i can’t stop thinking about what happened right after the pevensies were crowned, knowing literally nothing about narnia or how to be kings and queens, so here are a bunch of headcanons
After Aslan departs, the merriment at Cair Paravel goes on for three days. There is dancing and feasting, and the new kings and queens sleep wherever they fall, then awake and join in again. When they rise at noon on the third day, the castle is emptier and quieter than before, and there is work to be done.
The first thing they realise is that there is no furniture in Cair Paravel. There’s the odd stone bench, and all the glorious carvings and statues, and the thrones of course, but not a single scrap of wood. Every last splinter was stripped out during the Great Winter and burnt for fuel. They sleep in the simple beds from Aslan’s camp and eat sitting on the floor with their subjects, and it feels rather like camping in their own castle, like another adventure.
These early days are not like the coronation with all its pomp and splendour. Susan folds all their wine-stained finery into a pile and they do not wear clothes so rich as that again for a long time. Instead they wear practical leather and linen and their lessons are not in statecraft, but in combat, butchery, agriculture. Food is the thought in everyone’s minds after the Winter scarcity, with the land now so green and giving. And Peter’s shoulders grow broad and strong at the plough, and Susan finds the oldest of the wood-people and coaxes them out to the fields to teach those born in the Winter how to sow, and Edmund proves himself something of a genius with mechanical solutions, and Lucy delights in learning all the types of seeds and nurturing them under the sun. And before long they all four are lean and tanned and calloused at the palm with field work.
Summer brings news that a knot of remaining Fell Beasts has grown in the West, gathering their strength through the spring. Peter and Edmund, both pale and determined, don their armour again and ride out with a band of soldiers. In the weeks they are gone the first foreign delegation arrives: a group of Archenlandish nobles who approach the castle to present themselves before the thrones of Aslan’s chosen sovereigns, only to be led out into the fields away from the castle to a girl of eight with two simple braids, wearing leggings and boots, carrying out water. She drops her buckets with a gappy grin and sticks out her dirty hand as she is proudly announced as ‘Queen Lucy the Valiant’, and it is the start of a long and prosperous friendship.
The boys return from their bloody sweep through the west as the leaves start to fall, both taller and harder-faced. The harvest brings a bustle of trade, but after that the land goes hushed and fearful. With the cold comes the first of the mutterings that the summer may only have been a brief respite brought by Aslan; without him, what certainty is there that winter will lift again? And the cold starts to sink its teeth in.
It has been so long since the Narnians have seen a natural winter that they have forgotten that even without enchantment it is hard and cold. Edmund grows quiet and sleepless when the snow comes, and between this and Lucy’s night-time chills, Peter and Susan move all four of them into Peter’s room, which is small and easily warmed by its cavernous fireplace. It’s better to burn one fire than four and they abandon their individual wooden beds for a large heap of furs and blankets, taking heat from each other as the Animals do.
Edmund and Lucy hardly leave the castle all that winter. Lucy is too small to be trudging through the deep snows and Peter and Susan are keen to keep Edmund out of the cold, so when their people need aid, Peter straps his sword to his back and Susan straps her quiver to hers, and they venture out together into the merciless winter, leaving Edmund in charge of the castle and of Lucy for days and occasionally weeks at a time. It’s a clear and complete signal of trust which quiets some unfriendly whispers, and such important duties help keep him from darker thoughts of the previous winter.
No one is keen to waste precious food in feasting at Christmas in case the Winter truly has returned, but Father Christmas comes by the castle with plenty, so the gates of Cair Paravel are opened and there is a little cheer. And then all Narnia waits with bated breath to see if the snow will melt.
But eventually dawn starts to come a little earlier and the earth starts to thaw, and when the coming of the spring cannot be denied, the Narnians whisk their young sovereigns out into the meadows and crown them all over again with fresh flowers, and the second spring feels almost as much a victory as the first.
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