Forme de l'anneau unique

[Elendil]

Tout à fait, c'est d'ailleurs ainsi que je comprends ce passage :

While he wore it, his power on earth was actually enhanced. But even if he did not wear it, that power existed and was in ‘rapport’ with himself: he was not ‘diminished’. Unless some other seized it and became possessed of it. If that happened, the new possessor could (if sufficiently strong and heroic by nature) challenge Sauron, become master of all that he had learned or done since the making of the One Ring, and so overthrow him and usurp his place.

J'aurais d'ailleurs dû citer la suite de la lettre nº211 (oui, c'est 211 et non 212, erreur de ma part) :

(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. [...] Sauron was first defeated by a ‘miracle’: a direct action of God the Creator, changing the fashion of the world, when appealed to by Manwë: see III p. 317. Though reduced to ‘a spirit of hatred borne on a dark wind’, I do not think one need boggle at this spirit carrying off the One Ring, upon which his power of dominating minds now largely depended. [...]

Sauron was, of course, ‘confounded’ by the disaster, and diminished (having expended enormous energy in the corruption of Númenor). He needed time for his own bodily rehabilitation, and for gaining control over his former subjects.

Mais il est fort possible que Tolkien ait changé d'avis concernant l'emport de l'Unique à Númenor, car le texte « Of the Rings of Power » est postérieur à la lettre sus-mentionnée.