Wow! I love the portrait you paint of a protected but very wild Narnia in its earliest years, with the world still shaping itself outside the borders, the small gods of the land fighting one another, and the warrior culture around the court -- it feels like a very small kingdom, the sort where battles are fought by champions rather than large armies as in the Golden Age or later. Col and Kit drifting away from each other is both a typical story trope -- which is probably why the story lasted nearly two thousand years, if we believe Lewis's timeline -- and a believable consequence of brothers growing up in an age-segregated culture and having the weight of their father's throne hanging between them.
I also really like what you did with Ider, how she's introduced unremarkably as another of Col's companions and then Col and his friends continue to see her that way after the reveal of her gender, while Kit either cannot or will not accept her. I wonder if he reacted so badly because he truly felt her sex somehow negated all her achievements, or if it was a way of striking at Col through a socially acceptable framework. I was very glad when Ider stood her ground and then her friends stood and left Narnia with her.
The frame story is also nifty, because of course Rillian was probably betrothed before he vanished, and even if time stood still for him while he was enchanted (which is arguable either way, grrr, why is Lewis so vague about ages and time spans in SC?) the rest of the world didn't stop and Archenland in particular had no reason to expect him to return. And I have wondered for a long time what Archenland's attitude toward the changes in Narnian government was, since their royal family is at this point the only known line descended from Frank and Helen. It makes perfect sense that Archenlanders remember a lot of history that Narnians don't, because Narnia has had its culture nearly obliterated at least twice by Rillian's day -- first by Jadis and then by civil war followed by the Telmarine invasion.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2012-08-12 02:08 am (UTC)I also really like what you did with Ider, how she's introduced unremarkably as another of Col's companions and then Col and his friends continue to see her that way after the reveal of her gender, while Kit either cannot or will not accept her. I wonder if he reacted so badly because he truly felt her sex somehow negated all her achievements, or if it was a way of striking at Col through a socially acceptable framework. I was very glad when Ider stood her ground and then her friends stood and left Narnia with her.
The frame story is also nifty, because of course Rillian was probably betrothed before he vanished, and even if time stood still for him while he was enchanted (which is arguable either way, grrr, why is Lewis so vague about ages and time spans in SC?) the rest of the world didn't stop and Archenland in particular had no reason to expect him to return. And I have wondered for a long time what Archenland's attitude toward the changes in Narnian government was, since their royal family is at this point the only known line descended from Frank and Helen. It makes perfect sense that Archenlanders remember a lot of history that Narnians don't, because Narnia has had its culture nearly obliterated at least twice by Rillian's day -- first by Jadis and then by civil war followed by the Telmarine invasion.