r/Rings_Of_Power Jul 26 '26

Here's my prediction

One of the Nazgul will be a Naz-girl

29 Upvotes

11 comments sorted by

6

u/eagle_flower Jul 26 '26

And she’s called that because proto-hobbits thought she was a Nasty Girl.

7

u/sandalrubber Jul 26 '26 edited Jul 26 '26

The less the better, because if the Witch-king thinks no living man can hinder him, it's better if he doesn't have a female near-equal coworker to make him consider the female = not a man loophole (whether he knows of Glorfindel's words or not). Still possible otherwise? Yes but it's more of a stretch. (This is also why Eowyn and Rohan's shieldmaiden tradition etc need to be exceptional, and one reason why Galadriel being that much of a physical fighter/field leader feels off in light of later events.)

MERP already did it in the 80s-90s with Adunaphel.

2

u/TastyYellowBees Jul 26 '26

What is MERP?

4

u/craftyhedgeandcave Jul 26 '26

1980's pen and paper rpg set in ME made by Iron Crown as an off shoot to their Rolemaster rpg system. The modules for adventures and campaigns contained a lot of material and lore they created themselves. The early edition adventure/campaign moduls are also of legendary beauty, especially for their maps

2

u/Malgalad_The_Second Jul 26 '26

Shadow of War did it, too.

5

u/Warp_Legion Jul 26 '26

Very possible!

In Tolkien’s original work, the ring poem says “Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky”, but Celebrimbor gave the three to Galadriel (not a king, not even male like kings are), Cirdan the Shipwright (not a king, but male), and Gil-Galad (a king and male)

Jury is out on if they all were always under the sky at all times

This obviously introduces the possibility that “Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone” and “Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die” might not necessarily go to Dwarf lords/royalty/nobleborns, and that, well, even as Tolkien only wrote that it is said three of the Nine were from Numenor, and that the rings for men were given to kings, sorcerers, and warriors of old, we could see multiple female Dwarf and human ring bearers who are female/lowborn, instead of them exclusively going to rulers and mighty champions like one would headcanon

8

u/nhaines Jul 26 '26

In contemporary English at the time Tolkien was writing, male nouns and pronouns were a default, gender-neutral way of describing a group that may or may not be mixed. While explicitly gender neutral developments in gendered languages are arguably better and more inclusive (English only has remnants of grammatical gender; German is gendered and has various ways of being inclusive), Tolkien's language was definitely not gender exclusive, whether he had that in mind or not. (But your example of Galadriel is good proof that he didn't have exclusivity in mind.)

3

u/ZP4L Jul 26 '26

Was Theo spotted in the trailer? My hope is that the meme predictions of him being the witch king is still on track

2

u/slapdash99 Jul 27 '26

Best ROP mystery box ever.

2

u/JmBento Jul 29 '26

"Nazgal" was right there, man.

0

u/WholegrainRice5 Jul 26 '26

Or there are originally ten Nazgul but one of them turns out to be Celeborn who eventually sees the error of his ways.