In his notes for translators, Tolkien suggested that this king was of Númenórean origin.

  Over a thousand years after the Last Alliance, he turned Sauron's forces on the successor kingdoms of the northern realm of Arnor. These were Rhudaur, Cardolan, and Arthedain. He destroyed all three.

  Then the Elf-lord Glorfindel put him to flight and spoke a prophecy about his fate. The Witch-king escaped to Mordor and called the other Nazgûl together. Their task was to prepare for Sauron's return.

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• 3. The Hunt for the Ring

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  Near the end of the Third Age, Sauron sent the Witch-king out of Mordor with the other Nazgûl, bound for the Shire. Their errand was to find and recover the One Ring. He rode a black horse and wore a black cloak and hood, and no one could see his face.

  At Weathertop, he drove a Morgul-knife into the shoulder of Frodo Baggins, the Ring-bearer. A piece of the blade broke off and stayed in the hobbit's flesh. Such a knife was meant to turn its victim into a wraith.

  Frodo, wearing the Ring, could see more of the attacker than most. He noted that the Witch-king was taller than his fellows. His hair was "long and gleaming", and a crown sat on his helmet.

  The pursuit ended at the river Bruinen, where the water swept the Nazgûl away. Their horses drowned. The riders went back to Mordor and came again on hideous flying beasts.

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• 4. The Gates of Minas Tirith

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  During the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, the Witch-king commanded Grond, a battering-ram engraved with evil spells, against the gates of Minas Tirith. The gates broke, but he had to pull back from them. The Rohirrim had arrived, and he turned to lead the besieging army against this new threat.

  A single warrior stood before him, known as Dernhelm. This was really Éowyn, a noblewoman of Rohan and the niece of Théoden. Not far away stood Merry, a hobbit of the Fellowship.

  Éowyn called him a "dwimmerlaik" and told him to go if he was not deathless. He threw back his hood to reveal a crown, but the head beneath it could not be seen.

  Merry struck him from behind with an enchanted Barrow-blade, and the Nazgûl dropped to his knees. Éowyn drove her sword between his crown and his mantle.

  The cost fell on both of them. The Black Breath, a cold paralysis that brings terror and often death, struck down Éowyn and Merry alike.

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• 5. From Wizard to Witch-king

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  In early drafts of The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien called this enemy the "Wizard King", according to Megan N. Fontenot on Tor.com. He was so skilled in wizardry that Gandalf could not counter him alone. In drafts of "The Council of Elrond", Gandalf calls him "of old the greatest of all the wizards of Men".

  A later draft adds that he was also "a great king of old" and the "fell captain of the Nine Riders". Fontenot reads "fell" as hinting at "ravenous cruelty" and "ruthless... savagery".

  In a draft of "The Siege of Gondor", Tolkien made him "a renegade of Gandalf's own order" from Númenor. Fontenot notes that a Númenórean origin might make him a Maia and one of the Istari, which she calls "something decidedly other".

  Then Tolkien scaled him back. Gandalf tells Pippin, as Gondor waits for the attack, "In him I am not overmatched." His chief weapon became fear spread at a distance.

  At some point the name changed to Witch-king. Fontenot suggests this made him easier to tell apart from wizards like Gandalf and Saruman.

  Tolkien finally settled on a mortal, "a human king whose lust for power got the better of his good judgment." Fontenot wonders what such a man was like before accepting Sauron's ring. She sees possessiveness, greed, lust, and a desire for dominance, all markers of evil in Tolkien's scheme.

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• 6. The Shadow With Nothing Inside

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  Shippey describes the Lord of the Nazgûl as hovering near abstraction, "a vast menace of despair... a huge shadow". For him, the scene shows the "unexistence of evil". It rests on the philosophy of Boethius. If God is all-powerful, evil is not good's equal opposite, only its absence.

  The theologian George Hunsinger compares this figure with the evil described by Karl Barth. Barth's term was das Nichtige, or "nothingness". Hunsinger glosses it as "an active cosmic power, a power of destruction, a power of chaos, negation, and ruin."

  Barth held that such evil is outwardly repulsive and wholly evil, and that God defeats it. It can be described but not explained. It is both fearful and empty.

  Hunsinger sees this in the Witch-king at the gate of Minas Tirith, "actual and yet empty at the same time". He calls the "dead but undead Black Rider" as good a symbol as any for Barth's "impossible possibility".

  He finds the same paradox in the killing. Éowyn's sword shatters with her last stroke, and of her enemy "nothing is left" in the empty mantle and hauberk. Both weapons that pierced him fall to pieces.

  The priest and theologian Fleming Rutledge adds a political contrast. While the invisible "pale king" tries to kill Frodo, the true king, Aragorn, is out of sight as a Ranger and doing all he can to heal him.

  Her comparison pairs the Witch-king, once king of Angmar and bent on killing the Ring-bearer, with Aragorn, who has a claim to the throne of Gondor and works to heal Frodo. She adds that Gondor sees its enemy in the Men of Harad and the Easterlings. The real enemy, she says, is personified by the Witch-king.

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• 7. A Prophecy Read Wrongly

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  Julaire Andelin, writing in The J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia, explains that prophecy in Middle-earth depended on the Music of the Ainur, the divine plan for Arda. Such predictions were often ambiguous.

  Glorfindel had said "not by the hand of Man will the Lord of the Nazgûl fall." Andelin's point is that the words did not lead the Witch-king to expect a woman and a hobbit.

  Shippey sees a parallel with Shakespeare's Macbeth. The witches tell Macbeth he may "laugh to scorn / The power of man, for none of woman born / Shall harm Macbeth" (Act 4, scene 1).

  Then Macbeth learns that Macduff "was from his mother's womb / Untimely ripp'd" (Act 5, scene 8). Macduff was delivered by Caesarean section. The Witch-king's surprise at finding Dernhelm to be a woman mirrors this shock.

  Shippey notes that Tolkien disliked Shakespeare's handling of myth. Even so, this scene shows he read Macbeth closely.

  Michael Drout points to another echo, one of several allusions to King Lear in the book. The Witch-king warns "Come not between the Nazgûl and his prey", as the mad Lear says "Come not between the dragon and his wrath".

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• 8. On Screen and Board

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  Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trilogy, released in 2001-2003, changed the Witch-king's look. During the siege of Minas Tirith he wears a distinctive helmet over his hood, resembling a mask with a crown. In the book the crown sits beneath the hood.

  The film also gives his mount a bigger role. It is largely responsible for the death of Théoden and his horse Snowmane, a departure from the book. According to the films' audio commentary, the designs of the monsters drew largely on illustrations by John Howe.

  Jackson's The Hobbit trilogy, released in 2012-2014, brings him back. In the first film, the wizard Radagast briefly encounters the Witch-king while investigating the forest fortress of Dol Guldur.

  The character reached tabletops too. Péter Kristóf Makai, in A Companion to J. R. R. Tolkien, writes that the 1976 board game Middle Earth gave the Witch-king a choice of nine spells, against eleven for Gandalf. Some were shared, including the ability to project a defensive lightning-bolt.

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