Song of Years

Lúthien Tinúviel is a fictional character in the fantasy-world Middle-earth of the English author J. R. R.  Tolkien (author of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy). Lúthien is a Telerin (Sindarin) princess, the only child of Elu Thingol, king of Doriath, and his queen, Melian the Maia.

Lúthien's romance with the mortal man Beren is one of the greatest stories of the Elder Days and was considered the "chief" of the Silmarillion tales by Tolkien himself. She is described as the "Morning Star" of the Elves, a term meaning that she was the most beautiful of all her people at the height of their glory.

The name Lúthien appears to mean "enchantress" in a Beleriandic dialect of Sindarin but it can also be translated "blossom". Tinúviel was a name given to her by Beren. It literally means "daughter of the starry twilight", which signifies “nightingale”. She fell in love with Beren, a man of the House of Beor.

Their relationship was doomed from the beginning as Lúthien was not just the cherished only daughter of Thingol, the first and most powerful Elven-king in Beleriand, but also the daughter of a Maia, a powerful angelic being, who had existed since before time and creation itself. Beren on the other hand, was a mortal man on the run from the Dark Lord Morgoth and an outlaw, without father and exiled from the land of his kin. Whilst Lúthien had lived for thousands of years in the world already, Beren was young even by human standards.

J.R.R. Tolkien, in a letter to his son Christopher, dated 11 July 1972, requested that below the inscription for his wife Edith's grave was for this to be written:

"for she was (and knew she was) my Lúthien."

Edith and J.R.R. Tolkien lie in Wolvercote Cemetery (North Oxford). Their gravestone shows the association of Lúthien with Edith, and Tolkien himself with Beren. The stone reads: