At the height of the Temple of Delphi's prosperity, many people came every year seeking prophecies, including Oedipus. Once ordinary people learned what the future held, they would try to change it. Yet it was precisely because he believed the prophecy and left his adoptive father's kingdom that he fulfilled it.
Lady Galadriel had a water mirror that showed many visions. Perhaps she had seen the scene of herself meeting Frodo.
That mirror had also shown her another future for the Golden Wood. Like the Shire Frodo saw in the water mirror, it had been destroyed, and its people enslaved.
So imagine this: if a traveler who had journeyed to Delphi encountered a priestess like Lady Galadriel, how would he introduce himself?
The same question applied after the runaway slave Zhezhi defeated the previous king and became the King of the Forest. How would he introduce himself to the next runaway slave, Challenger? Now, what would your answer be?
If you saw yourself as a runaway slave and feared others would take away the small patch of freedom currently belonging to you, that was much the same as drawing a prison around yourself. Once you left the boundaries of the "King of the Forest," you would become the runaway slave you once were again. You were only "free" within this prison with its invisible iron bars.
In the Fellowship of the Ring, there was a ranger named Aragon. The only proof of his identity was a ring.
For all anyone knew, Aragon might have taken that ring from a corpse and put it on himself. Then he simply went along with the mistake and played the role of the heir to the King of Men.
The "King of the Forest" first had to persuade the challenging slave: "You must believe