Epic depiction of Éowyn and Merry taking down the Witch King.
Epic depiction of Éowyn and Merry taking down the Witch King.
I looked through a bunch of depictions of Éowyn and the Witch King and I think this is the best. It has all the pieces on display. You can see King Théoden under his horse in the front. Minas Tirith and the rest of the battle happening in the background, and Merry is there ready to wound the Witch King so Éowyn can finish him off.
I love Éowyn's pose and the imposing size difference between the fell beast and Witch King and Éowyn .
The Witch King really should have been more fearful. Middle Earth is full of not-men (women, elves, orcs, dwarves, hobbits, Istari, giants, trolls, nameless creatures, even the fell beast itself).
This was created by Craig J. Spearing.
So dumb question having only watched the movies.
Is there a reason the Witch King is transparent? Is that how he actually was described in the books or is this just artist interpretation?
Yep, that's from the books. The Witch King wore one of the 9 rings made for mortal men. After some time this caused them to fade and become permanently invisible and entirely under the control of Sauron.
If Bilbo had continued wearing the ring, the same would have happened to him eventually. Although, given that Gollum had it for hundreds of years, it's possible the process just takes a very long time for hobbits.
Actually, it's notable that wearing the ring made Bilbo invisible, including his clothes, whereas the Nazgul were invisible, but not their clothes. So, I guess that probably means that they had faded to permanent invisibility, but weren't actually wearing the rings anymore.