The agents of evil in the Fellowship are the products of evil. They are fashioned by evil craft. The creatures created to seek or fight on evil’s behalf bear the mark of their creators and appear as frightening and hideous. They are also mockeries. Above is the witch king as seen in the wraith world. Look what evil has done to him after it has claimed him as its agent. The face is a hideous parody of death. Evil has robbed theis king of his lifeforce and what remains is a husk. After taking his life evil could have chosen any image for its protige.
It could have rebuilt him in an image of former glory or vigour. Instead evil has chosen to leave him at the point just past death. A parody of a corpse. It is as if our own king were to die and the portrait we choose to hang in our hall is of his most undignified moments at the point past death. Evil mocks the king as it sets him to work. Parody and mockery mark the agents of evil.
The king raises his sword to wound. He himself is wounded. He is a walking wound. The wounded seek to wound. Being in pain the agents of evil seek to inflict pain. The wound of the king is patiently destructive, it works from within. As within so without. The wounder here seeks to penetrate with a wound that would similarly act on us. The wound would set to work over time, drawing out our life and leaving us as a parody of our own moment of death. As a man who is himself an open wound, parodied and mocked by his creator he can be relied upon to inflict himself upon others. He projects his pain, he stabs.
Notice how the Nazgul wears a crown but it is a crown of thorns. His former kinship is here mocked and parodied and once it again it inflicts a wound. The crown seems to reflect the pain on the contorted face of the king and refers again to the stabbing which is this agent of the dark lord's favoured way of inflicting a wound on his victim. it is a crown of blades.
Notice the fingers. The index finger still bears the ring, one of the nine used to capture the soul of the Nazgul. See what the ring has done to him. Every part of this man has been reduced except the fingers. These have been horribly extended. The extension emphasises that the influence on the king has been to disfigure him through manipulation of his ego. The ring is on his index finger, symbolising ego. The fingers have been warped into blade like extensions, the same effect as in the crown. The extended fingers remind us of the creature Gollum. Gollum too has extended probing fingers as the one ring brought about a similar transformation in that creature. Extended fingers signify those who are under the charge of the rings. Again we see in the works of Bosch the idea that evil mocks and parodies as it takes. In hell we see how for Bosch evil claims a soul only after subjecting it to humilliation and hideous remanufacture.
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