If I Were a Dark Lord

Sam is 63, Elanor 22, Frodo 20, Rose 18, Merry 16, Pippin 14, Goldilocks 12, Hamfast 11, Daisy 10 and Primrose 8 (or 40, 14, 13, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6 and 5 in Man years)

1443 SR

Sam was in the study, surrounded by all but his very youngest of children as he read from a large Red Book resting upon a stand before him. Bilbo, Ruby and Robin were fast asleep and the bairn Tolman was being fed in the parlor by Rose as she chatted with her mother; they were too young yet to sit in on readings of their father’s great adventure with Mr. Frodo of the Ring.

Tonight was a special occasion, it being Merry-lad’s sixteenth birthday, and they were coming to the end of the Red Book for the second time in Merry’s remembrance, the first time being when he was nine years old.* Only Elanor had heard the book three times and she was also the only one to have read the complete story. Merry couldn’t wait until he was old enough to hear the full story but for now he would contend himself with asking as many questions as he could and see how much he could learn that way.

Sam closed the book with a thump and drummed upon the cover with his fingers before sitting back in his chair. “Well, that’s it,” he said. “That’s how Sauron was defeated by Mr. Frodo, how the kingdoms were reunited by King Elessar and how the Shire was reborn. … Yes, Merry? You have a question, lad?”

“Not a question so much,” Merry said, considering a matter that was apparently of great concern to him. “I just have to wonder why Sauron would make the Ring so hard to find if it meant so much to him. He didn’t seem to be a very smart Dark Lord. If I were a dark lord and had his kind of magics, I would have made it so I could find it more better.”

“More easily,” Elanor corrected from her seat next to their father, while Frodo-lad grinned and said, “It’s a good thing you’re not a dark lord then.”

“I agree,” Pippin said and had to duck a playful blow from Merry. “I mean I agree with you, Merry, not with Fro. He’s not very bright.”

“And by that, you better mean the dark lord,” Frodo-lad said, still smiling.

“Well lads,” Sam said, considering Merry’s comment carefully, “you have to remember that Sauron never reckoned on losing the Ring and he made it hard to find so as his enemies wouldn’t be able to locate it when he wasn’t wearing it.”

“I don’t know, Dad,” Goldilocks joined in now. “The lads are right. Sauron should have considered that, and more. Like, he had all those Ringwraiths whose job it was to find the Ring, but they could only sort of vaguely sense it even with it right under their noses, so they could never find it either unless Mr. Frodo put it on. You’d think they’d at least be able to find it more easily than that. And why make them dress up in black robes and ride about on black horses so that they’d stick out like a sore thumb? It just doesn’t seem that he was thinking things through. If I were a dark lord, I would make them dress more plainly.”

Hamfast chuckled. “If you were a dark lord, everything would be roses and daisies, and every meal would include brownies.”

“Brownies are delightful,” Goldilocks said.

Daisy frowned and spoke up now. “Why did the Ringwraiths dress up so? Now that’s going to bother me.”

Sam smiled down at her and answered, “Well, for starters, the wraiths weren’t trying to blend in. They wanted to be seen and to have folk fear them. They’d figured on they’d have less trouble that way.”

“But that hardly helped them,” Rose-lass said now. “They’d have got much more information quicker if they had dressed friendly-like.”

“You’re forgetting that they were apparitions,” Elanor said. “They had faded and there was nothing of them to see. The robes were the only thing to cover them up so as people wouldn’t notice the emptiness of them, for while they wanted to instill fear, they didn’t want people running away from them as if they were mere ghosts.”

“But folk did notice,” Merry and Pippin said in unison.

“The story’s full of people saying as there was no face under their hoods,” Pippin said, “so I agree with Goldi. They should have worn something different. But I also agree with Elanor that it has to be robes. … Maybe they could have worn different colors, like blue robes, the color of the sky. That’s a nice color. Or maybe pink! That would have been much more friendly.”

Frodo-lad tried hard not to laugh and managed to say, “Ringwraiths in pink robes? They still wouldn’t have got any information as everybody’d be too busy laughing at them to talk.”

“Well, if I were a dark lord, I’d make them wear red, orange and yellow robes,” Rose-lass said.

“Why?” Primrose asked.

“To go with the Fire theme.”

“I don’t think the Dark Lord cared overly much for color coordination,” Hamfast said.

“That’s painfully obvious,” Rose-lass agreed.

Merry grinned at Pippin and Goldilocks, then turned to Rose-lass. “What about the horses? What would you make them wear?”

Rose-lass considered this for a moment, thinking hard, her lips pursed slightly. Then she snapped her fingers and said, “Firstly, they’d be white horses because they’re prettier and each horse would have a riding blanket to keep them warm at night and to soak up the sweat during the day, and the blankets would be the same color as the rider’s robes but a softer hue, and they will have flowers in their manes and tails.”

Her siblings burst into laughter as they imagined that image, Merry, Pippin and Hamfast laughing so hard that tears sprang to their eyes. Primrose and Daisy clutched at their sides and struggled for breath. “It’s not that funny!” Rose-lass said. “Dad!”

Sam wiped the smile off his face and said as sternly as he could manage, “Now children, let’s be respectful or we’ll call it a night.” The children sobered immediately, with Primrose and Daisy still chuckling softly under their breaths. “That’s better. Now… yes, Merry?”

“I’ve been thinking about some other things,” Merry said, “and if I were a dark lord, I wouldn’t have trusted Saruman at all. First, he knew too much about the Ring already. Second, he turned too easily on the White Council, so it only stands to reason as he’d turn on Sauron too. Third, he was a Maia also, so he could have made things real difficult for Sauron once he got the Ring… if he had got the Ring.”

“I think Sauron was too trusting of Saruman,” Daisy added, “like Saruman was of Grima.”

Sam nodded and scratched his head. “Ah, that is a good point, but you’re forgetting that you already know what’s going to happen and that always makes it easier to say what should have been done and what shouldn’t have been. Sauron knew nothing about true loyalty and knew only how to rule by fear. He was counting on fear to keep his allies in their place.”

Primrose cocked her head to one side, her brow knit with confusion. “But didn’t we already say that fear didn’t work for the wraiths? So why would it work for him?”

“It didn’t,” Frodo-lad said. “That’s what Merry just said, Primmie.”

“Oh,” Primrose said.

“Well, if I were a dark lord,” Hamfast said, “I’d’ve trained my troops to fight a fair bit more. I mean, if thousands of them could be defeated by a few of us, they couldn’t have known what they were doing. I would have made them smarter too. They were outsmarted an awful lot.”

Frodo-lad shook his head. “That wouldn’t work, the ‘them being smarter’ part. Imagine if they all understood about the Ring and knew what it was and how to use it. They’d wind up killing each other to try to get to it first.”

“They killed each other even without knowing about it though,” Hamfast pointed out, clearly thinking of the treason of Cirith Ungol for that was his favorite part of the story, when his father rescued Mr. Frodo from the tower. “If they did know about it, well, I don’t think it would have made any difference.”

“As for them not being trained, or trained as well as the Men were, there were more of them,” Merry said. “They were able to do their jobs by sheer numbers alone for a good long while. Training just would have taken longer.”

“I agree,” Pippin said. “Good point, Merry.”

 “But they still lost in the end,” Rose-lass said.

“That’s true,” Pippin said. “Good point, Rosie.”

“Well, if I were a dark lord, I’d let my troops eat something other than maggoty bread,” Primrose said, scrunching up her nose with distaste. “That couldn’t have tasted very good and if they’d had better things to eat, they might not have been so grouchy and mean.”

“I think you’re missing the point of being a dark lord,” Goldilocks said.

“If I were a dark lord,” Daisy said, and hummed a bit under her breath as she tried to think of what she would have done different. She finally landed upon something and said, “I wouldn’t have built my tower so far away from the only thing that could have destroyed the Ring. As soon as the Ring went missing, I would have moved my home to the Cracks of Doom and posted guards at the door. That was very silly of him not to at least have guards.”

“But he didn’t think anyone’d ever try to destroy it,” Frodo-lad said. “He reckoned the Ring was too tempting for anyone to toss it away, and he was nearly right.”

“Oooh!” Pippin exclaimed, his eyes wide as he thought of something he clearly believed to be brilliant. “If I were a dark lord, I’d have made the Ring so that no one else would have wanted to keep it so that way, they’d just toss it aside like it was nothing, and then when I went to find, because I would have made it like Merry did so that I could find it, it would just be lying there in the dirt or wherever.”

“But if that were the case, Isildur would have tossed it into the fire long ago and none of this would ever have happened,” Frodo-lad pointed out. “Maybe, you could make it so that they still wouldn’t be able to destroy it, but still wouldn’t want to keep it for themselves.”

Merry grinned at Pippin and patted his shoulder. “That’s good thinking, Pip.”

Pippin beamed at him and bounced happily in his seat.

Elanor laughed softly and shook her head fondly at her siblings. “If you were all dark lords, you’d do exactly the same thing that Sauron did, for even now it’s clear that you think yourselves much too brilliant to ever be foiled. Sauron’s downfall wasn’t his lack of thinking things through. It was his cockiness. He paid for that well enough, but not enough to make him more cautious the second time around and a good thing that was too, or Mr. Frodo and Sam-dad would have had no hope.”

The children considered this soberly and Sam stood with a sigh. “All right, children,” he said. “That’s enough for tonight. It’s time for bed for all of you but Ellie and Fro.” He held his hand up to forestall the protests he could see coming. “Bed. Now. Fro and Ellie, go to the kitchen and clean up. I’ll be in the parlor with your mother and grandma once I’ve seen the little ones to bed.”

The children filed out of the room one by one, the youngest heading for their rooms. Elanor was the last to pass through the door and she turned back to flash a smile at her father as she went.

“Good night, bright eyes,” Sam said.

“Good night, Sam-dad,” she said and closed the door behind her.
 
 
 

GF 3/14/06
 

* - According to “The Epilogue” found in HoME, Vol. 9 The End of the Third Age, Merry-lad was 9 the first time Sam finished reading the Red Book to his children.