Race Black Númenórean Spouse Tarannon Falastur | Title Queen of Gondor Significant other Tarannon Falastur | |
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Books The Fellowship of the Ring (1954), Unfinished Tales (1980) Similar Tarannon Falastur, Castamir the Usurper, Eärnil II, Hyarmendacil I, Arvedui | ||
Queen Berúthiel is a minor fictional character in J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium.
Contents
Mention in Lord of the Rings
The Cats of Queen Berúthiel were at first mention used as a cognitive estrangement device in an off-hand remark in the Lord of the Rings. In The Lord of the Rings, Aragorn uses Berúthiel's cats as a byword for navigation in the dark:
This suggests that Berúthiel and her cats have passed into popular legend by the time of the War of the Ring.
Story in Unfinished Tales
Outside of the brief reference in Lord of the Rings, Berúthiel was first described in Unfinished Tales. She was of Black Númenórean origin, from "the inland city", somewhere south of Umbar. Her marriage to Tarannon Falastur, the King of Gondor from T.A. 840 to 913, is believed to have been arranged for political reasons. She is described by Tolkien as "nefarious, solitary and loveless", and she and Falastur never had any children. Queen Berúthiel had ten cats. The cats were her slaves whom she used as spies. Queen Berúthiel was feared and reviled in Gondor, and at last her husband the King banished her from the realm. She was last seen aboard a ship, with all her cats, sailing away into the southern seas.
Eventually, Falastur separated from her and sent her into exile, at which point she returned to her original home. It may well have been her continual intrigues that led Falastur to expel her. Her name was removed from the Books of the Kings (but not from the memory of Men), and Falastur had her sent out to sea in a ship with her cats:
Discussion
The cats of Queen Berúthiel were mentioned by Tolkien in a 1956 letter as only one of the two references (besides the names of the Blue Wizards) in the whole Lord of the Rings that did not actually exist, on its own plane (of secondary or sub-creational reality). Before the publication of the Unfinished Tales in 1980, the cats were (in the words of Christopher Tolkien) "hitherto wholly mysterious."
In an interview Tolkien had in 1966 he added the following information on her:
Many things have been written about the cats of Queen Berúthiel. Tom Shippey says in J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century:
