King of the Nine Riders

Of the origins of the most powerful of the nine Nazgûl, little is known. He was born a Man, possibly of Númenórean blood, and was known to be a Sorcerer. His beginnings were in the Second Age, in a time when Númenor was a great power while the Men of Middle-earth toiled through the Dark Years. In some manner he encountered the Dark Lord Sauron and was given a Ring of Power, and that Ring, one of the Nine, gradually sapped his will and made him an unquestioning servant of the Dark Lord's will. It also made him a wraith, condemned to dwell in the Unseen realm but living on far beyond a mortal lifespan.

As Chieftain of the Ringwraiths the King served his new master through the last centuries of the Second Age, and after the Fall of Sauron in the War of the Last Alliance he went into the distant East for a time. When Sauron began to rise again, his chief servant returned to the western lands and travelled northward to found the realm of Angmar. Across the centuries that followed, in the guise of the Witch-king, he threatened and ultimately destroyed the realms that had made up Arnor, the North-kingdom of the Dúnedain.

In the wars surrounding the fall of the remnant of Arnor, the King of Angmar was driven away into the south. In Mordor he rejoined the other Ringwraiths, and together they laid siege to the Gondorian tower of Minas Ithil. After two years of siege, the tower fell to the King of the Nine Riders. Renamed Minas Morgul, the King would hold that tower as a bastion of evil on Gondor's eastern borders for the next millennium.

In the War of the Ring, the King of the Nine Riders rode out with a huge host to besiege Minas Tirith, the mightiest city of Sauron's enemies across the Great River. Mounted on a Winged Creature, he commanded his forces and brought them close to victory, until he encountered a lone warrior of the Rohirrim. Prophecy from long beforehand had said that the King could not be defeated by the hand of man, but this Rider revealed themselves to be a woman, the shieldmaiden Éowyn of the House of Eorl. She cut down his mount, and with the aid of the Hobbit Meriadoc Brandybuck, slew the King himself, bringing the long life of the Lord of the Nazgûl to an end.