Who is The Lord of the Rings?

This has been bugging me for a while so I thought it best to let it out at last :)

Few people stop to think and ask "why is this thing called The Lord of the Rings?". Who is this Lord? In fact no one gets to use the ring much for anything big in "present events" so why this title?

Well maybe the Lord of the Rings is the evil one with the eye? But he doesn't even get close to the ring. So no Lord at all :).

Maybe Frodo? What does he do? He gets the ring thrust upon him, carries it around a while, uses it a bit, doesn't like it much, and finally it becomes *his* lord and makes his mission impossible. From which Gollum saves him at a tiny fraction of the cost - one finger.

Could it be Gandalf? Hell no, he would not get even near to the ring, he is afraid of it and prefers to have little innocent creatures carry it around for him. So no Lord here, either.

What does Gollum do? Well, he devotes almost an entire lifetime to it, guarding it, using it just a little just to feed himself, lives an isolated life and generally does no harm except to food :). He does a great job in hiding the ring from the wrong hands. Then what does he do next? When he finds the ring missing, he sets out to search for it. And he finds it. And he gets both the bad party *and* the good party against himself. He suffers much more than Frodo and company along the journey to Mordor, and finally manages to complete the MISSION of the good party when that party was totally incapacitated. Obviously at the cost of his life.

Where the hell is that pesky Lord of the Rings :)

And who says Golum died while being in possession of the ring :)