#narnia thoughts

[dearlizzies-rip]

me and the other 3 blogs who are trying to keep Narnia relevant, brothers and sisters of my soul

[the-jules-world]

thoughts on the Pevensies returning home

Peter Pevensie was a strange boy. His mind is too old for his body, too quick, too sharp for a boy. He walks with a presence expected of a king or a royal, with blue eyes that darken like storms. He holds anger and a distance seen in veterans, his hand moving to his hip for a scabbard that isn't there - knuckles white. He moves like a warless soldier, an unexplained limp throwing his balance. He writes in an intricate scrawl unseen before the war, his letters curving in a foreign way untaught in his education. Peter returned a stranger from the war, silent, removed, an island onto himself with a burden too heavy for a child to bear.

Only in the aftermath of a fight do his eyes shine; nose burst, blood dripping, smudged across his cheek, knuckles bruised, and hands shaking; he's alive. He rises from the floor, knighted, his eyes searching for his sisters in the crowd. His brother doesn't leave his side. They move as one, the Pevensies, in a way their peers can't comprehend as they watch all four fall naturally in line.

But Peter is quiet, studious, and knowledgeable, seen only by his teachers as they read pages and pages of analytical political study and wonderful fictional tales. "The Pevensie boy will go far," they say, not knowing he already has.

His mother doesn't recognize him after the war. She watches distrustfully from a corner. She sobs at night, listening to her son's screams, knowing nothing she can do will ease their pain. Helen ran on the first night, throwing Peter's door open to find her children by his bedside - her eldest thrashing uncontrollably off the mattress with a sheen of sweat across his skin. Susan sings a mellow tune in a language Helen doesn't know, a hymn, that brings Peter back to them. He looks to Edmund for something and finds comfort in his eyes, a shared knowing. Her sons, who couldn't agree on the simplest of discussions, fall in line. But Peter sleeps with a knife under his cushion. She found out the hard way, reaching for him during one of his nightmares only to find herself pinned against the wall - a wild look in Peter's eye before he staggered back and dropped the knife.

Edmund throws himself into books, taking Lucy with him. They sit for hours in the library in harmony, not saying a word. His balance is thrown too, his mind searching for a limp that he doesn't have, missing the weight of his scabbard at his side. He joins the fencing club and takes Peter with him. They fence like no one else; without a worthy adversary, the boys take to each other with a wildness in their grins and a skillset unforeseen in beginner fencers. Their rapiers are an exertion of their bodies, as natural as shaking hands, and for the briefest time, they seem at peace. He shrinks away from the snow when it comes, thrust into the darkest places of his mind, unwilling to leave the house. He sits by the chessboard for hours, enveloped in his studies until stirred.

Susan turns silent, her mind somewhere far as she holds her book. Her hands twitch too, a wince when the door slams, her hand flying to her back where her quiver isn't. She hums a sad melody that no one can place, mourning something no one can find. She takes up archery again when she can bear a bow in her hands without crying, her callous-less palms unfamiliar to her, her mind trapped behind the wall of adolescence. She loses her friends to girlishness and youth, unable to go back to what she was. Eventually, she loses Narnia too. It's easier, she tells herself, to grow up and move on and return to what is. But her mourning doesn't leave her; she just forgets.

Lucy remains bright, carrying a happier song than her sister. She dances endlessly, her bare feet in the grass, and sings the most beautiful songs that make the flowers grow and the sun glisten. Though she has grown too, shed her childhood with the end of the war. She stands around the table with her sister, watching, brow furrowed as her brothers play chess. She comments and predicts, and makes suggestions that they take. She reads, curled into Edmund's side as his high voice lulls her to sleep with tales of Arthurian legends. She swims, her form wild and graceful as she vanishes into the water. They can't figure out how she does it - a girl so small holding her breath for so long. She cries into her sister, weeping at the loss of her friends, her too-small hands too clumsy for her will.

"I don't know our children anymore," Helen writes to her husband, overcome by grief as she realizes her children haven't grown up but away into a place she cannot follow.

[fartherupandfurtherin]

Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe thoughts (In no order)

- My Great Grandmother was too old for the trains but her sister went away with her mother. The bombing scene is accurate according to her.

- Jadis tricking Edmund with candy and hot chocolate is low if you know anything about war rationing.

- The reaction to Mr. Beaver talking is hilarious and the best moment in the movie.

- Susan: Let's think about this for a minute!

You dont have a minute, you are going to be eaten by wolves! You won't have a face in a minute!

- Susan is trying very hard to be grown up and it doesn't work, because it's in a way that is either a child's idea of being an adult or it doesn't make sense.

- The stone table cracking and Aslan coming back is peak.

- Edmund and his middle child nonsense: Peter's not King yet!

*almost immediately gets stabbed.*

- I wonder what Philip thought when Edmund never came back.

- it's a good thing they have an adult to process this with or they'd have way worse issues

[lemonprick]

lord forbid i have narnia thoughts at midnight when i’m supposed to be studying but here goes

so remember how at the end of prince caspian, all the telmarines chose to return to their homeland? which is Earth, since the telmarines were descended from some pirates that got into narnia through some rare gateway? let’s say they return to Earth’s modern times (modern for the books, at least.)

i raise you- telmarines somehow finding their way to england and getting enrolled in boarding school only to be roommates with the kings and queens of narnian old. cue narnia-telmar shenanigans

peter, at a biology lesson: weren’t you one of the guys who tried to kill caspian

telmarine child: in my defense, i was drafted at sixteen and didn’t know what was going on

peter: fair point, pass the pencil sharpener

---

telmarine child, snickering: queen susan! what a surprise to see you here among the peasants

susan, stil staring at her history paper: i may or may not have watched your father and uncles drown at the fords of beruna

---

edmund, dangling upside down from the top bunk: what do you mean you had a crush on my sister

telmarine child at the bottom bunk: there was this book of old narnian tales at the library before miraz had them confiscated, i thought she was fictional and the illustrations were really nice

edmund: still, it’s weird considering she’s a thousands years older than you

telmarine child: you're a thousand years older than me

edmund: which is why you should let me copy tomorrow’s essay

---

lucy, post-dawn treader: isn’t your dad lord restimar

telmarine child: yeah, but i haven’t seen him since he left for the lone islands when i was six

lucy: one of the seven lost lords, right

telmarine child: ..one of the seven what

(voyage of the dawn treader context: lord restimar was one of the lords who sailed to the east and went missing, lucy and co found him drowned in a pool on deathwater island and turned into gold)

anyways, a lot of comedic potential here

[jamiegeode]

So I watched Narnia before I read it. Specifically the Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe as a kid. And I always lowkey hated movie Peter in the beginning of the story because you’re getting BOMBED and that photo is the only guarantee the any of you will ever see your dad again in any way, and I get that means that Peter is trying to be a stand in. But you can’t call your brother selfish. You’re both terrified in different ways. You’re scared of your responsibility and your need to keep your family alive. He is terrified of loosing the person he thinks you’re trying to be

[uninspired-exwriter]

i am never not thinking about that one scene in The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, where the witch tries to decapitate Peter with her swords and Peter leans back, and the shot shows from above the swords crossing over his neck, barely missing.

always in my mind, rent free.

[regulusfate]

mr pevensie tho .. why does he have no name that’s annoying .. i feel like he’d be a george

[spellingsbees]

I think about how protective Peter is of his siblings a lot, and how he obviously cares for them so much. I’m just starting to reread the books for the first time since about third grade, so I don’t remember a lot of the plot according to those, but the way William portrayed Peter was incredible. I think it’s obvious how close the cast was/is, especially during filming of the first two movies, and that just makes the genuine bond they all have so much more obvious in their acting. 

Even when Peter is yelling at Edmund, like during the beginning of LWW, you know it’s because he’s worried. The scene where he kills the wolf that tries to attack Susan and Lucy, and the part where he hugs them, it makes me tear up every time. 

I’m positive that if it came down to it, Peter would sacrifice himself without a thought if it meant keeping the other three safe.