As I have previously noted, I am one of those people who has read The Lord of the Rings a lot. However, I’ve never studied it as a text; and because I first read it at the rather impressionable age of 12, I have never sat down and thoroughly interrogated Tolkien’s choices and decisions. To read Nick Hubble’s intriguing essay about Galadriel, then - showing how she fits with the idea of the Fairy Queen, what that might mean for her taking the One Ring, and what her position says about women and elves in Middle-earth more generally - was to look at this text, and this character, with fresh eyes.