Lieutenant of the Tower of Barad-dûr

The title of an important commander in the land of Mordor. The word 'lieutenant' is used here in its older sense of 'second-in-command', so that the Lieutenant of the Tower of Barad-dûr appears to have held the highest rank within the land of Mordor after Sauron himself.¹ During the First Age, Sauron was known as the lieutenant of Melkor, which gives some impression of the importance of his own lieutenant.

At the time of the War of the Ring the title was borne by the Man known as the Mouth of Sauron. Its unclear how long he had been Sauron's lieutenant, but at the time he was seen at the Morannon in the War of the Ring, the rebuilt Dark Tower had stood for sixty-eight years, so as a mortal Man it seems unlikely that the Mouth of Sauron had been its lieutenant for all that time (indeed we know that he joined Sauron at about the time the Dark Tower was raised, but some time passed before he was elevated to the role of Lieutenant). Perhaps more probably, there had been at least one previous Lieutenant of the Tower (and perhaps far more during the six centuries for which it had originally stood in the Second Age).