Queen Berúthiel is a Childless Cat Lady!

And that's sorta kinda canonical Tolkien (depending on how you define "canonical")

Photo by Jan Canty on Unsplash

This post is a part of an informal series of stacks that are process pieces for a new book project about women and Tolkien's legendarium, its adapations, and transformative works. Process pieces are those early early drafts where I scribble down some thoughts and start putting together a working bibliography of primary and/or secondary sources on the topic (“working” means I’ve found the sources, read through them or some of them, but have not begun to read deeply, or analyze or engage with the arguments and ideas yet).

Her first and only appearance in the “canon” (published by Tolkien during his lifetime):

In “A Journey in the Dark,” the group is working their way through Moria:

‘Do not be afraid!,’ said Aragorn. There was a pause longer than usual, and Gandalf and Gimli were whispering together; the others were crowded behind, waiting anxiously. ‘Do not be afraid! I have been with him on many a journey, if never on one so dark; and there are tales in Rivendell of greater deeds of his than any that I have seen. He will not go astray — if there is any path to find. He has led us in here aginst our fears, but he will lead us out again, at whatever cost to himself. He is surer of finding the way home in a blind night than the cats of Queen Berúthiel.’ (FR, 2, iv, 311)

Queen Berúthiel caught my attention in my very first reading (1965) and has resurfaced on a number of occasions in great part because of the lack of information about her in The Lord of the Rings. Even with just that one brief reference, she stood out: she was a Queen, and, more importantly, she had cats (plural!). She’s (possibly?) the only character in the legendarium who has cats (if you know of any others, please let me know in the comments!)

And although it turns out that she was married (but no children!), there was no mention of her husband in Tolkien’s first introduction of her (which is as an allusion, or reference, to a legendary/mythic? character, mentioned by Aragorn in the depths of Mordor with an implied comparison between the cats and Gandalf who is even more sure of finding his way home in the dark). I suspect there might be more than one point of similarity between Gandalf and cats now that I start thinking about it.

So many of the female characters in Tolkien’s work appear only in the context of the male character(s) with whom they have a relationship/relationships (don’t even get me started on Beren getting top billing in “Beren and Lúthien” titles when, as far as I’m concerned, she is the one who totally rocks the story in every possible way) that “the cats of Queen Berúthiel” seems almost unique. (Ioreth is the only other one that I can think of at the moment.)

It suddenly dawned one me a couple of days ago that Berúthiel was likely one of the earliest (in the chronology of Middle-earth) Childless Cat Ladies (C.C.L.)! As a C.C.L. myself, I realized I needed to look further into her story, whether in Tolkien’s work or in transformative fan works, or, as it turns out, in games).

Surprisingly, or perhaps not (fandom!), turns out that a number of people have written about her and the cats.

Marcel Bülles has an excellent essay, “What Happened to the Cats of Queen Berúthiel,” in which he quotes from, summarizes, and links to a number of good sources about her and the cats, including the posthumously published sources. As he notes, it’s a great example of Tolkien’s worldbulding and own process that he spent time thinking about a character who is mentioned only once in passing and even began to develop her backstory in discussions/interviews, letters, and earlier drafts.

What I am most interested in is the question of what fans have done with the character, specially transformative fandom. Not surprisingly, the Silmarillion Writer’s Guild has a page of fanworks that are tagged with “Berúthiel,” only one (of the seven) of which is also found on the Archive of Our Own where I found five fics using the search term “Queen Queen Berúthiel, Queen Beruthiel.”

Working Bibliography

Book_of_Kells. “Working behind the scenes.” Archive of Our Own. 2 Nov. 2014. Accessed 2 Nov. 2024. Part 3 of There are many paths to tread. Archive Warning: Graphic Depictions of Violence.

Bülles, Marcel. “What Happened to the Cats of Queen Berúthiel.” The Tolkienist. 13 June 2023. Updated 9 Jan. 2024.

“Fanworks tagged with Berúthiel.” Silmarillion Writer’s Guild. Accessed 2 Nov. 2024.

TheLioninMyBed. “That Men Wish Most to Keep Hidden.” Archive of Our Own. 21 June 2016. Accessed 2 Nov. 2024.

Satismagic. “About the Nature of Legends or Whisperings of a Ghost.” Archive of Our Own. 7 Nov. 2008. Accessed 2 Nov. 2024. Archive warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence; Rape/Non-Con.

Zdenka. “Killed With Kindness.” Archive of Our Own. 2 Mar. 2012. Accessed 2 Nov. 2024.

zopyrus. “Instead of a Dark Lord You Would Have a Queen, or, Baby Aragorn Totally Had a Cat Phase.” Archive of Our Own. 1 Apr. 2014. Accessed 2 Nov. 2024.

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I think I’m going to be pushing back on this idea of her as one of the Eeeeevil Female Characters (Black Númenórean, hating/torturing the cats [AS IF cats would hang around and help somebody treating them so badly!], becoming a byword for evil in Gondor that hangs on for centuries), etc. etc. A MONSTER in other words. Some of the transformative works challenge that perspective on her, and of course there’s the long misogynistic history in Europe of associating cats with witches, the devil, etc. The superstitions associated especially with black cats still exist today.

So I think the stories of the cats and the Queen that were passed down to Aragorn are one of the numerous examples of structural/systemic sexism in Tolkien’s work, and I am definitely on Queen Berúthiel’s, and the cats’, side!

Photo by Marie-Pier Morin on Unsplash