Éowyn
Éowyn, daughter of Éomund; the Lady of Rohan; the shieldmaiden; later Lady of Ithilien
Name and Lineage
Éowyn — daughter of Éomund and Théodwyn, niece of King Théoden, and sister of Éomer — was, with her brother, raised in the Golden Hall after the loss of her parents. She was tall and fair, golden-haired and stern; “a grave young woman, and in manner she was rather like an amazon, a shieldmaiden”. In Rohan’s tradition of the Old North this was held honourable, though in her hunger for deeds, “she was denied the arms and the riding she craved” while the men must ride to war.
The Years of the Shadow
- During the years of Gríma Wormtongue, Éowyn suffered his hateful courtship and his slights; she hated the counsellor and his counsels, and grieved that the gender that must be guarded in the halls should not be allowed to ride to the defence of the Mark.
- She loved Aragorn in his coming, seeing in him the king of song she had awaited — a love he could not require, for his heart was given to Arwen and his duty lay in the South. His gentleness, though, won her from the bitterness of the Shadow years.
The Ride to the Pelennor
- The secret ride: when the Riders marched to Gondor, Éowyn, taking on herself the name and bearing of a Rider of the Mark (Dernhelm, as the guards knew), rode with the host, bearing with her Merry, whom Éomer had forbidden to follow. No man guessed at the gift in the harness: “all thought that Dernhelm was of those who guarded the baggage”.
- The Battle of the Pelennor Fields: when the Dark Captain of Mordor — the Witch-king who no man could slay — bore down upon a fallen Théoden and his would-be helpers, Dernhelm defied him. Challenged, the Nazgúl mocked that no living man might hinder him; and the answer came: “But no living man am I! You look upon a woman.” Éowyn the shieldmaiden, with Merry’s stroke of the Barrow-blade at her side, slew the Witch-king — the chief of the Nazgúl — and fulfilled the ancient prophecy, at the cost of the black sickness, “the Black Breath”, that mastered her.
- The healing: carried to the Houses of Healing in Minas Tirith, she was woken by Aragorn (the hands of the king, the healer); and in her waking she turned from her despair — “I desired to die… but I will not now shrink from life” — and gave her heart in the end to Faramir, the Steward’s son, who understood her grief.
Later Years
In the Fourth Age Éowyn became the Lady of Ithilien, dwelling with Faramir in the fair land east of the Anduin that her kin had died to defend: “the usages of the North” were set aside, and she was honoured as “the one person who, in the ‘War of the Ring’, overcame the Witch-king and the Shadow”. She passed beyond the record of the age at last, in the peace of the restored realm.
Significance
Éowyn is the shieldmaiden who breaks the law of her own kin’s custom — “she did not love war, but she was doomed to it” — and who turns the doom of the Witch-king at the greatest battle of the age; her ride is the quiet deed of the lady who would not be left behind, and her healing the sign of the new peace.