On this day in Middle-Earth, March 1st
Aragorn, son of Arathorn, Heir of Isildur, is born.
Aragorn: Where did you get that tomato soup?
Éowyn: It’s actually a bowl of ketchup I just microwaved.
It took the Ring two seconds to make both Isildur and Gollum claim it as their own.
It didn’t take much longer for it to make Bilbo do the same, as he kept it as the key “trick up his sleeve” during the Quest for Erebor and never considered harming it.
But in 17 full years and 6 months, it couldn’t make Frodo claim it. It took being inside Mt. Doom, the place where its power was absolute and drowned out all othere, to get Frodo to claim it.
Inside Mt. Doom, no bearer can resist the Ring. They will inevitably claim it there. But literally ALL of the other Ring-bearers who ever claimed it did so outside of Mt. Doom.
The Ring never needed to apply its utmost, Cracks-of-Doom-level pressure to make any previous Ring-bearer claim it. Frodo was the only one who resisted it so long and so well that it had to force itself upon him and break him just to get him to regard it as his own.
Frodo Baggins is the strongest mortal in the Third Age of Middle-Earth and no, I am not accepting questions at this time.
(Remember our beloved Samwise Gamgee never claimed the Ring, and didn’t have it long enough for it to really sink its teeth into him as deeply as it did into everyone else. I’m talking about those who actually claimed the Ring at some point in their lives.)
