It is a strange thing that the camp was not watched while darkness lasted of the night Oct. 6-7, and the crossing of the Road into the southward lands seems not to have been observed, so that [the Witch- king] again lost track of the Ring. For this there were probably several reasons, the least to be expected being the most important, namely that [the Witch-king], the great captain, was actually dismayed. He had been shaken by the fire of Gandalf, and began to perceive that the mission on which Sauron had sent him was one of great peril to himself both by the way, and on his return to his Master (if unsuccessful); and he had been doing ill, so far achieving nothing save rousing the power of the Wise and directing them to the Ring.

But above all the timid and terrified Bearer had resisted him, had dared to strike at him with an enchanted sword made by his own enemies long ago for his destruction. Narrowly it had missed him. How he had come by it - save in the Barrows of Cardolan. Then he was in some way mightier than the B[arrow]-wight; and he called on Elbereth, a name of terror to the Nazgul. He was then in league with the High Elves of the Havens.

Escaping a wound that would have been as deadly to him as the Mordor-knife to Frodo (as was proved at the end), he withdrew and hid for a while, out of doubt and fear both of Aragorn and especially of Frodo. But fear of Sauron, and the forces of Sauron’s will was the stronger.

‘I galloped to Weathertop like a gale, and I reached it before sundown on my second day from Bree – and they were there before me. They drew away from me, for they felt the coming of my anger and they dared not face it while the Sun was in the sky. But they closed round at night, and I was besieged on the hill-top, in the old ring of Amon Sûl. I was hard put to it indeed: such light and flame cannot have been seen on Weathertop since the war-beacons of old.

‘At sunrise I escaped and fled towards the north. I could not hope to do more.'

'Caught between fire and water, and seeing an Elf-lord revealed in his wrath, they were dismayed, and their horses were stricken with madness. Three were carried away by the first assault of the flood; the others were now hurled into the water by their horses and overwhelmed.’

Dear Mr Hastings,

Thank you very much for your long letter. I am sorry that I have not the time to answer it, as fully as it deserves. You have at any rate paid me the compliment of taking me seriously; though I cannot avoid wondering whether it is not ‘too seriously’, or in the wrong directions. The tale is after all in the ultimate analysis a tale, a piece of literature, intended to have literary effect, and not real history. That the device adopted, that of giving its setting an historical air or feeling, and (an illusion of ?) three dimensions, is successful, seems shown by the fact that several correspondents have treated it in the same way–according to their different points of interest or knowledge: i.e. as if it were a report of ‘real’ times and places, which my ignorance or carelessness had misrepresented in places or failed to describe properly in others. Its economics, science, artefacts, religion, and philosophy are defective, or at least sketchy.

Letter 153 (in draft form To Peter Hastings, 1954)

["Tolkien Fandom: taking it ‘too seriously’, or in the wrong directions since 1954" - would make a good T-shirt]
[By "sketchy" Tolkien means the British and 20th Century meaning of the term - "like a sketch" (i.e. lacking in detail). Using it that way I've sometimes inadvertently amused my kids, to whom 'sketchy' has a newer meaning: something like 'morally dubious' ]

During the siege of Minas Tirith, could not the Nazgul have done what they did at Bree, use their sprit form to get through the physical walls of the city and cause chaos and misery inside? Or at least find out some secret entries and weakness?

“Children are capable, of course, of literary belief, when the story-maker’s art is good enough to produce it. That state of mind has been called ‘willing suspension of disbelief’. But this does not seem to me a good description of what happens. What really happens is that the story-maker proves a successful ‘sub-creator’. He makes a Secondary World which your mind can enter. Inside it, what he relates is ‘true’: it accords with the laws of that world. You therefore believe it, while you are, as it were, inside. The moment disbelief arises, the spell is broken; the magic, or rather art, has failed. You are then out in the Primary World again, looking at the little abortive Secondary World from outside. If you are obliged, by kindliness or circumstance, to stay, then disbelief must be suspended (or stifled), otherwise listening and looking would become intolerable. But this suspension of disbelief is a substitute for the genuine thing, a subterfuge we use when condescending to games or make-believe, or when trying (more or less willingly) to find what virtue we can in the work of an art that has for us failed.”
On Fairy-stories

...according to their different points of interest or knowledge: i.e. as if it were a report of ‘real’ times and places, which my ignorance or carelessness had misrepresented in places or failed to describe properly in others. Its economics, science, artefacts, religion, and philosophy are defective, or at least sketchy.

Letter 153

My theory:
The Witch-king is a vampire, and so are all the Nazgûl.

This may sound unlikely at first, but the textual evidence goes with the idea surprisingly well and explains many things.

(I have an in-progress theory post on vampires on Tolkien on which I made some good advancement a while ago, but which turned out to be a major undertaking because there is so much material to cover. I think I probably should prioritize getting that theory in shape.)

Also, I think the Witch-king didn't actually want to kill Éowyn and would rather she had not intervened. This would have been why he chose to speak rather than attack immediately. He was hoping that Éowyn would back down so that he could let her live.

I think the Witch-king's Ring of Power may have been the Ring of Frost, hence his powers over winter. My theory is that all the Rings of Power had specialties like that.

Vampires do exist in Tolkien's Middle-earth, but they are Maiar, not undead mortal Men. We only know of one human-like Vampire and that was Thuringwethil, a messenger of Sauron during the First Age that could take the form of a vampire with an iron claw on each wing. She was slain either by the hound Huan or in the collapse of Sauron's fortress on Tol-in-Gaurhoth (the "Isle of Werewolves"). Sauron, himself, did take on the shape of a Vampire on at least one occasion, to escape Huan.

Tolkien's only other reference to Vampires was to the huge bats that covered the sky during the Battle of Five Armies and descended to feast on the fallen among the Men, Elves and Dwarves.

The Ringwraiths were sustained by their Rings and the will of Sauron. There is no evidence that they needed to feed on the blood or life force of Men or other beings. But go ahead and make your case.

“Frodo waited, like a bird at the approach of a snake, unable to move. And as he waited, he felt, more urgent than ever before, the command that he should put on the Ring. But great as the pressure was, he felt no inclination now to yield to it. He knew that the Ring would only betray him, and that he had not, even if he put it on, the power to face the Morgul-king–not yet. There was no longer any answer to that command in his own will, dismayed by terror though it was, and he felt only the beating upon him of a great power from outside.”

It's fun that "Which king was the Witch King?" would be a perfectly reasonable question within Tolkien fandom.

This is not a theory original to me, but I remember having read a very convincing argument for how the Witch-king would be Tar-Atanamir.

This gives rise to another question: Which would have the better claim for the throne of Gondor, Aragorn or Tar-Atanamir?

He scorned the yearnings of his father, and eased the restlessness of his heart by voyaging, east, and north, and south, until he took the sceptre.

Much is said of this King in the Annals, such as now survive the Downfall.

Even if Tar-Ciryatan wasn't the supreme commander of the fleet, he almost certainly would have been involved in a major role. I checked and he would have been 66 years old at the time. Ciryatur might have been his uncle.

Anyway, Tar-Ciryatan is known to have traveled all over the place in his youth.

From UT:

Quote

Tar-Atanamir died "witless and unmanned" per Tolkien. A witless old dotard is hardly a candidate for the Nazgul.

Plus, according to Appendix B, the nine Nazgul appeared during the first years of the reign of Tar-Atanamir; ergo, the WitchKing had taken the Ring from Sauron and was corrupted long before Tar-Atanamir even ascended the throne.

I would suggest a Southern Lord of a renegade Numenorean house in Far Harad would be a more likely candidate, and more accessible to Sauron.

In Reply To

The problem with that is that there is no evidence that a renegade Númenorean house in Far Harad, especially one so early in the timeline, even existed in the first place.

Admittedly, I didn't check Unfinished Tales for additional information. There's nothing about Tar-Cirytan's travels in Appendix A or at Tolkien Gateway. Still, Tolkien provided documentation of his life and death, making him a poor candidate for Wraith-hood.

I've already explained why I don't think it is possible for Tar-Atanamir to have been one of the Nazgûl.

There's no problem here, really. We don't need a renegade Númenorean house in Far Harad or anyplace else. All we have to do is consult Tolkien's timeline of the Second Age (Appendix B):

Circa S.A. 1800: "From about this time onward the Númenoreans begin to establish dominions on the coasts. Sauron extends his power eastwards. The shadow falls on Númenor."

We know that at this time the Númenoreans return to Middle-earth not as teachers but as rulers and oppressors, exploiting Middle-earth for resources. This new attitude makes them prime candidates for Sauron's advances (thus, many viewers' certainty that the character Kemen of The Rings of Power will be targeted by Sauron for one of the Nine Rings, as the show is now reflecting this period of Númenorean expansion).

Men proved easier to ensnare. Those who used the Nine Rings became mighty in their day, kings, sorcerers, and warriors of old. They obtained glory and great wealth, yet it turned to their undoing.

They had, as it seemed, unending life, yet life became unendurable to them. They could walk, if they would, unseen by all eyes in this world beneath the sun, and they could see things in worlds invisible to mortal men; but too often they beheld only the phantoms and delusions of Sauron. And one by one, sooner or later, according to their native strength and to the good or evil of their wills in the beginning, they fell under the thraldom of the ring that they bore and under the domination of the One, which was Sauron’s. And they became for ever invisible save to him that wore the Ruling Ring, and they entered into the realm of shadows. The Nazgûl were they, the Ringwraiths, the Enemy’s most terrible servants; darkness went with them, and they cried with the voices of death.

In Reply To

The timeline has no mention about a rebellion or colonies declaring independence. Therefore if we are looking for a Númenorean lord who became a king, the legal heir to the throne would be the most likely candidate. It would also make much sense for Sauron to focus his attempts on such an individual.

Also, the line "The shadow falls on Númenor" implies that it falls on Númenor itself.

Outside of the Peter Jackson films it is never said that all of the Nazgûl were kings in life, at least not before they were given Rings. What Tolkien stated in his essay "Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age" was:

Quote

Some of them may indeed have already been rulers of their lands before they received their gift from Sauron, but that does not necessarily include any of the three (or more?) Númenóreans who were given Rings.

While the Ringwraiths might have shared a few common traits with the vampires of folklore, they were very different in other respects. There's no evidence that they drank blood or needed the life force of others. They never physically died but rather faded until they dwelt almost entirely in the spirit realm. They didn't need to rest in the day, much less return to coffins or tombs or their native soil. Also, Tolkien's Vampires were not mortal Men but were corrupted Maiar (or were the huge bats that appeared at the Battle of Five Armies in The Hobbit). You have yet to make your case for vampiric Nazgûl.

Where did I say anything about rebellions or colonies declaring independence? Answer: I didn't. Not a word.

The shadow that fell over Númenor was a shadow of their own making. It was the rebellion of the Númenoreans against the Valar and the limits that they imposed upon them. Sauron came later, though his influence upon those Númenoreans dwelling in Middle-earth might have been a factor.

This matter is confused by contradictions in the published material especially with regard to the timelines.

For example, on the subject of Tar-Ciryatan living for more than 600 years in one version, there are several options:
a) Tolkien made an unintentional mistake, which he later corrected.
b) Tolkien's consistent intention was that Tar-Ciryatan was the Witch-king. The version with the shorter lifespan is meant to reflect the official history rather than the real truth. Tolkien could have intended for both versions to be published so that the reader could have noticed the discrepancy and found the clue to the hidden literary Easter egg.
c) Tolkien decided that Tar-Ciryatan was the Witch-king but then decided otherwise and edited the timeline of Númenor to change that.

Tolkien doesn't actually say that, and there is also the issue of the identity of the Witch-king having possibly changed between the various drafts that Tolkien didn't publish in his lifetime.

King, sorcerer, warrior - the Witch-king would have been all three at once. Middle-earth isn't D&D with distinct character classes. The Witch-king fights with physical weapons on a field of battle, has been known to control the weather over a wide area, and has ruled over a kingdom. On Weathertop all the nine Nazgûl have swords and crowns, presumably not for no reason, and obviously all of the Nazgûl had Rings of Power which alone are sufficient cause to explain how the Nazgûl could have become known as sorcerer.

The shadow being connected to the faction known as the King's men implies that the corruption flowed from above. The Númenoreans were envious of the immortal life of the Eldar, and you know what the Rings of Power can do to a mortal? Right. A Ring of Power in the hand of the king would explain very well how the rebellion started to take root.

Not all leaders or rulers are kings (or queens). Númenórean settlements or fortresses in Middle-earth would have had their own governors or commanders who themselves could have been prime targets for Sauron. The Dark Lord's spies could have even identified the local leaders of rival factions (such as the King's Men versus the Faithful). All of the Númenórean lords who became Ringwraiths could have been (and probably were) the leaders of Middle-earth settlements or factions.

The discontent of the King's Men was able to arise with no need of help from Sauron. Envy and fear are all-too human conditions and the Men of Númenor were as vulnerable to them as anyone else.

what strategic plot turns hinge on there being such creatures, as opposed to, say, trolls or orcs? I'm referring both to Tolkien's strategy as a writer as well as Sauron's-within-the-books.

I can see the need for more intelligent creatures that are allowed to have, and are able to exercise, a certain amount of independent thought and strategy--more so than orcs are allowed.

But also, as Squire said, what about the "value" of the Fear Factor?

But they became Nazgul in the first place by entering into a Faustian bargain.

The Nazgûl were experimental products. The example of the Dwarves shows that Sauron didn't always get what he wanted to achieve with the Rings of Power. In other cases he may have made conscious tradeoffs with his craft.

The excessive fear the Nazgûl produce is probably not really what Sauron wanted to achieve. Sure, such levels of fear can be useful in certain situations, but in other times fear gets in the way. The Nazgûl would have been much stealthier on their mission to recover the Ring if they didn't involuntarily radiate so much fear. I think Sauron was trying to create extremely powerful undead under his control, and the results with humans were so plain successful that even random civilians with ordinary spiritual senses could feel the unnatural death aura. I think Sauron really would have liked to have some capability to operate undercover though. It speaks much of the Witch-king's capability as a ruler that despite everything he managed to hold Angmar together and lead it successfully in multiple wars.

As for what Sauron would have liked to achieve, I think he would have liked a way to turn humans into Elves, under his control of course. The undead Nazgûl have all sorts of drawbacks that Elves don't have, but Sauron did the best he could.

'Spoiling nice fish, scorching it. Give me fish now, and keep nassty chips!’

Why did you skip Tar-tar, known for his stakes?

We are confronted with another theme. It is not a new theme; it leaps out upon us from the Dark Ages – racial persecution, religious intolerance, deprivation of free speech, the conception of the citizen as a mere soulless fraction of the State. To this has been added the cult of war. Children are to be taught in their earliest schooling the delights and profits of conquest and aggression. A whole mighty community has been drawn painfully, by severe privations, into a warlike frame. They are held in this condition, which they relish no more than we do, by a party organisation, several millions strong, who derive all kinds of profits, good and bad, from the upkeep of the regime. Like the Communists, the Nazis tolerate no opinion but their own. Like the Communists, they feed on hatred. Like the Communists, they must seek, from time to time, and always at shorter intervals, a new target, a new prize, a new victim. The Dictator, in all his pride, is held in the grip of his Party machine. He can go forward; he cannot go back. He must blood his hounds and show them sport, or else, like Actaeon of old, be devoured by them.

You see these dictators on their pedestals, surrounded by the bayonets of their soldiers and the truncheons of their police. On all sides they are guarded by masses of armed men, cannons, aeroplanes, fortifications, and the like – they boast and vaunt themselves before the world, yet in their hearts there is unspoken fear. They are afraid of words and thoughts; words spoken abroad, thoughts stirring at home – all the more powerful because forbidden – terrify them. A little mouse of thought appears in the room, and even the mightiest potentates are thrown into panic. They make frantic efforts to bar our thoughts and words; they are afraid of the workings of the human mind.

The Defence of Freedom and Peace (The Lights are Going Out)", radio broadcast by Winston S Churchill to the United States and to London, October 16, 1938.

but I know not whether their blades would still bite, for the Dead needed no longer any weapon but fear.

Wraith

1. An apparition or spectre of a dead person; a phantom or ghost...
2. An immaterial or spectral appearance of a living being, frequently regarded as portending that person's death; a fetch.

(OED: WRAITH n.)
The word is of Scottish origin, both meanings being traced back by the OED to a verse-translation of Virgil's Aeneid made in 1513 by the Scottish poet and bishop Gavin Douglas. Tolkien has taken the first sense and given it a particular twist: the Ringwraiths are a kind of living dead, invisible and completely controlled by Sauron by means of the rings they once wore.
"Long ago they fell under the dominion of the One, and they became Ringwraiths, shadows under his great Shadow. (LR 1. ii)"

Ringwraith is the commonest term, but we also find Wraith-lord and Wraith-king (LR iv. viii). And Frodo speaks with dramatic irony in LR 1. xi when he jokes: I hope the thinning process will not go on indefinitely, or I shall become a wraith. In early drafts of The Lord of the Rings, before the scope of the various rings of power was more precisely determined, there are references to men-, elf, dwarf-, and goblin-wraiths (HME VI. 78). Also in the drafts of Appendix A we read of 'a way beneath the White Mountains of Gondor that no man dared to tread, because of the fell wraiths of the Forgotten Men that guarded it' (HME XII. 267).

The earlier history and derivation of the word wraith is not known. However, there is an etymological possibility which Tolkien favoured, though it is not mentioned by the OED. It is conceivable that wraith might be descended from an unrecorded noun related to the verb writhe, the original meanings of which are 'to coil (something)' or 'to envelop or swathe (something). Writhe was at one time inflected on the same pattern as ride, with past tense wrothe and the past participle writhen (used by Tolkien to describe the hills behind Mindolluin: LR v. v). Just as the verb ride, past tense rode, is related to the noun raid, which is the Scots form of road, so writhe could be related to wraith.

The Ring of Words, Tolkien and the Oxford English Dictionary. By Gilliver, Marshall & Weiner, Oxford University Press 2009

It's said that science will dehumanise people and turn them into numbers. That's false, tragically false. Look for yourself. This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people were turned into numbers.

Into this pond were flushed the ashes of some four million people. And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance, it was done by dogma, it was done by ignorance. When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods.

Science is a very human form of knowledge. We are always at the brink of the known; we always feel forward for what is to be hoped. Every judgment in science stands on the edge of error and is personal. Science is a tribute to what we can know although we are fallible. In the end, the words were said by Oliver Cromwell: "I beseech you in the bowels of Christ: Think it possible you may be mistaken."

I owe it as a scientist to my friend Leo Szilard, I owe it as a human being to the many members of my family who died here, to stand here as a survivor and a witness. We have to cure ourselves of the itch for absolute knowledge and power. We have to close the distance between the push-button order and the human act. We have to touch people.

Transcript from Speakola

The shadow that fell over Númenor was a shadow of their own making. It was the rebellion of the Númenóreans against the Valar and the limits that they imposed upon them. Sauron came later, though his influence upon those Númenóreans dwelling in Middle-earth might have been a factor.

There are three phases in their fall from grace. first acquiescence, obedience that is free and willing, though without complete understanding. Then for long they obey unwillingly, murmuring more and more openly. Finally they rebel - and a rift appears between the King's men and rebels, and the small minority of persecuted Faithful.

Sauron was driven away south-east after great slaughter at Sarn Ford.

In the Battle of the Gwathló Sauron was routed utterly and he himself only narrowly escaped. His small remaining force was assailed in the east of Calenardhon, and he with no more than a bodyguard fled...

... the name and origin of the Witch-king is not recorded, but he was probably... of Númenórean descent.

Would the Nazgul have considered trying to slip off and set up on their own? Would they even have been capable of such considerations or are they too much under the power of the Ring?

What about all those years Sauron was "recuperating"? What were they up to?

Your point is how I've always read Tolkien's notes about some of the Nazgul being "Numenorean" in ancestry.

We know that Numenor had colonies and satrapies on the mainland, governed and led by colonial populations who'd returned to Middle-earth from their island homeland. They are "Numenorean" in heritage, but they are no longer "Numenorean" in residence. Surely this is the population that Sauron seduced and, in some cases, utterly corrupted with his gifts of nine Rings of Power.

Tolkien never suggests that the royal family or even its princely adjuncts were liable to contact with Sauron in a way that would result in a Ring and a descent into wraithdom. That's not in keeping with his conception of the Fall of Numenor, as noted elsewhere in this thread.

The 1940s Rings of Power narrative postdates the 1930s Tale of Numenor, to the point that Tolkien had to do backflips to include Sauron's own Ring in the later versions of the Akallabeth, when The Lord of the Rings had been added to the legendarium. He, I think, had no interest at all in complicating the Fall by including the secondary Rings in the story. Sauron, without use of his own Ring, simply completes the seduction of the Kings of Men in a disaster that they were already bringing upon themselves, with no Rings involved at all.

In Reply To

Looking at the timeline in LotR, Sauron is defeated with the help of Tar-Minastir's navy in 1700, and then:

c. 1800 From about this time onward the Númenoreans begin to establish dominions on the coasts. Sauron extends his power eastwards. The shadow falls on Númenor.

The colonies at this early time would have been small and insignificant next to the importance of the mainland, not the sort of places where you find "great lords" as permanent residents.

Why would you assume that? Earlier in the Second Age, Tar-Aldarion (the Mariner; S.A. 700-1099) spent a great deal of time in Middle-earth even after he gained the throne. Why wouldn't some of the great lords of Númenor want to make a name for themselves as governors of Middle-earth colonies, especially during Númenor's expansionist period when it was exploiting Middle-earth for its resources? Seems like a good way to gain wealth and influence to me.

He [Sauron] naturally had the One Ring [with him in Númenor], and so very soon dominated the minds and wills of most of the Númenóreans. (I do not think Ar-Pharazôn knew anything about the One Ring. The Elves kept the matter of the Rings very secret, as long as they could. In any case Ar-Pharazôn was not in communication with them...)

I do not think one need boggle at this spirit [Sauron's] carrying off the One Ring, upon which his power of dominating minds now largely depended.

The colonies at this early time would have been small and insignificant next to the importance of the mainland, not the sort of places where you find "great lords" as permanent residents.

c. 1800 From about this time onward the Númenóreans begin to establish dominions on the coasts. Sauron extends his power eastwards. The shadow falls on Númenor.

This "complicating the Fall" creates no new plot holes but solves the issue of Sauron ignoring the Númenor mainland (because he didn't do so here) and gives more background on how the King's Men started to crystallize. The existence of the faction implies that the king must have had strong ideas about the matter and was a driving force behind the split.

There is that one version of the timeline where Tar-Ciryatan lives for over 600 years...

I agree with this assessment of Vinyalondë, as it pertains to Aldarion's era. Yes, prince, then king Aldarion failed to keep this settlement going. And yes, Tar-Ancalimë dumped her late father's support for Gil-galad ("After Aldarion's death she neglected all his policies, and gave no further aid to Gilgalad [sic]" - 'The Line of Elros'). Yet it's worth noting that there is, early in the reign of Tar-Minastir, some 600 years later "a small Númenórean harbour" at the mouth of the River Gwathló, including "forts at the Haven" - Vinyalondë restored, as CJRT concluded ('The History of Galadriel and Celeborn'). This is before the c. II.1800 'dominion-building' era that you cite from 'The Tale of Years'.

I also agree that it may be that the Númenórean population in Middle-earth was negligible by the end of Tar-Ancalimë's reign (II.1280). But it's up and running again in the 17th century of the Second Age at the latest.

On the timelines we're focusing on, I'm not sure I follow all of your argumentation. There's nothing I can see in it that underwrites Ciryatan being the answer to 'who was the Witch-king, originally?'.

Via the 'Tale of Years' (Appendix B, LotR), we have a fixed (or rather circa) date for the 'when' of the emergence of the Nazgûl, c. II.2251. And two precise dates concerning two named Númenórean strongholds in Middle-earth: II.2280 for Umbar and II.2350 for Pelargir. For the latter, this is a construction date ("was built"), and for the former, it was arguably an 'upgrade' date rather than a 'first built' one ("was made into a great fortress"). Moreover, in a very late in life note dated to c. 1970 ('Note on the delay of Gil-galad and the Númenóreans', NoMe 3.XVIII), Tolkien adds another layer to the history of Pelargir, by referring to "the Númenóreans occupying the Mouths of Anduin and the shorelands of Lebennin...". This setting is at some point between II.1600, when Sauron forges the One Ring and II.1695, when he invades Eriador. In other words, Pelargir was preceded by adjacent, possibly pre-located, Númenórean settlement.*

Add to this that Vinyalondë, at the mouth of the River Gwathló, was a functioning Númenórean settlement ("a small Númenórean harbour") at the time of Tar-Minastir's intervention in the War of the Elves and Sauron ('The History of Galadriel & Celeborn', Unfinished Tales), and it's evident that there were Númenóreans dwelling in Middle-earth, prior to the formal foundation / upgrade dates of Umbar and Pelargir.

I agree with you that the founding of Pelargir and Umbar come across as very significant events in the history of Númenórean colonisation of Middle-earth. And by extension, they likely outstripped in size and grandeur earlier editions. And I agree with you that because they post-date the emergence of the Nazgûl, they are not the dwelling places of 'the great lords', three of the future Nazgûl, we're looking for. Yet I'm less certain than you when you say:

Quote

Smaller, sure. Insignificant? Maybe but not necessarily. Afterall, Númenórean settlements are being founded / expanded in the cause of 'dominion' from c. II.1800, as per the entry in 'The Tale of Years' that you quote:

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I reckon it's eminently conceivable that 'great lords' of Númenórean descent could have set up shop early in this 'dominion' phase, even if we dismiss the idea that the pre-II.1700 Númenórean population in Middle-earth may also have been worthy enough to include such lords among their number. Looking at who the kings were in this era, Tar-Ciryatan and Tar-Atanamir and what they were doing ("eager for wealth, and they laid the Men of Middle-earth under tribute" - Akallabêth), it's easy enough to imagine members of the Númenórean aristocracy piling in - serving as colonial governors, overseers of tribute collection and so on. The preserve and business of aristocracies - existing or on the make - in many a historical empire.

So, coming back around to the date for the emergence of the Nazgûl, c. II.2251. Yes, this utter enslavement is completed many decades before Umbar and Pelargir enter into 'The Tale of Years'. But what does that really tell us with regard to when Sauron distributed those particular Rings of Power? What we can pin down is a terminus post quem, II.1697 (ie. when Sauron first gets his hands on these Rings) and a terminus ante quem of c. II.2051. Why does this mean Ciryatan is the future Witch-king? We are looking for three 'great lords'. Sure, it can be made to fit with the terminus post quem. But there is no 'two great lords and one crown prince' passage to draw on for this. And we've seen above that there's sufficient context in what Tolkien wrote to assume that there were likely plenty of candidates for Sauron to approach/seduce in the date range we're talking about. There isn't, in my view, a problem that needs solving by inserting Ciryatan into this. Not least because there is no imperative to tie origins of the future Witch-king to the earliest possible date - there are another 500 or so years to choose from, after all! It does provide for some fun extratextual speculation, admittedly.

This part of your theory also caught my eye:

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I'm not sure why the emergence of the King's Men needs Sauron or a Ring of Power (transmitted to Númenor by Ciryatan or anyone else for that matter) to explain it. I agree with you that the corruption of the bulk of the Númenóreans would have been linked to/guided by the world view articulated by the king - Tar-Ancalimon in Akallabêth, and Tar-Atanamir in 'The Tale of Years'. I reckon squire and Otaku set out very well that the Fall has its own well-established origin and narrative, separate to the Rings of Power. Insofar as the Ring-lore is retrofitted into this Fall by the author, it's not there to describe the 'why' or the 'how' of that Fall, but rather serves to help explain why Sauron was able to suborn the Númenóreans relatively easily. He is not 'the Shadow', in this context.

And finally, a question! Is the source for the below tucked away in HoMe XII somewhere or somewhere else altogether?

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As for what would count as a "great lord", I think a duke or better? There are not many of those in a realm.

Consequently all their colonies would have to be built nearly from scratch and it would be a long time for these to grow into the sort of places where "great lords" would live.

The psychological condition of the Númenoreans explains why the king's message would have been so widely popular. Sauron influencing the king through a Ring of Power explains why the king would be propagating the message in the first place. It would have been easy for the king to adhere to the traditions from sheer inertia (after all, those traditions put him at the top), but instead he chose to actively rebel and spread the rebellion.

Tolkien's epistolic commentary on the events of the Akallabêth went even further than the later redrafts of that story in terms of retrofitting, I reckon - as specifically set out in Letter 211, written in 1958:

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And, in the context of answering how an disincarnated Sauron could possibly have borne the One Ring back with him, following his 'death' in the cataclysm that destroyed Númenor:

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I do not think one need boggle at this spirit [Sauron's] carrying off the One Ring, upon which his power of dominating minds now largely depended.

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Retrofitting at its finest!