The Beauty and Power of Tolkien's Queens Quiz

Answer: Elbereth

In J.R.R. Tolkien's Legendarium, the fourteen Valar are angelic powers appointed by Eru Ilúvatar as guardians of Arda, the World. Manwë, the Lord of the Air, is their King: Varda is his consort, and thus known as the Queen of Arda. Together they dwell on Taniquetil, an immensely tall, white peak in the Blessed Realm of Aman. In the "Valaquenta", the second chapter of "The Silmarillion", Varda is described as the most beautiful of creatures, with the light of Ilúvatar shining out of her face. Her epithets Elentári ("Queen of Stars") and Tintallë ("Kindler") emphasize her connection to stars and light in general. She has often been compared to the Virgin Mary, to whom the Catholic Tolkien was devoted.

Varda was responsible for creating the stars out of the dew of the Two Trees of Valinor, and placing them in the sky in preparation for the Awakening of the Elves - whose name, Eldar, means "people of the stars". Because of that, the Elves held Varda in special reverence, and called her Elbereth Gilthoniel - the Sindarin translation of Elentári Tintallë. In "The Fellowship of the Ring", the four hobbits are saved from a close encounter with one of the Nazgûl by a group of Elves singing a hymn to Elbereth. The name of Elbereth appears in other instances throughout "The Lord of the Rings": however, though she is mentioned as Varda only once, in the song with which Galadriel bids farewell to the Fellowship.

The three wrong answers are all flowers that appear in "The Lord of the Rings"; Elanor is also the name given by Sam to his eldest child.

Answer: a tree

Yavanna means "Giver of Fruits", while her epithet Kementári means "Queen of the Earth". Presiding over all things growing on the Earth, Yavanna was the spouse of Aulë the Smith, the Vala concerned with rocks and metals, the substance of the Earth. In the "Valaquenta", it is stated that she often took the form of a very tall tree crowned by the sun, with its roots in the waters, and a golden dew spilling from its branches.

In "The Silmarillion", the most remarkable of Yavanna's acts (besides populating the Earth with all sorts of plants) was her singing the Two Trees of Valinor, Telperion and Laurelin, into being. The Silmarils, crafted by the mighty Elf Feänor, captured the light of these Trees, which was eventually lost when they were attacked by the monstrous spider Ungoliant. When Aulë, before the awakening of the Elves, took it upon himself to create the Dwarves - defying the will of Ilúvatar - Yavanna pleaded with the One, thus prompting the creation of the Ents, the Shepherds of the Trees.

Although Yavanna does not appear in "The Lord of the Rings", one of the Maiar (lesser angelic beings) that served her, Aiwendil, is mentioned there, in "The Hobbit" and in "Unfinished Tales": he was one of the Istari (Wizards) sent to Middle-earth to fight Sauron, and was known there as Radagast the Brown.

Answer: Lúthien

Melian ("beloved gift") was a Maia, one of the lesser angelic beings that helped the Valar in their stewardship of Arda. Like Yavanna, she had a deep affinity for trees and forests, as well as birds and their song: indeed, Melian was surpassingly skilled at songs of enchantment. In the forest of Nan Elmoth, she met the Elf Elu Thingol, and became his wife, in the only known pairing of one of the Ainur with one of the Children of Ilúvatar. Together they founded the forest kingdom of Doriath, the Land of the Fence, protected by Melian's magic against intruders.

Melian and Thingol had only one child, Lúthien Tinúviel ("nightingale"), who was said to be the most beautiful of all the Children of Ilúvatar, and possessed many of her mother's powers. When she fell in love with Beren, a mortal Man, and he died in the quest for one of the Silmarils, Lúthien gave up her immortality in order not to be separated from him. The kingdom of Doriath eventually fell to an army of Dwarves, and Thingol was killed, brought down by his arrogance and greed for the Silmaril. After her husband's death, Melian left Middle-earth forever, returning to Valinor to mourn her losses, and removing her protection from Doriath.

Inspired by Tolkien's own love for his wife, Edith, the tale of Beren and Lúthien is mentioned various times in "The Lord of the Rings", particularly in relation to Arwen, Elrond's daughter, who was said to resemble Lúthien (her great-great-grandmother) almost uncannily.

Nimloth was the spouse of Dior, Beren and Lúthien's son. Elwing, the spouse of Eärendil, was her daughter, while Idril was the daughter of Turgon, the king of the hidden city of Gondolin.

Answer: she was exhausted after giving birth to Fëanor

Míriel Serindë ("the Broideress") was so named because of her extraordinary ability in needlecraft. Though her story in "The Silmarillion" is related relatively briefly, the eleventh volume of "The History of Middle-earth", titled "Morgoth's Ring" (1994), contains many more details about her and the consequences of her actions. In fact, not only was she the first of the immortal Elves to die when still living in the Undying Lands, but she did so of her own free will - a decision that had an enormous impact on later events.

Described as slender, graceful and silver-haired, with a soft and sweet voice, Míriel bore her husband Finwë, king of the Noldor (one of the three clans of Elves that migrated from Middle-earth to Valinor after the Awakening), a son whom she named Fëanáro (Fëanor in Sindarin), meaning "Spirit of Fire'. The birth of this immensely talented (though deeply flawed) Elf sapped her physical and mental energy so much that she lost the will to live, and her spirit departed her sleeping body, passing into the Halls of Mandos, the Vala of Death. As she refused to be reborn, Míriel and Finwë's marriage bond was severed, and after some time he was allowed to marry the golden-haired Indis of the Vanyar, with whom he had two sons, Fingolfin and Finarfin. Fëanor's unhappiness at his father's remarriage led to the chain of tragic events narrated in "The Silmarillion".

In "Morgoth's Ring", it is said that, after Finwë was killed by Morgoth, Míriel's body and spirit eventually reunited. Then she left the world of the living altogether, dwelling in the House of Vairë, the Valië who was responsible for weaving tapestries depicting the history of Arda.

Answer: his love of the sea

The sad story of Aldarion and Erendis in the 1980 volume "Unfinished Tales" bears the subtitle of "The Mariner's Wife". Offering a rare glimpse of the time before both the rulers and the people of Númenor were slowly corrupted by arrogance and greed, it is also the remarkably realistic story of the slow disintegration of a marriage between two strong-willed people with ultimately little in common. "The Mariner's Wife" also makes use of a common trope of fairytale romances - the union between two people of unequal status. In spite of the Cinderella-like story of the girl from a modest background who wins the love of a prince, the story of Aldarion and Erendis boils down to an irreconcilable clash of wills that sows the seeds for Númenor's decline and fall.

A beautiful young woman with dark hair and grey eyes, Erendis came from a family that, while not noble, was descended from the ancient House of Bëor. She fell in love with Aldarion, the heir to the throne of Númenor, the first time she saw him: however, the prince's deep-seated love of the sea - in contrast with Erendis' love of forests and trees, which she wanted to protect from the axes of shipbuilders - drove a wedge between the pair even before their marriage. When, after their wedding, he spent more time sailing and exploring the vast, uncharted lands of Middle-earth than he did with her, Erendis was angered, and the couple separated.

In her bitterness and disappointment, Erendis turned her only daughter, Ancalimë (who would become Númenor's first Ruling Queen), against men. Though the narrative is incomplete, the ending of the story was reconstructed by Christopher Tolkien from fragments and notes - in which it is said that Erendis, abandoned by everyone, "perished in water". Aldarion, on the other hand, outlived her by over 100 years.

Answer: she was drowned in the Great Wave

Míriel Ar-Zimraphel was the only child of Tar-Palantír, twenty-fourth king of Númenor, who had tried to bring back the use of Quenya, the language of the High Elves, and restore good relations with both the Elves and the Valar. Míriel was his rightful heir, as Númenor allowed women to become Queens Regnant: however, her cousin Pharazôn forced her into marriage, and usurped the throne that should have been hers.

Once he became king, Ar-Pharazôn launched an attack on Mordor, challenging Sauron for the title of Lord of Men, and eventually taking him prisoner and bringing him to Númenor. There Sauron corrupted the king into worshiping Morgoth in order to obtain immortality, and then - when Ar-Pharazôn was already old - persuading him to launch an attack against the Undying Lands to wrest immortality from the Valar. As told in the "Akallabêth", the story of Nùmenor's downfall in "The Silmarillion", and Tolkien's own reinterpretation of the myth of Atlantis, Ilúvatar intervened to prevent the sacrilege, sinking the island beneath the waves of the sea. Míriel tried to escape her doom by climbing to the top of the Meneltarma, Númenor's holy mountain, but the Great Wave caught and drowned her - as it did everyone else on the island.

Answer: cats

The first (and, for a long time, only) mention of Queen Berúthiel and her cats occurs when the members of the Fellowship are journeying through the Mines of Moria, and Aragorn compares Gandalf's skill in finding his way home in the dark to that of the legendary cats. A short but detailed explanation of the identity of this mysterious Queen finally appeared in "Unfinished Tales", in a note to the section titled "The Istari". She was the wife of Tarannon Falastur, twelfth King of Gondor, described as "nefarious, solitary and loveless" - a sinister figure of witch-queen always dressed in black and silver, dwelling in a bare house surrounded by funereal trees and tormented sculptures, away from the sight and sound of the sea she hated. In a 1966 interview, Tolkien compared her to the Norse goddess Skadi, a mountain-dweller who made the mistake of marrying Njörd, the god of the sea, and eventually left him because the sound of the gulls kept her awake.

Queen Berúthiel had ten cats - nine black ones and a white one - that were her slaves, trained to discover the darkest secrets of the realm of Gondor. Needless to say, people hated and feared them. While in the note it is said that Tarannon eventually exiled her from Gondor by setting her adrift at sea on a ship with her cats, in the interview Tolkien stated that she had gone back to the "inland city" she had come from. Not surprisingly, Tarannon died childless, and was succeeded by his nephew. Berúthiel's name was erased from the Book of Kings, but her cats had already become proverbial.

In one of the early versions of "The Silmarillion", a huge black cat named Tevildo, Prince of Cats, appears as a forerunner of Sauron (who in later versions was able to shapeshift into a werewolf). This detail, and a couple of remarks in Tolkien's letters, have given rise to the belief that he disliked cats.

Answer: Gimli

In "The History of Galadriel and Celeborn", published as part of "Unfinished Tales", Tolkien clearly states that, when Galadriel and her spouse returned to Lórien in the middle of the Third Age, they did not take the titles of King or Queen, as they regarded themselves as the guardians of the small but fair realm. Galadriel came from a royal house, and her father Finarfin was King of the Noldor in Valinor. In her youth, she had been extremely ambitious, and her main reason for leaving the Undying Lands was to carve out a realm of her own in Middle-earth. However, after the long ages of her exile, she had come to recognize the dangers inherent to power. This more fully developed text contrasts with the last chapter of "The Silmarillion", in which Tolkien calls Galadriel "a queen of the woodland Elves".

In "The Fellowship of the Ring", Galadriel refers to herself as a Queen in the episode of her temptation by Frodo after she allows him and Sam to look into her mirror: "Instead of a Dark Lord you would set up a Queen". On the other hand, during his impassioned description of the Glittering Caves behind Helm's Deep, Gimli - who was deeply devoted to her - says that the marbles there glow like "the living hands of Queen Galadriel".

Answer: No

Éowyn was a member of the royal house of Rohan on her mother's side. Théodwyn was King Théoden's younger sister, who had married the valiant warrior Èomund, First Marshal of the Mark. As her uncle was a widower, she fulfilled some of the duties of a queen, and was invested with the task of ruling the realm when the King and the Fellowship left for Helm's Deep.

After her fateful encounter with the fearsome Witch-King of Angmar - whom she killed with the help of Merry Brandybuck - Éowyn lay near death for some time, and was healed by Aragorn. While in the Houses of Healing, she met Faramir, Steward of Gondor, and fell in love with him. Realizing that her love for Aragorn stemmed from her desire for fame and status, she told Faramir that she no longer wanted to be either a queen or a warrior, but would instead rejoice in healing and making things grow.

Following Aragorn's crowning, Faramir became Prince of Ithilien. Éowyn and he married and settled in that fair land east of the Anduin River. In "The Peoples of Middle-Earth" (1996), it is said that they had a son, named Elboron.

Answer: a white jewel

As the daughter of Elrond (Beren and Lúthien's great-grandson) and Celebrían (Galadriel's only daughter), Arwen had both Elvish and human ancestry. Like her father before her, she had been granted the choice between Elvish immortality and human mortality - also referred to as the Gift of Men.

In her only speaking appearance in "The Lord of the Rings" (with the notable exception of Appendix A), she meets Frodo by the fountain of the White Tree of Minas Tirith, and gives him a white jewel on a chain. The jewel was meant to help him in those times when the memory of his suffering as Ring-Bearer troubled him. In the last chapter of the book, it is said that Frodo always wore the jewel, and was often seen fingering it.

Like her ancestress Lúthien, whom she resembled, Arwen chose mortality in order not to be separated from Aragorn, her husband. However, she found the Gift of Men bitter to receive, and the account of her lonely death of a broken heart is one of the saddest things Tolkien ever wrote.