Do you ever think about the fact Edmund was nine* when he was told he deserved to die? Sure, Aslan sacrificed himself so it didn't happen, and the people he'd actually wronged forgave him, and everyone rallied around him to protect him and thought the Witch was being overly cruel in asserting her right to kill him—but she did have that right.
“Have you forgotten the Deep Magic?” says the Witch. "…what is written on that very Table of Stone which stands beside us? Tell you what is written in letters deep as a spear is long on the fire-stones on the Secret Hill? Tell you what is engraved on the scepter of the Emperor-beyond-the-Sea? You at least know the Magic which the Emperor put into Narnia at the very beginning. You know that every traitor belongs to me as my lawful prey and that for every treachery I have a right to a kill. …that human creature is mine. His life is forfeit to me. His blood is my property. … unless I have blood as the Law says all Narnia will be overturned and perish in fire and water.”
“It is very true,” said Aslan, “I do not deny it.” (LWW ch 13)
Even Aslan doesn't deny it. He's sad about it and he'll give his own life to get around it but he doesn't deny it. It is written in fire and carved in stone and woven into the very fabric of the universe in ancient immutable laws that will destroy the world and everyone in it if this truth is denied: Edmund should die. And he is nine.
And I think that does some damage to your psyche.
*this has been in my notes for a while, and I originally had Edmund as ten. (He's born 1930; LWW takes place in 1940.) But looking through LWW again i realized Lucy tells Mr. Tumnus "it's summer" in England. And PC starts with the Pevensies going back to school (so presumably in autumn), a few days after Edmund's birthday. So if he's born autumn 1930, in summer 1940 he's not even ten. He's nine. He's so small. Someone please give this tiny child therapy.
