Having gone head-to-head with Narnian geography, I sympathize with you.
"What they don't tell you in the history book" stories are always fun, but here you have the perfect frame, because we KNOW Jill and Eustace heard the blind bard's version of HHB and that they later had a chance to hear Edmund's version directly. This is everything I always knew I wanted and never found--HHB and the Finding of Cor from inside Edmund's head. Thank you!
I love the elevated, courtly-without-being-stilted speech, I love that it fails Susan and she falls back on CAD, I love Lucy in chain mail and the argument about whether Susan shall come, I LOVE Lucy's "What do you mean, you found the baby?" And the Giants (six of them!) have "spikey boots" and Lucy and Edmund are grown up together, and it was Lucy's arrow that nearly put out the Rabid Ass's eye, and the poetic license WAS NOT POETIC LICENSE BUT REAL. That, for me, captures the whole spirit of Narnia, a place where the songs and the poems and the stories are true.
But my favorite part of this story was Shasta, and how Edmund realized only too late. Your description of Edmund's and Lucy's lines as staged is marvelous, because of course they knew and of course it was Lune's job to make the first move. The detail of Edmund's voice nearly catching on the word "traitor" is beautiful and so telling, and the line "I killed three men," exclaimed Corin, bursting with pride. "Didn't I fight grand? All your lessons paid off! Of course, Shasta didn't do so well, not sure where he's got off to…" is heartstopping, even though we know the outcome already.
And this: Edmund was a man of few words, so he did not give any rousing call to battle as Peter might have done, but his eyes met many of the warriors' that day, and it was many a proud soldier who would later tell their daughters and sons of the day King Edmund looked them in the eye and found them worthy, . . . this. I have no words.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2012-09-06 02:28 am (UTC)"What they don't tell you in the history book" stories are always fun, but here you have the perfect frame, because we KNOW Jill and Eustace heard the blind bard's version of HHB and that they later had a chance to hear Edmund's version directly. This is everything I always knew I wanted and never found--HHB and the Finding of Cor from inside Edmund's head. Thank you!
I love the elevated, courtly-without-being-stilted speech, I love that it fails Susan and she falls back on CAD, I love Lucy in chain mail and the argument about whether Susan shall come, I LOVE Lucy's "What do you mean, you found the baby?" And the Giants (six of them!) have "spikey boots" and Lucy and Edmund are grown up together, and it was Lucy's arrow that nearly put out the Rabid Ass's eye, and the poetic license WAS NOT POETIC LICENSE BUT REAL. That, for me, captures the whole spirit of Narnia, a place where the songs and the poems and the stories are true.
But my favorite part of this story was Shasta, and how Edmund realized only too late. Your description of Edmund's and Lucy's lines as staged is marvelous, because of course they knew and of course it was Lune's job to make the first move. The detail of Edmund's voice nearly catching on the word "traitor" is beautiful and so telling, and the line "I killed three men," exclaimed Corin, bursting with pride. "Didn't I fight grand? All your lessons paid off! Of course, Shasta didn't do so well, not sure where he's got off to…" is heartstopping, even though we know the outcome already.
And this: Edmund was a man of few words, so he did not give any rousing call to battle as Peter might have done, but his eyes met many of the warriors' that day, and it was many a proud soldier who would later tell their daughters and sons of the day King Edmund looked them in the eye and found them worthy, . . . this. I have no words.