Bêlit

Bêlit appears within Howard's single canonical short story "Queen of the Black Coast" (Weird Tales, 1934). In that narrative she is an accomplished pirate-captain, native of Shem, who rules a fleet of raiders from the ship Tigress. The story relates her meeting and instant love-affair with Conan, their joint career of piracy, her seizure of a priceless ruby necklace in the ruins of a city of the "old ones," and her subsequent death at the hands of an "ancient winged ape-like creature" which later hanged her from the yardarm; Howard's tale also reports that she temporarily returns from death to protect Conan from that same creature. Later pastiches and comics expand her exploits, but Howard's original corpus contains only the single short story in which she lives, dies, and briefly returns.

Howard's prose depicts Bêlit as a Shemite woman whose description emphasizes an arresting, eroticized physical presence: "slender, yet formed like a goddess: at once lithe and voluptuous," wearing essentially only a broad silken girdle with sandals and jewelry; passages speak of "white ivory limbs and the ivory globes of her breasts," "rich black hair" falling in rippling clusters, and "dark eyes" that burn on Conan. This formulation is Howard's literary depiction in the story and is echoed in later comic artwork, which offers varied visual renderings but does not introduce a consistent alternative physical canon.

Bêlit possesses no documented supernatural powers in the primary sources; she is characterized as an expert sailor, commander, and pirate captain who directs raids along the Black Coast and northward to Zingara. She commands the respect and awe of an all-male crew, is a fearsome warrior in battle, and instructs Conan in seamanship and piracy. Narratively she is strongly avaricious—Howard's text links her passion for treasure to plot consequences—and her life intersects with supernatural antagonists (the winged ape-like creature that kills her and her reported brief post-mortem manifestation to defend Conan) but these are external events rather than intrinsic abilities.