After Théoden is laid to rest with the highest honour ever given to a king of Rohan Éomer is proclaimed as the new king. He stands before his people and all his guests as lord of his hall and speaks of joy.

“Faramir, Steward of Gondor, and Prince of Ithilien, asks that Éowyn Lady of Rohan should be his wife, and she grants it full willing. Therefore they shall be trothplighted before you all.”

And then, at last, Éowyn is able to look Aragorn in the eyes without shame or fear and she speaks to him: “Wish me joy, my liege-lord and healer!”

And so the story that began when Aragorn aided Gandalf in the freeing of Théoden from bondage comes to the happiest of endings. Of course this shared story ended when Éowyn gave her heart to Faramir in the gardens of the Houses of Healing and when Aragorn and Arwen were wed on Midsummer Day but at this moment in Meduseld where the story began it ends in joy with the words that they speak freely to each other. For when Éowyn asks for Aragorn’s blessing he is able, freely, to give it.

“I have wished thee joy ever since first I saw thee. It heals my heart to see thee now in bliss.”

It was not only Théoden who was in bondage in the dark halls of Meduseld but all his people too. His shame was theirs. His sense of impending doom lay heavy upon them also and none more so than the one who most truly loved him for Éowyn loved him as a daughter. It was not just her own unhappiness and shame that she felt as Wormtongue’s grip grew stronger. It was her misery to have to watch a good, kind and brave man who had always loved her shrink into a lizard like creature under the sway of his enemies and to feel helpless as she watched it. But when she saw Théoden freed from bondage and able to fulfil his destiny as king this was denied to her. She was required to fulfil the ancient female role of waiting for men to return either in victory or defeat and she was denied the love of a man who might have given her glory and happiness. Tolkien has been accused of writing stories in which this traditional gender expectation is played out but this is not the story of Éowyn or Tolkien’s greatest female character, Lúthien of Doriath, who fights alongside Beren, her man, as a warrior who is at the very least his equal. Like Lúthien Éowyn refuses to accept the imprisonment that those who think they act in her best interests impose upon her. She follows her heart taking the way of a warrior into battle and following the man who she loves best of all standing by him at the very end defending him against the Lord of the Nazgûl on the Pelennor Fields as his body lays broken beneath his horse.

This is why Aragorn is able to call her back as she lies in the Houses of Healing. Her True Self has never given way to despair. When he anoints her with athelas “an air wholly fresh and clean and young, as if it had not before been breathed by any living thing… came new-made from snowy mountains high beneath a dome of stars, or from shores of silver far away washed by seas of foam”. Éowyn has remained entirely true to herself. Aragorn may have been a dream but it was for Théoden that she was ready to lay down her life. And then when she meets Faramir she realises that she is free to say yes to life and to happiness.

Éowyn is a woman of truth who has never compromised her True Self and although brought to the very edge of despair did not give way to this at the end. It is her love that has guider  her most truly and so she can look Aragorn in the eye. There is nothing for her to be ashamed of. She has given her love freely as her brother declared before the company and Aragorn too can bless her without shame. Both are true lovers indeed.