The Stone Queen or Queen of the Chessboard Castle also represents Sovereignty.  Her gwyddbwyll board is lost by Peredur, who subsequently strives to recover it and win back the queen's patronage.  The board represents the land itself.

She is noble and practical; she understands the relationship of all life to the land; she imparts a sense of nurture and security to all who encounter her." - Caitlin & John Matthews

"Stable, trustworthy, a consciousness steeped in altruism, especially devoted to family and friends.  The physical being glows with a healthy, joyful desire to advance upward.  A beautiful generosity of Spirit exhibited by the Queen of Pentacles inspires all who enter her sphere.  Intelligent, highly practical; can also be a very successful businesswoman, loved by those she "governs"". - Stephen Walter Sterling

Queens are associated with inner and personal control, competency, maturity, introspection, self-awareness, nurturance, healing and fulfillment.  Pentacles are associated with the material world, acquisitions of wealth and possessions, our connection to Earth and Nature, sensation, matters pertaining to the physical plane and the element of earth.  Pentacles can also be connected with practicality, groundedness and being realistic.  The Queen of Pentacles is a wise and mature figure.  She traditionally represents wealth in material things, cultivated relationships and experiences, practicality and comfortableness with wealth.  Hard work that paid off in a high level of competence and security; having a skill that can be used to earn income at any time.  Abilities are recognized and documented.  Reaching a point where a particular pattern of health (or ill health) has become totally integrated into the body.  Home, career or financial security is established.

This queen seems to possess all those wonderful, nurturing, maternal properties we associate with women in general and mothers specifically.  Usually this very fact would send me screaming from the room.  But I've always liked the Queen of Pentacles and associated with her on a deep level.  This is very interesting to me because in the past I have tended to react negatively to The Empress and in some respects the Queen of Pentacles is The Empress on a lower level.  But the Queen of Pentacles doesn't trigger the negative associations for me that The Empress does.  I think that's because her physical presence doesn't trigger me the way the often visibly pregnant Empress does.  In fact the only queen I used to react that negatively to was the Queen of Cups. 

In both cases it was for the same reason - mother issues.  What I am finding is that as I resolve more of my mother issues, I am becoming more comfortable with these archetypes and energies.  Although they can still be a bit overwhelming.  I guess I just don't respond well to an all-encompassing mother's love.  I remember my mother claiming that I just wasn't a cuddly child.  If she tried to talk baby-talk to me I would look at her with disdain (this is as an infant).  So as I grew older I fought even harder against it.  And that's they type of love my mother is best at providing.  She wants to be needed, depended upon.  I don't depend on others, or at least I hate admitting I depend on others. 

So on one level, the Queen of Pentacles/Stone Queen may be letting me know that my sovereignty over my own life is not threatened by admitting that I need help sometimes.  I don't mind being the queen who bestows her beneficence on others but I don't necessarily like being the recipient of such beneficence.  I think this is connected to my childhood and experiencing a lot of financial hardships growing up.  It wasn't so much that we were poor (a lot of folks in my neighborhood were poor) but we had several incidences of having to move because we didn't pay the rent or didn't have enough money to pay for the groceries.  I remember being so embarrassed and humiliated when that would happen.  But regardless of what happened or why, the bottom line is that I developed a strained relationship with money and admitting I need help.

As I've matured and grown I have gotten more comfortable with money and admitting I need assistance.  I have to let others be a Queen of Pentacles to me.  And that can be a really challenging thing for me.  I think it's because in so many ways I have a more typically masculine approach to some things - that rugged individualist mythos America loves to promote.  So for a long time I viewed asking for support or assistance as a sign of weakness.  And in my life experience you did not want to be perceived as weak.

But the more I explore the Queens, the more I see their strengths.  In the case of the Queen of Pentacles, her strength is that she has the spirit, will and ability to nurture and knows how to allocate her resources so that she is not depleted.  These are qualities I can certainly use in my life.  I have a tendency to overcommit or to have swings where I will be too generous and then become stingy as a reaction.  I need to ponder some of this stuff a while longer.