Why not send the ring to Valinor?

why not send the ring to valinor surely The Valor were powerful enough to destroy it and it would have saved everyone that long dangerous journey to Mount Doom let's take a look hi everyone this is Robert welcome to indeep geek on this channel we cover the Lord of the Rings and tolk's wider legendarium in depth as well as other great fantasy worlds Like A Song of Ice and Fire And The Witcher if you're new here welcome so why not just put the one ring on a boat to valinor and let the Valor deal with with

it well like when we looked at the idea of throwing it into the sea this was considered briefly at the Council of Elon and then rejected for a couple of reasons they really did Cover a lot of ground at that meeting the first reason is a very practical one it's actually what Sauron was probably expecting them to do so he would make it very hard for them this is what geldor the elf says at the council if the return to Tom Bombadil be thought too dangerous then flight to the sea is now fraught with gravest

Peril my heart tells me that Saron will expect us to take the Western way when he learns what has befallen he soon will the nine have been unhorsed indeed but that is but a respite a they find new steeds and swifter Elon agrees with this saying the westward Road seems easiest therefore it must be shunned it will be watched too often the elves have fled that way now at this last we must Take A Hard Road a road unforeseen there lies our hope if hope it be already the wise were coming around to the idea

that their Hope was in keeping it secret and perhaps counterintuitively that meant heading east yes sinon's base was to the east but he had many spies to the West as well it had been hard enough getting the ring from hobbton to Rivendell it would be even harder to try and take it back that way saon knew that valanor was real he was from there and he knew that the Valor were real and Powerful more powerful than him and there were other powerful beings there too I suspect that sinon's fear here was not that they would

destroy it but use it against him so that's the Practical reason Saron would make that way extremely hard for them but the more fundamental reason was that even if they had made it to the gray Havens got on a boat on the straight path and made it to the undying lands the simple fact was that the Valor would refuse to accept it again we have Elon speaking gandal has revealed to us that we cannot destroy it by any craft that we here possess said aland and they who dwell Beyond the Sea would not receive it

for good or ill it belongs to Middle Earth it is for us who still dwell here to deal with it which is pretty clear there was no point in taking it to valinor because the Valor would simply refused to take it but why well again I think there are a couple of things here first the Rings corrupting influence was very real and very powerful even fundamentally good people like gandal and Galadriel feared falling under its spell and Galadriel came pretty close to succumbing yes the undying lands was pretty idilic but evil could still happen there

and people could still fall saon Fell From Grace while there back in the Mists of time there was the whole sorry business of feanor and his sons as well as morgoth and angolian sneaking in to kill the two trees the one ring was a threat even to the elves Mayar and Valor who lived there of course they would not want it there but the second thing requires us to go back to the fundamentals of the nature of Middle Earth and AR more broadly looked at from a long-term perspective they who dwell Beyond the Sea as

Alon calls them have been distancing the CES from Middle Earth more and more as each age passes when the Valar first arrived to shapard they were involved in Middle Earth fulltime then after a particularly damaging battle against morgoth they built themselves a continent away from Middle Earth and largely just waited for the elves to arrive with most of the Valor and Mayar hardly visiting at all when the elves did turn up in Middle Earth The Valor basically just cooled them out from Middle Earth and over to the undying lands they built a huge mountain range

to close off their home set traps for the uny and imposed a ban on even elves traveling there in the first age yes the host of The Valor got involved at the end of the first age but by the end of the second age they had moved themselves off completely from the physical plane of ardor only accessible by the straight road they then made a point of not intervening directly or frequently asmo had for example several times in the first age instead the asari was sent to assist the free peoples but not lead them the

vision faramir and Boromir received was to push them in the right direction not tell them exactly what to do the Eagles messengers of manway might appear every now and then but only at the very last minute this was about the Valor stepping back and Humanity stepping up because fundamentally Middle Earth was meant for Humanity the third age was the age where things shifted the elves slowly migrated West magic slowly faded and man took over from Elf as the dominant power on the continent the end of this process was the defeat of saon which was something

that Humanity had to do to complete that process so that the fourth age could truly become the Dominion of man this is what alron meant by saying that it the ring belongs to Middle Earth it is for us who still dwell here to deal with it the elves who remained would play their part but they were no longer strong enough on their own to deal with it it's not a Perfect Analogy but it's like parents letting their teenage children sort out their own problems The Valor were no longer going to always be there to step

in and sort everything out for humans and elves in Middle Earth it was time for Humanity to take full responsibility for their world so although this may sound cruel by The Valor to refuse to get directly involved in the matter of the one ring it was in their eyes at least a blessing they were taking that last step back from control and intervention and giving the people of Middle Earth their freedom and they were right of course the elves who remained dwarves Hobbits and humans were up to the task without the Val helping out the

ring was destroyed and Saron defeated and as tolken was fond of pointing out that world is our world albeit in a different stage of imagination so that freedom we could say is our freedom though it is a freedom that comes with responsibilities for them it was facing saon and destroying the ring for us well Tolen wasn't one to allegorize so I won't either why not take the ring to venor partly because Saron expected it so it would be very hard to do so but mostly because the Dennis of vanor wanted the people of Middle Earth

to have the freedom and responsibility of dealing with it themselves this video was actually suggested by a lot of people in the comment section of my last video about why not throw the ring into the sea so let me know in the comments here if there's anything else you want me to cover in the meantime there are more videos diving deep into the lore of tolkin legendarium in the playlist appearing now on the left of your screen or if you'd like to support this channel there's a link to my patreon page on the right of

your screen that's all for this time thanks for watching I'll see you again soon