Queen Berúthiel

Queen Berúthiel is a fictional character in J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium.

Berúthiel was first mentioned in Unfinished Tales. She was of Black Númenórean origin, from "the inland city", somewhere south of Umbar. Her marriage to Tarannon Falastur is believed to have been arranged for political reasons. She is described by Tolkien as being "nefarious, solitary and loveless", and she and Falastur never had any children. Eventually, Falastur separated from her and sent her into exile, at which point she returned to her original home.

Berúthiel was most notorious for her cats—in particular, her use of them as spies. This is described in the Unfinished Tales:

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:

In an interview Tolkien had in 1966 he added the following information on her:

After her return home, little is known about Berúthiel, except that she re-adopted Black Númenórean culture and practices.

Later References

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.

A Tolkien-comedy website makes the (intentionally) false claim that Berúthiel appears in The Lord of the Rings as Galadriel's sister. In the run-up to the Peter Jackson movies, the Sunday Times (UK) printed an article treating this as fact. 1

References

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