The Chronicles of Narnia

Prince Caspian by C. S. Lewis, 1951.

This book starts with the four Pevensie children from the previous book in the series heading to their boarding schools by train. The girls are going to one school, and the boys are going to another. As they’re waiting for their trains at the station, they suddenly feel themselves being pulled and dragged by some unseen force. They feel like it’s magic of some kind, and they all join hands to stay together. The next thing they know, they’re in a forest. They wonder if they might have returned to Narnia.

They explore the area and realize that they are on an island. When they search for food, they find an abandoned apple orchard and the ruins of a castle. Something about the ruins seems strangely familiar to the children. When Susan finds a golden chess piece, they realize that the castle is the ruins of Cair Paravel, the castle where they used to live as kings and queens during their previous time in Narnia. The children are sad that the castle is now ruins. They’re also puzzled at how it can be ruins when they last saw it intact, and when they lived there, the castle was on a peninsula, not an island. Even though their previous adventures only took place a year before for them, it looks like many years, maybe centuries, have passed in Narnia.

They find their way into their old treasure room and discover that it is undisturbed. They leave the jewels and riches there, but they find the special presents that they were given during their last adventure and take them because they may be helpful during this adventure. The one thing they can’t find is Susan’s magic horn, which can be used to summon help in desperate times. Susan realizes that she had it with her during the stag hunt right before they returned to their own world from Narnia, and it was probably lost in the woods.

When they rescue a dwarf from some men holding him captive, the dwarf thanks them. He says that they were planning to drown him as a criminal, but he doesn’t fully explain. Instead, he offers to catch some fish for them all to have breakfast because all the children have are apples. When the children mention that there is firewood at the castle, he is amazed. He’s heard stories about an old castle there, but he wasn’t sure that it was real. The rumors are that the forest around the castle ruins is haunted.

After they eat, the dwarf explains that he is a messenger for Caspian, the king of Narnia. He then qualifies that by explaining that Caspian should be the king. The old Narnians recognize him as the rightful king, although he is considered one of the new Narnians himself. Prince Caspian was an orphan raised in the castle of his Uncle Miraz. He was mostly raised by his nurse and wasn’t very close to his aunt and uncle, but his uncle acknowledged him as his heir because he had no children.

According to the dwarf’s story, Prince Caspian has a fascination for the old days of Narnia from his nurse’s tales, when there were fauns and talking animals in Narnia, but his uncle says those are just fairy tale stories for little kids. The Pevensie children realize that the legends that Prince Caspian was told as a young child were about them and their adventures. People still tell stories about them, but not everyone believes them.

Miraz forbids Caspian from believing in those stories or talking about them again and sends away Caspian’s nurse. Instead, he hires a tutor for Caspian called Doctor Cornelius. Caspian misses his nurse, but he enjoys his lessons with Doctor Cornelius. From Doctor Cornelius, he learns that his ancestors and other humans came to Narnia from another land and conquered it. However, Doctor Cornelius is reluctant to explain exactly whom his ancestors conquered. Doctor Cornelius quietly admits that Miraz forbids anyone from talking about Old Narnia because it’s supposed to be a secret. Over time, Doctor Cornelius lets Caspian know the secrets of Old Narnia, which confirm to him that his nurse’s stories were true.

Caspian’s ancestors were the ones who silenced the taking animals and drove away or killed other races who inhabited Narnia. The reason why Miraz won’t let anybody talk about the history of Old Narnia and denies that other species once lived there is to cover up that his ancestors stole Narnia from its rightful inhabitants and that most of the humans are merely transplants to this land, not its rightful heirs. Doctor Cornelius reveals himself to be a dwarf, one of those few who still live in Narnia in secret. He is also part human, which is how he is able to pass for a human. He says that there are others there in disguise. Caspian feels like he should apologize to Doctor Cornelius, although he knows that what his ancestors did to the dwarves was not his fault. Doctor Cornelius says that apologies are not necessary, but he knows that Caspian will one day be king and can help the remaining Old Narnians who still live there, hiding from Miraz.

The stories about the woods around Cair Paravel being haunted were invented by Caspian’s ancestors to hide Narnia’s past and also because they want the forest to separate them from the sea. Caspian’s people fear the sea because, although they deny that Aslan exists, the legends all say that Aslan will return from across the sea. They fear the wrath that Aslan may visit on them for what they did to Narnia and its peoples. However, not all humans have this fear of Aslan and Old Narnia. Others, like Caspian, are fascinated and would like to see Narnia become more like its past self, with magic and talking animals and dwarves and fauns. As Caspian gets older, he realizes that many people in Narnia are unhappy with Miraz and the way he rules Narnia. He is a cruel king.

One night, while Caspian’s aunt is very ill, Doctor Cornelius wakes him and prepares him for a journey. He tells Caspian that he is not just the prince but the true king of Narnia. His father was the true king, and after Caspian’s parents were dead, Miraz took the throne for himself. Miraz murdered or exiled Caspian’s father’s old friends and supporters. Caspian was too small at the time to understand or have any memory of this, but now, Miraz is planning to murder Caspian. His aunt’s “illness” was actually childbirth, and now that she has given birth to a son, Miraz is planning to eliminate Caspian so his own son can be his heir with no opposition from the true heir. Doctor Cornelius says that Caspian has no other choice but to flee to another, friendly kingdom. To help him on his way, Doctor Cornelius gives him some food, a purse of gold, and Susan’s magic horn, an Old Narnian artifact found after she and her siblings disappeared from Narnia.

While Caspian is fleeing, he has an accident and is knocked unconscious. He is found by a dwarf and talking animals. They almost kill him as one of their enemies, but Caspian explains who he is and why Miraz wants to kill him. The dwarf still wants to kill him, but the badger realizes that Caspian is a hopeful sign. The golden age of Narnia was when human children ruled, and young Caspian’s belief in the Old Narnian stories and assertion that he has longed to meet Old Narnians like them are signs that he could be a true high king like King Peter. The badger says that he would be willing to follow King Caspian if he remains true to Old Narnia and its people.

Caspian is allowed to stay among the Old Narnians in hiding. He gradually makes friends with different species, and they begin to form a rebellion against Miraz. Doctor Cornelius finds Caspian and warns him that his uncle is searching for him. Caspian’s supporters convinced him that it was time to blow Susan’s horn to summon help, and that was how the Pevensie children were summoned back to Narnia.

The dwarf explaining all this to the Pevensie children is the same doubting dwarf who almost killed Caspian and ended up joining his supporters. The men trying to kill him were Miraz’s people. Trumpkin, the doubting dwarf, now doubts that the Pevensie children are the help they were hoping for. They are children again, not the great kings and queens they were when they left Narnia. The children aren’t too troubled by his doubts because they know who they are and the victories they have already achieved in Narnia. They have not lost all the skills they gained in Narnia before, and the more time they spend in Narnia, the more they become like the kings and queens they once were and still are. They outfit themselves from their old treasury and prepare to once again battle again evil in Narnia in support of Aslan.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies, including some in different languages).

My Reaction

The books in The Chronicles of Narnia are famously Christian allegories, and Christian themes continue through this book. There are people who are doubters, but those who remain faithful believers in Aslan (who represents Jesus in this series) are the ones who prevail in the end. Like Jesus, Aslan wants his followers to do what they can on their own but is often near to offer them strength, support, and hints about the right thing to do. However, some people are more perceptive to his guidance than others, especially Lucy, and there is a theme that runs through the story about belief in things from people who have not seen them directly and are relying on other people’s experiences. As Lucy has a greater capacity for perceiving Aslan, some other people have a greater capacity for general belief. Edmund has learned his lessons from the previous book. Feeling badly about his earlier doubting of Lucy and how he had once belittled her, he becomes her biggest supporter during times when she can see Aslan and others can’t, urging his older siblings to listen to her. Some people, including Peter and Susan, doubt whether Lucy has actually seen Aslan when they haven’t seen him himself. Trumpkin, the doubting dwarf, is the classic Doubting Thomas of the story. He doubts everything, every step of the way, from Caspian’s intentions to the existence of the Pevensies and Aslan, but he keep son going until he sees the Pevensies himself and has the opportunity to see their abilities in action. Among Caspian’s followers, there are some, like the badgers, who have always believed in Aslan and always will, and there are others who are won over when they see for themselves.

There are also themes in the story that can apply equally to religious issues and political ones. Miraz struggles from the beginning to control the narrative of how his family came to rule Narnia and how he himself became the king when his brother’s son was actually the true heir. There are people who know the truth about both of these issues, but he’s not above censoring people, exiling them, and even killing them to prevent people from talking about the truth openly. Miraz is not a good king and has his self-interest in mind more than his subjects’, but he’s sharp enough to know that nobody really likes him or wants him to be king except he has convinced them that he has the authority to be king and that their self-interest lies with him. If people came to see him and his family for who and what they truly are and what they’ve actually done, he would lose all of that, and he knows it. Authoritarian rule is like that. It relies on maintaining the sort of image that, realistically, they can’t maintain if people know what the individuals involved are really like. Authoritarians try to make themselves look stronger and better than normal humans to cover up for their flaws, but the image collapses when they can’t or won’t deliver what they promise, and people see them for the flawed humans they really are, often more flawed than the people they tried to convince were weaker.

Aslan eventually reveals that Caspian and his people are not just from a foreign country in the world of Narnia, but their distant ancestor were actually pirates from our world. They had conquered and looted an island in the South Seas, murdered many of the inhabitants, and taken the women for their own. Then, they had argued and fought among themselves. Some of the pirates took their women and tried to hide in a cave from the others, but it was a gateway to the world of Narnia, and that was how they got there to later conquer Narnia. When Caspian hears this, he says that he wishes that he had come from a more noble lineage than murdering pirates, and Aslan tells him that, further back than the pirates, he is also a son of Adam and Eve, just like the Pevensies, and that lineage is noble enough. I liked this explanation because, in modern times, people have struggled with the concept of having slave-owning ancestors, fearing criticism, punishment, or some form of reparations for it. I’ve heard some people saying that they don’t want to be ashamed of themselves or their ancestors. They are hung up on one part of their family’s history, a history that, when you think about it, goes back as far as humans go, and they fear blame and shame for that. I don’t think I’ve heard many consider that their family didn’t always own slaves. They were something other than slave-owners before that, even if some of them can’t quite remember what that was. I’m not big on ancestor veneration and imitation, but everyone’s ancestry goes back too far to remember every generation. Even if some generations weren’t good examples, they’re not the only past generations, if you see what I mean. Maybe, instead of looking at what their family used to be and lost and might be blamed for even having, they should consider that what they’ve become since then might just be a return to what they were before that period in their family’s history, which might just be better and noble enough.

Earlier in the story, when the Old Narnians talk about whether to support Caspian or continue to support him, there are some who waiver in their support or withhold it, also out of self-interest. While nobody really likes Miraz, Narnian history and legends influence the way that the Old Narnians feel about Aslan and his supporters. Most of the Old Narnians remember the White Witch from the previous book as a wicked ruler, but the dwarves and wolves fared better under her than other species. Their descendants forget that their relatively better treatment came from their collaboration with the witch and their participation in her wickedness, and even then, the relatively better treatment still wasn’t that great. (Plus, some of the wolves are actually werewolves, not just talking animals, like the others.) They just vaguely remember that there was a time when a ruler put them in a better position relative to other species, which they are not now. In fact, they feel like they are now treated worse and given fewer supplies than the other groups. The other groups say that’s not true, but it feels like it is to them because they are no longer better off than the others. They miss that and want it back. When they become impatient with Caspian and feel like he won’t give them the treatment they want, they rebel, and some of them are killed. Prince Caspian and the others feel badly about that because the might not have rebelled and been killed in the struggle if circumstances were different and they had felt more satisfied, but they had no choice but to defend themselves from their attack.

The book also looks at the type of people who support authoritarian rulers. Much of their support also has to do with self-interest or apparent self-interest. Miraz does have supporters among the human nobility who helped him accomplish his rise to power and who helped do his dirty work in getting rid of his brothers old allies. Since then, some of them have become disillusioned with Miraz. Miraz has not followed through on what he promised them before in exchange for their loyalty and support, furthering his own self-interest instead of theirs, and that’s the one thing they can’t accept. The thing about supporting someone who is selfish and is willing to throw former supporters to the wolves or even kill relatives in pursuit of power … is that you end up being one of those former supporters who may be thrown to the wolves or killed when your leader pursues self-interest and power. Some people never think anything through. They may have assumed that they would be a special exception to the leader because of their support, but nobody is special to Miraz but himself. Everyone else is just a tool to be used until he can’t find a use for them or they seem to be a hindrance.

When Aslan reveals the true history of Caspian’s people to them, many of them are afraid that Aslan is going to kill them all for what they’ve been and what they’ve done, which is another factor in their support of Miraz and his narrative. Even some of those who knew the truth before were too scared to say anything or do anything about it because they feared the blame, guilt, and consequences that might follow acknowledging the truth. A major reason for their fear is that they and their ancestors have not been merciful to anybody, so it never occurs to them that someone else might have better intentions for them.

At the end of their adventure, when it’s time for the Pevensies to go home, Aslan tells them that Peter and Susan will not be returning to Narnia next time because they are getting too old, but Edmund and Lucy will return someday. It’s a common theme in children’s fantasy books that only children can experience certain types of magic, and when they get older, they can no longer experience it or believe in it. It’s a trope that is meant to explain why grownups don’t experience this type of magic in the real world and why the adults in stories think that the children are just imagining things when they experience magic, but to me, it doesn’t logically follow in this story. We already know that at least one adult the Pevensie children have met believes in Narnia and magic because he has also experienced them, and we know that the ancestors of Caspian’s people arrived in the world of Narnia as adults. The Chronicles of Narnia don’t seem to have a consistent principle about who can visit the world of Narnia or believe in it, not in age or even in moral character because Caspian’s ancestors were murdering pirates. I think, in the case of Caspian’s ancestors, it might have something to do with explaining how even flawed and immoral people can rise to power or even seemingly have God’s favor, when it seems like they’re the last ones who should. It seems to be a combination of random chance (happening to wander into the right cave, in this case), their own choices (conquering other people), and possibly, part of a much longer game on Aslan/God’s part (eventually producing Caspian, who is the kind of ruler Narnia needs, even though it involved a lot of evil along the way – the evil being the humans’ choice, not a requirement). That’s some speculation and interpretation on my part, but I think the story kind of sets that up. Aslan seems completely aware of what’s going on and what has been happening but hasn’t tried to interfere until the critical moment in this story when Prince Caspian needs his help to fulfill his destiny.