Pretty much everyone knows who Sauron is. For a while, however, this iconic villain took on
another persona: the Necromancer of Dol Guldur. But why did this happen, and how did his rule
over the Hill of Sorcery come to an end? This is Sauron's guise as the Necromancer explained.
Sauron may be best known for his role in the War of the Ring,
but his history stretches back to the beginning of time itself — and it's important to know
his full history if you want to fully understand his role as the Necromancer.
In the beginning, Sauron is an angelic being named Mairon the Admirable.
After the world is created, Mairon becomes one of the followers of the Dark Lord Morgoth.
Known at the time as Gorthaur, Sauron serves Morgoth throughout the First Age,
which ends with his master's fall during the cataclysmic War of Wrath.
During the Second Age, Sauron picks up the mantle of "Dark Lord" for himself,
and sets in motion his plan to dominate Middle-Earth. Rather than waging open war,
however, he first tries to beguile the Elves — by putting on a handsome physical form and
befriending them under the name Annatar, the Lord of Gifts. During this time,
Sauron helps the Elves forge most of the Rings of Power. But disguise falls away when the Dark
Lord forges the One Ring in secret, hoping to control the elves who wear the Rings of Power.
When Sauron creates the One Ring, the Elves become aware of his betrayal and hide the Rings away,
including the powerful Three Rings, which Sauron had no hand in creating.
Furious that his carefully laid plans have amounted to nothing,
Sauron gathers his servants and declares open war on all of the free peoples of Middle-earth.
Over the next 1,500 years, Sauron conquers most of Middle-Earth and reclaims most of the Rings
of Power, choosing to then redistribute them to the races he believes will be easier to control:
namely, men and dwarves. Although the dwarves prove surprisingly resistant to
the power of the Rings, the men do not — and soon after, Sauron's Nazgul are born.
During this era, Middle-Earth's noblest and most powerful men are the Númenóreans,
who hail from the island nation of Númenór. Eventually, a vast Númenórean army sails
east to aid the elves and put an end to Sauron's rule over Middle-Earth.
Faced with inevitable defeat, Sauron concocts a new plan,
and surrenders willingly to the Númenóreans, who take him back to their homeland as a prisoner.
During his time on Númenór, however, Sauron corrupts the king and persuades him to invade the
Undying Lands. This goes badly — to say the least — and Númenór itself is sunk beneath the sea.
When Númenór sinks, Sauron goes down with it, losing his physical form for the first time.
But his spirit doesn't die. Instead, it returns to the mainland
and takes a new shape. The Silmarillion explains that, once back in Mordor:
"[Sauron] brooded in the dark, until he had wrought for himself a new shape;
and it was terrible, for his fair semblance had departed
for ever when he was cast into the abyss at the drowning of Númenor."
Unfortunately for Sauron, it turns out that he wasn't the only survivor of the Númenórean
catastrophe. A group of Númenóreans known as "The Faithful" managed to escape in their ships,
having decided not to join the invasion of Valinor. Arriving in Middle-earth,
the Faithful set up two sister kingdoms: Arnor in the north and Gondor in the South.
Seeking justice against Sauron, the exiled Númenóreans join forces with the
Elves and Dwarves of Middle-Earth, sparking the conflict known as the War of the Last Alliance.
The free armies win a number of successes against Sauron, and eventually lay siege to Mordor itself.
During the final battle, Isildur, Prince of the Faithful,
cuts the One Ring from Sauron's hand, and with this, the Second Age of Middle Earth
comes to an end — and the Dark Lord's shapeless spirit takes flight once more.
Sauron is absent from the history books of the early Third Age.
The appendix to The Return of the King succinctly explains that during this time:
"Sauron slept and the One Ring was lost."
When he next appears, Sauron is known only as the
Necromancer — a name that has a great deal of significance to Tolkien's writings.
By this point, Sauron has taken on a number of shapes, forms, and names. The Necromancer persona,
however, is distantly connected to the earliest version of Tolkien's archvillain.
In the earliest versions of the stories that would later appear in The Silmarillion,
one of Morgoth's chief lieutenants is Tevildo, the so-called "Prince of Cats." Over time, as
Tolkien characteristically rewrote his narrative many times, the character was eventually replaced
by a being named "Thû," who is described as a magician, a sorcerer, and a werewolf.
He's also the earliest clearly identifiable version of Sauron in Tolkien's mythos.
Interestingly, it's this early, underdeveloped, and eventually abandoned iteration of Sauron
that is the most closely aligned with his later appearance as the Necromancer. In fact,
Tolkien's posthumously published book The Lays of Beleriand even refers to Thû this way, explaining:
"In glamoury that necromancer held his hosts of phantoms and of wandering ghosts."
So why does the power-hungry Dark Lord ultimately become associated with the title
of "the Necromancer" at this point in his story? The answer seems to lie in Tolkien's simple desire
to connect his first wildly successful book, The Hobbit, to his larger, then-private mythology.
According to Tolkien himself, the Necromancer was a necessary peril who added depth to Bilbo
Baggins' world. In a letter to his publisher, Tolkien explained that:
"The presence [...] of the terrible is, I believe,
what gives this imagined world its verisimilitude. A safe fairy-land is untrue to all worlds."
Initially, the Necromancer was meant only as a veiled reference to Sauron himself,
who was unknown to the public at the time — but his identity revealed itself as The Hobbit
nudged a little closer to the world of Tolkien's other works. In another letter, Tolkien writes:
"Mr Baggins began as a comic tale among conventional and inconsistent
Grimm's fairy-tale dwarves, and got drawn into the edge of [the
Legendarium] — so that even Sauron the terrible peeped over the edge."
But The Hobbit was never supposed to have been consistently integrated with the stories of The
Silmarillion, meaning Tolkien appears to have thrown the character in as a half-thought-out
tip of the hat for his own personal amusement. Then he wrote The Lord of the Rings, however, and
everything changed. With Sauron and the One Ring taking center stage for the sequel, it suddenly
became important to reconcile the Necromancer of Mirkwood with Morgoth's second-in-command, Sauron.
In the appendix to The Return of the King,
Sauron's re-emergence is first mentioned roughly 1,050 years into the Third Age, at which time:
"A shadow falls on Greenwood, and men begin to call it Mirkwood."
"This is not the Greenwood of old. The very air of the forest is heavy with illusion."
Over the next 2,000 years, Sauron slowly builds his power
and attempts to take a new form. Tolkien's details are very scarce during this time,
and there's some contention regarding whether he succeeds in taking on a physical shape
at this point. While it's possible that the Necromancer is spiritual in nature, however,
it's worth pointing out that Sauron is mentioned as having a physical body in the novel version of
The Lord of the Rings, so he seems to have taken shape eventually. Still, physical form or no,
the Necromancer has little trouble sowing chaos in Middle-Earth from behind the scenes.
Fifty years after Sauron's shadow is first felt in Mirkwood, the wizards arrive in Middle-earth
with the express purpose of resisting the resurgent darkness. Over the next few centuries,
several events begin to unfold, setting into motion Sauron's final return.
In southern Mirkwood, the elvish city of Amon Lanc becomes Dol Guldur, the Hill of Sorcery — and it's
assumed by many that a Ringwraith, or some other nameless evil, has taken up residence there.
Meanwhile, Easterlings begin to push westward, displacing local settlers.
These corrupted Men used to serve Sauron, and their arrival gives their old master some local
muscle to man his new fortress. This also seems to be what causes the hobbits, who live just
west of Mirkwood, to migrate further west over the Misty Mountains and settle in the Shire.
By the 1,300th year of the age, the Nazgûl have officially returned, and
evil is beginning to stir… pretty much everywhere. Then, roughly 1,600 years into the Third Age,
a sickness called the Great Plague devastates Middle-earth. In The Return of the King,
Tolkien writes that the plague "came with dark winds out of the East," and also points out that:
"Later it was noted that these things happened even as the Shadow grew deep in [Mirkwood],
and many evil things reappeared, signs of the arising of Sauron."
About a thousand years after Sauron relocates to Dol Guldur,
several of his enemies begin to suspect that the Dark Lord himself is hiding in Mirkwood,
rather than a lone Ringwraith. As a result, Gandalf the Grey decides to go and investigate.
The Necromancer, however, isn't ready to reveal himself. When Gandalf arrives in Dol Guldur,
Sauron opts to flee for the time being, so that the Grey Wizard doesn't discover who he really is.
The Dark Lord withdraws far into the eastern regions of Middle-earth.
In the meantime, the western portion of the continent enjoys a 400-year stretch
of peace and quiet known as the Watchful Peace. During this time,
Sauron continues to prepare from afar, and his servants in Middle-Earth remain relatively quiet.
At the end of the Watchful Peace, Sauron returns to Dol Guldur — with greater power and more
servants in tow. Coincidentally, just three short years later, Gollum happens to stumble on the One
Ring, and the White Council is officially formed to fight the growing shadow in Middle-Earth.
For almost 500 years, both the White Council and the Necromancer bide their time.
Eventually, Gandalf returns to Dol Guldur in search of answers. This time, he discovers that
the Necromancer really is Sauron, that the Dark Lord is gathering together the Rings of Power,
and that he's desperately searching for the One Ring. Gandalf also learns
that the enemy is trying to locate and hunt down the heirs of Isildur.
"Doubt ever gnaws at him. A rumour has reached him. The heir of Numenor still lives."
Gandalf also runs into Thorin's father, Thráin , at this point,
and the captured Dwarven king gives him a map of Erebor — as well as the key
that Bilbo later uses to unlock the secret door to the Lonely Mountain.
Equipped with this new knowledge, Gandalf urges the White Council to attack the Necromancer's
stronghold. Saruman the White, however, delays the assault, insisting that the loss of the
One Ring means that Sauron isn't a real threat to Middle-Earth. Saruman isn't actively aiding
Sauron at this point, but the White Wizard wants to observe the Dark Lord's movements in the hopes
that he'll find out where Sauron thinks the One Ring is — so he can find and claim it for himself.
Saruman's scheming sets back the White Council's attack by several decades, until, in the same year
that the events of The Hobbit take place, they finally attack the Necromancer in Dol Guldur.
The fighting isn't described in any of Tolkien's works, and it's unsure whether the Council took
on Sauron alone, or whether the attack was more of a full-scale battle. Details aside,
the Necromancer appears to be defeated and retreats, only to later reappear in Mordor.
Safely ensconced in his ancient home, he finally openly declares himself as none other than the
Dark Lord Sauron himself. Soon after, the War of the Ring begins, Frodo Baggins comes
into possession of the One Ring, and Sauron the Deceiver is defeated— once and for all.
Check out one of our newest videos right here! Plus,
even more Looper videos about your favorite movies are coming soon.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell so you don't miss a single one.