The Witch-king of Angmar

The Man who became a wraith

The Witch-king's name, his people and his country are not recorded; by the end of the Third Age there was probably no one left, save perhaps Sauron, who remembered them. What is known is that he was a Man of the Second Age, a king and a sorcerer, and that when Sauron gave the Nine Rings to the great among Men he was one of those who accepted. Three of the Nine were lords of Númenor; it is often supposed that the Witch-king was among them, but the histories do not say so. The Ring gave him unending life, power over others and sight into the unseen world, and took in return his body, his will and his name. By about S.A. 2251, when the Nazgûl first appeared as Sauron's servants, he was the foremost of them, and he vanished into shadow with the others when Sauron fell to the Last Alliance in 3441.

Angmar

When the Nazgûl returned to the world it was in the North. About T.A. 1300 a new power established itself beyond the Ettenmoors, in the far northern end of the Misty Mountains, and took the name Angmar, with its stronghold at Carn Dûm. The Men of the North called its ruler the Witch-king, not knowing what he was; Gondor only afterwards recognised him as the chief of the Ringwraiths. His realm was a gathering of Orcs, hill-men and evil Men of the East, and its single purpose was the destruction of the three kingdoms into which Arnor had split.

He went about it patiently. Rhudaur, the weakest, he corrupted from within until hill-chieftains in his pay ruled it. In 1356 King Argeleb I of Arthedain was killed fighting Rhudaur and Angmar together. In 1409 the Witch-king struck in strength: Rhudaur was overrun, Cardolan ravaged and its last prince killed on the Barrow-downs, and the tower on Weathertop burned and thrown down, though its palantír was carried away to Fornost. Arthedain held, with help from Lindon and Rivendell. After the Great Plague of 1636 the Witch-king sent evil spirits into the deserted mounds of the Barrow-downs, and the Barrow-wights that took Frodo fourteen centuries later were his work. By war or by slow rot, the North was emptied until only Arthedain was left.

The fall of Arthedain

In the winter of 1974 he came for it. Angmar's host took Fornost and drove the Dúnedain over the Lune; King Arvedui held out for a while in the North Downs and then fled to the frozen bay of Forochel, where he drowned in the spring when the ship sent for him from Lindon was lost in the ice. The North-kingdom ended there. But Arvedui had sent for help, and it came too late for him and in time for the Witch-king. In 1975 Eärnur, son of the King of Gondor, landed at the Grey Havens with an army, and with the Elves of Lindon and the remnant of the Dúnedain marched on Fornost. The Witch-king came out of the city to meet them in the open between the Nenuial and the North Downs. Gondor's cavalry broke his host, Eärnur's horsemen swung round from the hills and turned the rout into slaughter, and Glorfindel came down from Rivendell to close the trap. The Witch-king fled north toward Carn Dûm with Eärnur hot behind him; when the wraith turned on him Eärnur's horse could not bear it and carried the prince away. Then Glorfindel rode up, and the Witch-king fled from him into the dark. Glorfindel stopped Eärnur from following and spoke the prophecy: the Witch-king's doom was far off, and it would not come by the hand of a man. Angmar was destroyed root and branch.

Minas Morgul

He went back to Mordor, where Sauron was quietly preparing his return, and gathered the other eight. In 2000 the Nine came out of Mordor and laid siege to Minas Ithil, the tower of the moon that Isildur had built on the eastern edge of Gondor. It fell in 2002, and its palantír with it, and thereafter it was Minas Morgul, the Tower of Sorcery, and the Witch-king's seat for the rest of the age. From there he settled his account with Eärnur, who was now King of Gondor. In 2043 he sent a challenge to single combat, mocking the flight at Fornost; Eärnur's Steward, Mardil, restrained him. In 2050 the challenge came again, and this time Eärnur rode to the gate of Minas Morgul with a few knights and was never seen again. He had ended the kingship of Gondor as he had ended that of Arnor, and the Stewards ruled in the King's name for nearly a thousand years while he held Minas Morgul. In 2951 he kept his seat while Khamûl, his second, went with two others to reoccupy Dol Guldur.

The hunt for the Ring

In 3018 Sauron sent the Nine to find the Ring. They crossed the Anduin on 20 June in an attack on Osgiliath, the Witch-king leading, and searched the vale of Anduin before turning west. Unfinished Tales records that he went by way of Isengard, where Saruman dared not refuse him, and that Gríma Wormtongue, taken on the road, told him where the Shire lay. On 22 September he broke through the Rangers at Sarn Ford and the Black Riders entered the Shire. They hunted Frodo across it and through Bree, and on the night of 6 October the Witch-king came with four others up the slope of Weathertop. He struck Frodo, who had put on the Ring, with a Morgul-knife, and was driven off by Aragorn with burning brands and by Frodo's own cry on the name of Elbereth. The splinter working toward Frodo's heart was meant to make him a lesser wraith under the Witch-king's command, and it nearly did. On 20 October all Nine caught Frodo at the Ford of Bruinen; Elrond's flood swept away the three who rode in after him and the horses of the rest were driven in after. Unhorsed and scattered, the Witch-king went back to Mordor to prepare a war instead of a chase.

The Black Captain

He came out again on 10 March 3019 at the head of the host of Minas Morgul, under a cloud of Sauron's making that turned the day to night, and on 13 March his army crossed the Anduin and closed on Minas Tirith. He rode now on a winged fell beast, and his presence over the field drove men to despair; Faramir's rearguard broke under it and the Black Breath filled the Houses of Healing. Through the night of 14 March his engines worked on the walls, and before dawn on the fifteenth the ram Grond, with the Witch-king's spells on it and his voice driving it, broke the Great Gate of Minas Tirith. He rode in through the wreckage and found Gandalf alone on Shadowfax in the archway. He threw back his hood, showed the crown on nothing, and told the wizard that his hour had come. Gandalf did not move. At that moment the cocks crowed for a dawn the cloud had not quite smothered, and out of the north came the horns of Rohan.

The Pelennor

The Witch-king left the gate to meet the Rohirrim. Théoden had already broken the Haradrim on the field when the shadow fell on him: the fell beast came down on the king's horse and Snowmane, pierced by a dart, fell and crushed his rider. The king's household had scattered and there was one figure left between the Witch-king and his prey, a young rider who told him to leave the dead alone. He answered with the prophecy, that no living man could hinder him. The rider laughed and pulled off a helmet, and Éowyn, Théoden's sister-daughter, told him she was no man.

What followed was short. She struck the head from the fell beast when it came at her. The Witch-king rose from its ruin with mace in hand and broke her shield and her shield-arm with one blow. As he raised the mace to finish her, Merry, who had ridden to the battle hidden behind Éowyn's saddle and lain unnoticed at the wraith's feet, drove his sword into the back of the Witch-king's knee. The blade was one Tom Bombadil had taken from the Barrow-downs, forged long ago by the Dúnedain of Arnor for the war against Angmar itself and wound about with spells against its king; no other blade would have bitten. Éowyn, with her last strength, thrust her sword between the crown and the mantle, and it shattered in her hand. A wail went up and thinned away on the wind, and the crown rolled on the grass beside an empty heap of black cloth. The Lord of the Nazgûl was gone, unmade by a woman and a hobbit, almost eleven centuries after Glorfindel's prophecy.

Legacy

His fall broke the siege and, in the end, the Nazgûl, for the eight who remained had no captain and were burned in the eruption of Mount Doom ten days later. Éowyn and Merry both nearly died of the Black Breath. The Witch-king had been the most successful of all Sauron's servants: he unmade Arnor, ended the kings of Gondor, took the Ring-bearer's blood at Weathertop and broke the gate of Minas Tirith, and nothing of it survived him but ruins, the wights in the mounds, and the empty stones of Carn Dûm.

Destroyed on the Pelennor Fields on 15 March T.A. 3019, when Merry's Barrow-blade broke the spell that held him together and Éowyn's sword found the place between crown and mantle; his cloak and crown fell empty and his cry faded on the wind.