IDK if this is an unpopular opinion as much as an….unpopular focus? I’m a bit obsessed, but in a very inconclusive wheel-spinning way, with Saruman’s sheer senseless pettiness in speeding up the ruining of the Shire solely to fuck Frodo over, not for revenge because Frodo in no way harmed him or brought about his fall, and not for any kind of gain for his earlier more moderate screwing around with the Shire was all rendered defunct. It’s hard for me to understand, because it’s so petty it’s kind of hilarious. But I guess the underpinning is that it’s….a kind of hatred of the fact that what Frodo did essentially rendered Saruman’s entire life a waste, in a way. “He was great once, of a noble kind…his cure is beyond us; but I would still spare him, in the
hope that he may find it.” At some point Saruman traded in all he was on the – I am quite sure – very bitterly-swallowed and sincerely heart-wrenching calculation that this way was what was right, what was good, what was the only way. Even if the years between the time when he made this choice/came to this conclusion, and when we see him in LOTR, have been long enough for him to calcify and cake over any rawness of belief with layers of self-generated superciliousness and scorn and contempt, because it’s much easier to hold fast to a bitter calculation when everyone who opposes your secret idea is an idiot undeserving of acknowledgement.

I don’t see the ruthlessly callous narrowly pragmatic disdainful thing as something that was always a big part of him, I don’t think everyone around him was that bad a judge of his character. I’d think his sweet calming voice and reassuring sense of kindness and hypnotic charisma aren’t totally fake manipulation, but habits of an unpretended positive part of him long long ago.

I think his scheme at the end – after he crosses the company on the road with Gandalf, was a desire to absolutely ensure the imploding conclusion of Frodo’s arc, to try to ensure that Frodo wouldn’t find healing, and to poison his memories of it and his hope for its future and leave nothing but looming creeping dread of the slow fall and long defeat. Because it’s only fair, right, to try and rub in how their success in destroying the Ring was nothing but a brief upward tick on the downwards trajectory into even worse times. It’s much better than accepting that his, Saruman’s, bitterly-attained conclusions and thwarted attempt to join Sauron and all the ugly things he had to do in order to bring his attempt about, were a waste from the start. Oh, my defeat was really a tragic derailing from a successful possible future into this timeline, which actually the Bad Ending AU! “Mine, mine, yes and dearly bought!’ cried Saruman, clutching at the
pouch. ‘This is only a repayment in token; for you took more, I’ll be bound.” Prob not talking just about pipeweed, hm.