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tolkiens legendarium - How can Tauriel use athelas if she is not a queen?


It is my understanding in Lord of the Rings most folk dismiss athelas, also called kingsfoil, as a useless weed, while it's actually a healing herb. This is probably because by the time of the book's events, they haven't had a king to use it for a long time.


It's not made clear whether kingsfoil only works in the hands of the king of Gondor (or any king for that matter), or if it can be used by any person with less powerful effects. But it is definitely hinted at that it's only truly effective in the hands of a king.


However, in the second Hobbit movie, Tauriel -- an elf and certainly not a queen -- successfully uses kingsfoil to help someone recover from a pretty serious magical wound.


We know Tauriel was invented by Peter Jackson. Did he mess this up, or is this usage of kingsfoil actually supported by the source material?



Answer




Tauriel's use of kingsfoil in the film is a legitimate extrapolation of known LotR canon.


There's nothing definitive on this, but it seems that while athelas is useful in the hands of any healer (Gondorian healers used it for headaches), the people of Gondor have noticed that it's especially effective in the hands of their royal family. This isn't a universal truth that kingsfoil (a name originating in Gondor) is sensitive to royalty, or to the royal Gondorian lineage in particular; it's just a Gondorian observation that their kings are better at using it than the average Gondorian is. In fact, if athelas responded to general royalty, it would not have been a suitable test for heirs to the Gondor throne: the royalty of any nation would pass.


So what made it a decent test? The Gondorian kings have elven blood. The fact that kingsfoil is more effective when used by Gondorian royalty actually supports the idea that an elf would be able to do especially cool stuff with it. This idea is reinforced by the name athelas, which means roughly "healing leaf" in both Elven tongues.


We can conclude that athelas is a healing herb which is most effective in elven hands. "The hands of a king are the hands of a healer" is a roundabout way of saying that the kings of Gondor are part elven, which athelas responds to. "Kingsfoil" is a folk etymology with roots in this ancient lore.


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