É sabido que o romance de Tolkien com sua esposa, Edith, foi sua inspiração para Lúthien e o romance (e tragédia) de Beren e Lúthien. (Tanto que “Beren” e “Lúthien” estão inscritas em suas lápides.)
Mas quem era a musa de Éowyn of Rohan, uma donzela do escudo e o assassino do rei bruxo, e tão crítica para a história?
Não parece que Éowyn seja modelado após qualquer indivíduo específico. Alguns pensam que Éowyn poderia ter sido inspirado pelas mulheres que se infiltrariam na guerra durante a Primeira Guerra Mundial, quando Tolkien lutou. Talvez ele conhecesse pessoalmente uma garota que causou um impacto duradouro no resultado de sua experiência. Possivelmente uma enfermeira, especialmente com a declaração de Éowyn, no final de ROTK, de "ser curadora e amar todas as coisas que crescem".
Em sua tese 2014, Jon Michael Darga diz:
By portraying Éowyn as an idealized woman at war, Tolkien expressly links her with the wartime events surrounding England at the time that he wrote Rings, strengthening the notion that what Éowyn exemplifies is what modern women should strive for. Éowyn is a woman who wants to put in just as much work as the men; the women’s suffrage movement would still have been fresh in Tolkien’s mind, and in English factories “95 per cent of the workers were female, and they included not only all kinds of semi-skilled mechanics, gaugers, examiners and tracers, but also some fully skilled tradeswomen.” Éowyn is also a woman who disguises herself as a man to ride to war; protesting women during World War I often dressed as Joan of Arc and rode on horses during marches because Joan’s “transvestism and military vigilance... subverted the order of femininity... she was and was not a woman... [transcending] the limitations of her sex and... [posing] a challenge to the English and to men... She offered an identification which was neither that of the domestic feminine ideal nor of its obverse, the hysterical fanatic.” [sic]
Tolkien’s Women: The Medieval Modern in The Lord of the Rings
Tão diferente de Lúthien, a interpretação comum de Éowyn é mais simbólica, do que baseada em alguém na vida de Tolkien.