Worldbuilding Wednesday 9/3/25: Narnian Commoners (Narnia LXXIII)

Leighton Edmund Blair, Faded Laurels (1889)

A while back I speculated on what Narnian female names might have been like, drawing from names that were given to Victorian-era English girls. Since there’s a paucity of names for human Narnian commoners I came up with another list, shown below.

(This is a sore point with me. I don’t like to be reading fiction set in a made-up fantasy world and come across an Amy, Madison, or Steven. It completely ruins whatever immersive effect the writer has going. There’s actually a passage in The Voyage of The Dawn Treader where the crew, on entering the murky cloud of Dark Island, start talking about their dreams come true: “I reckoned I’d find I was married to Nancy if we landed here.”  “And I’d find Tom alive again.”  Even as an 11-year-old Tom and Nancy didn’t sound right to me, given that there was a Rhince and Drinian… and Puttincream… on the ship.)

 

Narnian Commoner’s Names

Female

Auda

Ernetina

Espory

Genyliss

Hanaflor

Helwyn

Herdra

Ithiline

Limarice

Lothilda

Lunda

Maebuelle

Marella

Marowyn

Meliset

Seranda

Urla

 Male

Antoris

Bertmond

Bornil

Druvil

Egurid

Florsk

Frydolf

Handwin

Hyldo

Indwin

Morbrech

Orfbet

Petran

Rillund

Stefin

Ushar

Winfil

A word about the painting’s artist, Leighton Edmund Blair. He was a Romanticist, related in spirit to the pre-Raphaelites, who as part of his repertoire painted idealized depictions of the past, as in the scene above which is set in Arthurian times. It’s a comment on the fleeting nature of fame as the older bard, on the bottom, finds his audience more enraptured by his younger rival. I picture Narnia as having such costumes and scenes.

An interesting Estonian edition of the Chronicles

I came across these covers on a search today. They’re from Estonia, and different from most covers I’ve seen. The one above is The Magician’s Nephew, but in Estonian, it translates literally as “The Miracle Worker’s Son.” It’s one of the very few covers I’ve seen that depicts Jadis in stasis in the Hall of Images. Not only that, she’s dressed as a warrior-queen, like Boadicea, with shield, sword, and armor. Not sure who the artist is or when it was published.

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and Prince Caspian. I get a Finnish vibe from both of them, not surprising because Finland is across the water.  The White Witch is depicted accurately as per the book, but Caspian on his cover seems older and meaner. Nikabrik and Trumpkin are at lower left and right, looking more like gnomes than dwarves in their stocking caps. (Why is Nikabrik holding Susan’s Horn? )

Below, The Horse and His Boy. Some interesting localization going on. They’re not in the desert, for one thing, but in a wintry forest. Shasta is dressed like a rustic Nordic peasant. And Bree, the fiery Ottoman-coded warhorse, is a shaggy little gray pony.

That Accursed Lion

That Accursed Lion, by Jean-Léon Gérôme (1895)

I’ve always thought dead lion paintings like the above and sculptures like this one influenced C. S. Lewis’s description of the bound and dead Aslan’s presence and majesty. Note how the artist’s second name even  means “Lion” in Spanish!

Gérôme is famed today for his Orientalism, that is, paintings that depict everyday life in places other than Europe — Turkey, the Levant, etc. In Orientalism such subjects were depicted accurately for the most part but had the titillation of the exotic and savage, such as a lion hunt or a slave market, for Victorian-era Europeans to simultaneously marvel at and feel superior (read: more civilized) to.

Read more about this fascinating artist here.

Summer of Narnia 2024 Fanfic Reviews, Part 1 [Review]

The White Stag and the Lamppost, MS Paint art by schmidtyart

Here’s some Narnia fanfic I’ve read over the past year.

Modern Narnia: A History, by Twinklestar

This is one of those fics that applies a pseudo-historical tone — and a meta one — to the Narnia series AND Narnia fanfic. It’s written like a textbook intended for a college literature class. An interesting little snippet.

General

Untold, by cofax

There are many, many fanfics about the Problem of Susan that crops up towards the conclusion of The Last Battle, most reacting with outrage or sympathy for Susan’s apostasy, not the scorn that Jill and Eustace give her.  This short fic discusses  that even though Susan turned her back on Narnia, she lived a full life as a human being whereas the other children, for all their fantastic adventures, did not. Thoughtful and compelling.

The Last Battle

From Her Hands A Spill of Blood (how many drops to make it flood?) by Kila9Nishika

A bloody and mythic fic, told from the Telmarine point of view, of how Queen Lucy rescues King Edmund, who’s been imprisoned by a Telmarine Duke. What he doesn’t count on is Queen Lucy turning into a raging, murderous, killing machine who plows through an entire army to get her brother back. A true AU because in the books Lucy, even as an adult Queen, is sunny, cheerful, and brave in battle — but sticks to shooting arrows. In this story, she lops heads with a golden sword.

The author plays around with golden imagery in this story, which creates such a terror in the Telmarines that after the slaughter they forever ban the use of gold, even in their coinage. And actually, it is more of a horror story than an adventure one, though I think the author intended it as a revisionist take on Queen Lucy.

It also implies — which I think is interesting — that Telmar and Narnia had connections in the Golden Age. I haven’t read too many stories about that.

The Golden Age 

The Lion and the Black Gryphons, by HakisakMatys

Prince Caspian is my least favorite book in the Chronicles (and one I lament ever existed at all) but even I admit this AU fic is a good take on it, book and movie both. It takes place before Caspian’s meeting with Dr. Cornelius, while he is still ignorant of Miraz’s treachery regarding his father. It draws on the scenario presented in the movie where Telmarine society is of Spanish descent, though they also retain some Polynesian traits. But for all intents and purposes, they’re 16th century Spanish.

The author introduces embellishments like the Black Gryphons, a group of elite Telmarine warriors, one of which is a character in the story. There are other Telmarine characters as well, and the story is mostly told from their POVs, not Caspian’s, a refreshing change. Also refreshing is that Caspian is an overprotected, daydreaming, bookish sort, and he also suffers from PTSD caused by his uncle Miraz’s upbringing. All this is a promising setup.

My only criticism is that there are too many viewpoint characters to keep track of, but it really was well written and would appeal to fans of the movie who wonder about what Telmarine society might have been  like.

Prince Caspian, book and movie

High Queen Hazel the Wise, by potterhead0928

Many, many fanfics are written about the addition of a fifth character to the Pevensie quartet, sometimes another sibling, sometimes a cousin or a relation of the Professor’s. Usually the character functions as a stand-in for the writer. Not really a Mary Sue, because most of the time there’s nothing extraordinary about them; mostly it’s a way for the author to re-experience the original story with a personalized viewpoint of it A rewriting, if you will, as most of these tales don’t venture far from the original plot.

This story began like one of those, but it’s more melancholy. Hazel is the youngest child, younger even than Lucy, in her teens still when her older siblings vanish through the lamppost. Naturally she’s distraught and searches for them with the magic spyglass given to her by Father Christmas during the events of LWW. But over the chapters hope fades and she realizes she has to get on with her life: she marries, has kids, and goes on living in Narnia.

But then… Aslan causes her to return to England, and unlike her siblings, she remembers all of her life, in vivid detail. The dissonance this causes while she’s in the physical body of a seven-year-old is agonizing, especially because she’s lost her husband and children.

It’s a more nuanced exploration than most stories of its ilk and ends at the beginning of Prince Caspian — with all the Pevensies discovering their former castle in ruins. Tantalizingly, no more has been written since that chapter. But there should be.

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

Early Dutch Editions of the Chronicles

Note the bell-bottom pants and zippered windbreakers the kids are wearing. That’s Edmund front and center looking every inch the betrayer.

It’s time to look at some Dutch editions of the Chronicles.

The illustration above was painted by Jan Wesseling for a 1976 omnibus edition that combined The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe with Prince Caspian. The pic is mainly the latter with the kids wearing modern (mid-1970s) clothing, but the far right features Caspian in his sissy-boy hairdo and a court lady who is holding either a harp or a book in her hands.  The only candidates I can think of for her are Caspian’s old nurse, Queen Prunaprismia, or Miss Prizzle, but none of them seem to fit, and none are major characters in the way Trumpkin, Glenstorm, or Trufflehunter were. Then there’s that weird little witch/chicken hybrid at the lower right, whom Peter is regarding with affection. No clue on that one either.  Aslan stands in the middle between both, providing continuity.

This edition, published between 1976 and 1978, was, unusually, a four volume set.

Volume I featured De betoverde kleerkast & Prins Caspian (The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe & Prince Caspian)

Volume II featured De wonderreis van het drakeschip & De zilveren stoel (The Voyage of the Dawn Treader & The Silver Chair)

Volume III featured Het Paard en de Jongen (The Horse and His Boy)

Volume IV featured Het neefje van de tovenaar & De laatste strijd (The Magician’s Nephew & The Last Battle).

Wesseling began his career as a comic book artist and later switched to children’s illustration. I think that’s evident in how the pic is composed and the loose, inked outlines with their washes of color.

These pics were for the dust covers of the hardbacks. The paperbacks that followed used them as well, but in a cropped form.

Overall, they are nice, though dated, depictions with a few oddball artistic choices that add to their interest.

Cover of The Silver Chair from a later edition… a snake with boobies! And boy does she look pissed!

Annemarie van Haeringen is the artist, and she also did the covers for The Horse and His Boy, The Magician’s Nephew, and The Last Battle, which were released 1989 – 1993. In one of those futz-ups so common in the world of publishing, the previous three titles appeared in 1983, but were discontinued. It does seem, though, that van Heiringen also did the earlier covers, going by the similarity of the style.

Aslan Creating the World in The Magician’s Nephew

As I said I’m pretty excited about this book receiving an adaptation. I am especially curious about how Greta Gerwig will film one of its most spectacular yet problematic aspects: how Aslan creates the world of Narnia with his song.

All this time the Lion’s song, and his stately prowl, to and fro, backwards and forwards, was going on. What was rather alarming was that at each turn he came a little nearer. Polly was finding the song more and more interesting because she thought she was beginning to see the connection between the music and the things that were happening. When a line of dark firs sprang up on a ridge about a hundred yards away she felt that they were connected with a series of deep, prolonged notes which the Lion had sung a second before. And when he burst into a rapid series of lighter notes she was not surprised to see primroses suddenly appearing in every direction. Thus, with an unspeakable thrill, she felt quite certain that all the things were coming (as she said) “out of the Lion’s head.”

[ . . . ]

The Lion paid no attention to them. Its huge red mouth was open, but open in song not in a snarl. It passed by them so close that they could have touched its mane. They were terribly afraid it would turn and look at them, yet in some queer way they wished it would. 

This description sounds similar to the creation of Arda written by fellow Inkling J. R. R. Tolkien; in his version it is Eru, the supreme deity, who creates the other gods and the Middle-earth itself with music. Lewis published his take in 1955 while Tolkien’s came to light in 1976 when The Silmarillion was released. Since Tolkien worked on his Middle-Earth histories throughout his life I bet he had the original concept which Lewis later cribbed, with Tolkien’s permission I hope. But I’ve yet to find any scholarly analysis of this.

Not a few artists have tried to capture the above scene, and most of them, well, look comical.

Continue reading

Netflix’s The Magician’s Nephew to Be Set in 1955

A chubby Digory with a schoolboy satchel on the streets of 1950s London. That may be no-nonsense Aunt Letty behind him.

I’ve been aware of director Greta Gerwig’s helming of this project for a while now, but my interest was only cursory since the news had been swirling around for a few years with nothing to show for it. However, in the past month, the actual filming has begun and from the set photos we’ve been able to get a glimpse of Gerwig’s vision – there’s been a major time change from 1900 to 1955, making The Magician’s Nephew set in a post-war England during the Cold War, not the late Victorian Age as was written.

A meta moment where a 1950s street advert for paint echoes Aslan’s creation of Narnia

Like a lot of fans I was surprised, and unlike a lot of fans, I’m very stoked to see this take on it.

Continue reading

It Rhymes With Takei [Reading Challenge 2025]

It Rhymes With Takei

by George Takei and Harmony Becker (artist)
Adapted by Steven Scott and Justin Eisinger
Penquin Random House, 2025

[ #1 Year of the Snake: A book published in any of the Chinese Years of the Snake: 2025, 2013, 2001, 1989, etc. ]

Since I didn’t get into my Howdy, stranger (a book about immigration) pick for this year I substituted another category, Year of the Snake. The book was It Rhymes With Takei, George Takei’s autobiography of sorts. It’s a graphic novel like his award-winning earlier memoir They Called us Enemy which was about his childhood in a Japanese internment camp during WWII. It Rhymes with Takei is a sort-of sequel about his adult life and how he got into acting and — surprise! — activism, something I never knew about the actor. Mostly I knew him as Sulu from the 1960s Star Trek and in more recent years, memes where he utters  “Oh my” over and over again and denounces certain politicians as douchebags in a stentorian tone. The two aspects never quite came together for me and though I was amused, I didn’t know he got from point A to point B.

The book explains all of that. Takei’s activism took many forms — civil rights, architectural preservation, city planning. But despite being gay, he didn’t participate in LGBT activism, at least not in his earlier decades. As he explains it, he stayed in the closet both because of the damage it would cause to his career and to his other activism, some of which involved state and city appointments to power. This was the focus of the book and it was handled very effectively. The same artist who worked They Called us Enemy, Harmony Becker, did the artwork which was just as lively and enjoyable as their earlier collaboration. Takei came out as gay in 2005 and since has burst into the limelight in way he never did in his more conventional career.

The book also serves as a concise history of gay rights in American from the 1990s forward. It’s sad to think that since the book’s release in June of this year the federal right to gay marriage, which came about in 2015. is now in danger of being taken away yet again.

The book was also fascinating in how it shows the behind-the-scenes aspect of an actor’s life. Though Takei accomplished a lot in his life and had a wide network of connections in Hollywood and the greater world, some of which interacted in surprising ways, I have the feeling he was not unique. Peel back the veneer of even a minor celebrity’s private life and one might find the same thing. That is pretty humbling.