gandalf and witch-king

if eowyn and merry didn't kill the witck-king,do you yhink gandalf could of defeated him?

[Cibbwin]

I think he could have, but he WOULDN'T have. The prophecy that says "No man can kill him" simply seales someone's fate, IMO. He is killable by a male, but a male will NOT kill him.

[Iarhen]

Gandalf had already defeated him in the door of Minas Tirith. And from what Gandalf says, he was planning on pursuing the Witch King and neutralizing the menace he represented.

Gandalf was a maiar... an ainu, in his origin as powerful as Sauron. If Olorin was the wisest of the maia, then he must know the counterspell that kept the Witch King alive... untie the "unseen sinews" of the Wiki...

[Gwaihir the Windlord]

You don't know that. And how did Gandalf 'defeat' him at the gate, Iarhen?

Cibbwin; the thing about the WK not falling at the hand of man included Gandalf. It did not include male humans, apparently, but it did include a certain Hobbit.

[rudeboy]

Yes, Gandalf didn't defeat him, Witchy merely turned away to focus on the onslaught by the Rohirrim, as he was then mounted on his fell beast. Thats my biggest disappointment, I would love to have read about a battle between Witch-King and Gandalf.

[Rider of Rohan]

I don't think that Gandalf could have done it. Well at least he would have died as well. Prophecy has a nasty habit of coming true. I am sure the wisest of the maiar knew that. He only confronted him at the gate because he was the only one who could have. I am sure he was thinking, "Here we go again, I am confronting evil incarnate in a narrow pasage once more...I wonder what my next incarnation will be like?"

[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

As I believe Gwaihir was saying earlier, Glorfindel's prophecy regarding the Witch-king is "not by the hand of man will he fall". He does not say that the Witch-king cannot be killed by a man, but that this will not happen.

That being said, Gandalf is not a man: he is an angelic emissary of the Valar, of the same order of beings as Sauron himself; and his human form is as temporary as a suit of clothes. The Witch-king is a corrupted human, and therefore of a lesser order, so his chances of defeating Gandalf, whatever powers he may have been awarded by his master, are slim to none. The Nazgûl are in fact much less powerful than the films make them appear. In a letter, Tolkien wrote of them:

Their peril is almost entirely due to the unreasoning fear which they inspire (like ghosts). They have no great physical power against the fearless; but what they have, and the fear that they inspire, is enormously increased in darkness. The Witch-king, their leader, is more powerful in all ways than the others; but he must not yet be raised to the stature of vol. III. There, put in command by Sauron, he is given an added demonic force. But even in the Battle of the Pelennor, the darkness had only just broken.

Although Tolkien speaks of an 'added demonic force' it was clearly not enough to protect the Witch-king even from a blade made by men (even the Númenoreans were only human). Gandalf is more powerful in every way than both Merry and the makers of his barrow blade; and if it came to it, his sword, Glamdring, was made in Gondolin by the Elves, of whom the Númenoreans were only protégés. I have no doubt that Gandalf would not only have defeated the Witch-king, but done it so decisively that all drama would have been lost. Besides, he would have preferred that the races of Middle-earth dealt with the Lord of the Nazgûl themselves rather than relying on him to do it. The way in which matters transpired was truer to the Istari's mission than a direct confrontation with evil would have been.

In any case, I suspect that when Glorfindel made his prophecy on the battlefield long before he may have had an intimation of exactly how matters would turn out at the Pelennor Fields. This is why he made no mention of how the Witch-king could be defeated, or who would be able to kill him. It's quite possible that anyone could have done it, given the right weapon, but that Éowyn and Merry were destined actually to do the deed.

[Eothain Elfwine]

I've been wondering about this idea myself. It had occured to me that perhaps Pippin's appearing to drag Gandalf away to rescue Faramir may have saved his (Gandalf's) life. When he was Gandalf the Grey, it took all his strength to stand up to a Balrog, itself a kind of demonic being created by Morgoth. Yet it was true that he was a Maia and had powers against the Nazgul no Man had. I'm not at all sure.

[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

Morgoth didn't create the Balrogs. They were Maiar that were corrupted to his service at the beginning of the world. As such the Balrog was of the same order as Gandalf.

There were certain limitations placed on the Istari when first they came to Middle-earth: they could feel the same pangs of the flesh as the humans they resembled, and their use of their powers was restricted. When Gandalf was sent back, his powers were greatly increased, although I doubt that he had full use of them. I find it difficult to believe that someone who could defeat a corrupted Maia with limited powers would find it difficult to defeat a corrupted human with those limitations relaxed.

[The Barrow-Wight]

Though some of the answers are definitely BOOKSworthy, the overall topic is based on a general opinion question, so I'm moving it over to Novices and Newcomers where it belongs.