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It was so hot of Elrond to try and save the library in the middle of battle

#rings of power #rops2 #rings of power spoilers #rops2 spoilers #elrond peredhel

ive been reading everyone's analysis on saurons crying at killing celebrimbor and it made me think about what he must have been feeling in that moment.

on the surface it reads like frustration; frustration at celebrimbor for defying him, not knowing where the rings are etc. but i started to think more about the origins of those emotions. i do this to myself often because it's a skill i had to learn later in life (iykyk).

having that experience, i found that frustration often rises when our behavior contradicts a core belief we have about ourselves. so, i thought to myself, what are saurons core beliefs about himself? what do we know about him? we know he has the great conviction of wanting to "heal" middle earth and he is convinced that he is the only one who can achieve this. it is, in saurons mind, his sole purpose.

i thought then that it it's contradictory for sauron to side with morgoth. but after looking at it through that lense, it made perfect sense to me. sauron saw morgoth as the closest means to achieving his goals. sauron needed to destroy middle earth in order to "remake it" and he would use morgoth to do that. im not well versed enough in the lore to make more detailed arguments and this may seem unrelated, but this is an important detail.

sauron ultimately sees himself as responsible for the entirety of his reality and future. someone who desperately wants control of everything must believe that it's possible to have control of everything in order to achieve this. he is willing to go so far as to side with morgoth to secure this vast amount of power over other beings. sauron cannot bare the thought of not "doing something" about "it" - "it" being the perfection he saw as so desperately absent and needed in the world.

so, we return to eregion.

sauron has spent every waking moment thinking about what he will do next. he more than likely is going over every possibility in his mind, and working it towards his vision as the "road goes ever winding". but he is getting impatient and everything is starting to crumble around him, literally and metaphoricaly.

i wouldn't be surprised if sauron perhaps truly has come to see celebrimbor as an ally or friend in some ways, as he is most likely someone sauron genuinely admired because of his being a smith as well.

So, when sauron kills celebrimbor out of anger and has him hoisted against that pillar, dead; and gone with him the location of the rings, sauron sees a direct contradiction to a core personal belief he has about himself. the belief going something like this:

>i will be the one to heal middle earth because i am the only one who can heal middle earth.

sauron is confronted with the stark truth that, perhaps, this is a lie he's told himself about himself, to make sense of his desperate need for order and control (and perhaps all the evil he had done under morgoths hand). sauron has suddenly found himself in a place of having to accept that there are some things that are completely out of his control.

and it's maddening. not because he sees himself as a victim in this. oh no. no no no. he may play that part in pursuit of manipulating someone, but sauron ultimately sees himself as being capable of achieving anything he wills to be so. when he doesn't get his way, his frustration and fear boil into anger. we see this when adar betrays, losing his temper after the orcs are hesitant to follow him.

but, here, with celebrimbor, there is no one to threaten or torture or scream at any longer. he doesn't see himself as a victim of the circumstances. sauron sees celebrimbors death as a failure on his part to fulfill his goal and retrieve the location of the nine. this further forces him to confront the reality of having to accept that he is, in fact, a being that can fail.

and it all boils out in a single tear; his inability to will himself to succeed, confronting the reality that he may not be as powerful as he believed himself to be, the loss of a friend/ally - it all becomes too much.

that's why i think sauron cried then. saurons entire identity rests on the belief that he is in control and therefore responsible for everything around him. its like the dark, evil, corrupted version of being a people pleaser. and similarly to being a people pleaser, when you have exhausted yourself to the point of burnout because you believe you're responsible for all outcomes, it will absolutely destroy you. and you become a slave to the will of others who you so desperately want to control. hence, the lord of the rings.