Top Ten Tuesdays is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and The Bookish and this week’s theme is the favorite heroines from books.
1. Mara from The Empire Trilogy – My absolute favorite female character in the entire fantasy genre. She is a bad ass through and through. She is not the typical sword wielding fantasy genre heroine, no, she wins by her sheer genius and diplomacy skills.
2. Melian from The Silmarillion – She is a Maia, the wife of elf king Thingol. She laid the girdle of Melian to protect the kingdom of Doriath from Morgoth’s evil forces. Her husband, quite unfortunately, failed to heed her wisdom.
3. Arya Stark from A Song of Ice and Fire – She is my favorite female character from the whole series. I think she’s everyone else’s favorite, too.
3. Princess Carline from The Riftwar Saga – She was a spoiled little princess in the beginning but much later she became a sharp witted, funny woman, especially in her mature age.
4. Yavanna Kementari from The Silmarillion – Spouse of the smith god Aule, she is the goddess of nature who gave life to trees and plants. When Aule’s children (the dwarves) started cutting her trees, she begged Manwe, the King of the Vala and got him to create the Ents to protect the woods.
5. Galadriel from The Lord of The Rings – The embodiment of beauty and wisdom, who doesn’t love Galadriel?
6. Miana from The Broken Empire – The only character who has a sharper tongue than Jorg. I had a laughing fit when she made her snarky remarks about ‘Jorg the Quick’ in King of Thorns. She definitely had the funniest lines in King of Thorns.
7. Luna Lovegood from Harry Potter – She may be an outcast and picked on as a weirdo but she’s quite smart and very compassionate. She is the perfect school friend.
8. Molly Weasley from Harry Potter – She kicks serious arse in the last book, wouldn’t you agree?
9. The Empress of Kesh from Krondor’s Sons duology – The old lady has a sharp tongue and an even sharper mind.
10. Esmenet from The Prince of Nothing – One of the strongest female characters I’ve seen in fantasy. She has flaws and makes mistakes but she’s awesome anyway.
What is your top ten? Share your blog link in the comments below!
Leona's Blog of Shadows 
Molly Weasley! One of my favorite literary moms (and therefore, heroines). 😀
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Molly is so awesome, she was my favorite grown female characer throughout the whole series!
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Ok, Molly is an awesome choice she really does kick arse!
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Great list! I love that you included Molly. 🙂 I do like Arya, but I think Sansa and Margaery are my favourite Game of Thrones ladies.
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on a second thoughy I regret not listing Olenna Tyrell but it was so hard to cjoose!
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Great list! I can’t believe I forgot about Molly Weasley!! Hermione’s getting all the love for this Top Ten Tuesday and while I can’t argue, there were so many other great heroines in HP. I loved Ginny, Tonks, Luna, & Professor McGonagall. I agree about Galadriel, there’s just so many men in the Hobbit/Lord of the Rings, I forget about the women xD. Arya Stark is also amazing!
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Arya and Luna both remind me of the aspects of my childhood 🙂 Oh I had a hard choice between Tonks and Molly Weasley, too!
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I love your list! I completely forgot about Princess Carline and Galadriel! I put Daenerys on my list but Arya should’ve been there too…it’s so hard to pick just 10 though!
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I made an informal / mental list after seeing others’ posts today. A little surprised I’d forgotten about the Song Of Fire And Ice ladies (my favorites are Dany and Arya), but these were the first 11 (yes, 11 *lol*) I thought of:
Yelena Zaltana from Maria V. Snyder’s Study series
Katsa from Kristin Cashore’s Graceling
Fire from Kristin Cashore’s Fire
Nefertari from Michelle Moran’s The Heretic Queen
Katniss Everdeen from Suzanne Collin’s Hunger Games trilogy
Hermoine Granger from J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series
Bright Dawn from Scott O’Dell’s Black Star, Bright Dawn
Karana from Scott O’Dell’s Island Of The Blue Dolphins
Liesel Meminger from Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief
Jane Eyre from Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre
Lyra Belacqua from Phillip Pullman’s Dark Materials trilogy
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Forgot to say that I love your choices of Arya, Luna, Molly Weasley, and Galadriel! Molly’s one of the most awesome literary mothers I’ve met. 🙂
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I think Molly Weasley is the coolest mom ever!
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I am meaning to read His Dark Materials, Lyra was listed in a lot of blogs today!
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Molly is a great choice – and Arya – I love that character!
Lynn 😀
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Arya reminds me of my own childhood. I was a tomboy like her! She is awesome. The teaser chapter featuring Arya from The Winds of Winter was superb! Did you read it?
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I’m just going to confess that I’ve only read GRRM’s first book in Game of Thrones – I know it’s so bad and I loved it as well! I WILL catch up!
Lynn 😀
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Oh, you gotta read the rest and see how she kicks arse, but if you watched the show you already know most of it 🙂
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Molly Weasley is something to behold for sure. And Luna is someone I would really like to be friends with. She’s so genuine and a little weird, but I just love her for it.
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She is the smart and weird geek girl and such an awesome friend!
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This is an outstanding list!
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Thank you! I had a hard time choosing, I could come up with a top 20 easily I think 🙂
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I thought Miana ended up being an awesome character – I loved snarky she was too! Arya and Asha my two favorite females from ASOIAF.
I would like to mention Isabella (Lady Trent) from the Memior of Lady Trent series. I’m enjoying those books a lot.
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Arya is one of my favorite GoT characters, but I haven’t yet read the books so I wasn’t able to put her on my list. I love that you included other Harry Potter characters besides the obvious Hermione.
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Your list reminds me I need to read The Silmarillion. I just brought a copy home last year but I haven’t made very much progress in it. Tolkien made up some really amazing women in his books.
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I just bought the Silmarillion, I really need to read it soon! I was considering adding Arwen or Galadriel to my list as well -if only I could’ve chosen 11. Luna Lovegood is one of my favorite HP characters, she’s just so quirky and funny. And Arya Stark is my favorite GoT character.
Great list!
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I had a bit of difficulty the first time I read The Silmarillion, but re-reading was better than even the best chocolate cake in the world! Everyone criticizes Tolkien for the lack of female characters but The Silmarillion is full of great female characters. Also some of the most memorable characters in the whole fantasy genre. No one was ever able to write a character quite like Feanor again… He is something else.
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Lady Galadriel is *such* a cool choice! As is Molly Weasley (and Luna) – I bet most of us just listed Hermione and forgot about all the other great women from that series!
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Everyone listed Herminone but if I was in school I’d rather have a gentle and sweet friend like Luna rather than a bossy one like Hermione 🙂
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Im gonna back you up on Miana, she was one of my favorite secondary characters in Broken Empire. I wish she had more story development. Out of all the big name books right now Sansa form ASoIF is my favorite. Shes a fantastic well written character. Also, I saw that comment on reddit knocking the women in WoT, ignore it. WoT is a fantastic series with great characters.
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I love Bitterblue in Kristin Cashore’s novel (of the same name.)
Malian in Helen Lowe’s The Heir of Night series is awesome, too.
I really like Karou in Daughter of Smoke & Bone (by Laini Taylor) as well.
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