Prince Caspian: C.S. Lewis Sends the Pevensies Back to a Conquered Narnia
The prince fights for his crown while discovering the true history of his people, the Telmarines, a race of land-bound pirates. The Pevensies come to Narnia again to help him win back the throne that is rightfully his. Caspian raises an army to free his country from a treacherous king, and a duel of honour between two men will decide the fate of a whole world.
Author: C.S. Lewis (1898–1963); illustrated by Pauline Baynes
Title: Prince Caspian (1951)
Format: English paperback (HarperCollins Children’s Books), 192 pages
Scope: Book 4 of The Chronicles of Narnia in reading order (second published)
Amazon: www.amazon.es/dp/0007115563 (ASIN 0007115563)
A Different Narnia
Prince Caspian tells how the four Pevensie children return to Narnia more than a thousand Narnian years after the events of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, only to find it has become a completely different place. Overrun by the Telmarines, Narnia is now ruled by the tyrant Miraz, a usurper who governs with an iron fist. All the talking creatures have gone into hiding, far away from the race of men.
The Rightful Heir
Miraz has a nephew, Caspian, the rightful heir to the throne. Caspian’s tutor, Doctor Cornelius, who is really half-dwarf and half-human, secretly teaches him about the old Narnian ways and the talking creatures that once lived in the land. When Caspian learns of his uncle’s plans to murder him, he flees the castle and takes refuge with some talking creatures he meets in the forest. There he uses Queen Susan’s old horn in an attempt to summon the kings and queens of old.
Meanwhile, in England, the four Pevensies are waiting at a railway station to go back to school when they are pulled into Narnia by the call of Susan’s horn. Narnia: the land where anything can happen.
Pulled from a Railway Platform
The Pevensies are sitting on a station bench, waiting for trains back to school, when they are tugged out of England by the blast of Susan’s magic horn, blown in desperation by Caspian. They find themselves among the ruins of their own castle, Cair Paravel, now an overgrown island, and realise with a shock how much time has passed. A dwarf named Trumpkin, whom Edmund nicknames "Dear Little Friend", leads them to Caspian’s army of Old Narnians, among them the gallant mouse Reepicheep, one of Lewis’s best-loved characters.
Lucy Sees Aslan
The heart of the book is a quiet test of faith. Lucy alone sees Aslan beckoning the party along a gorge, and the others, Peter and Susan included, refuse to believe her and take the wrong road. Only when they follow her, at first without seeing anything, does the lion become visible to them one by one. It is Lewis at his most openly allegorical, but the scene works as pure story too: anyone who has been the only person to see something will recognise Lucy’s frustration.
Where the Telmarines Came From
Near the end, Aslan reveals that the Telmarines are descended from pirates of our world who stumbled through a cave on a South Sea island, a detail that ties Narnia’s history back to our own. The climax combines Peter’s single combat with Miraz and a wild procession in which Aslan, with Bacchus and Silenus, wakes the trees and the river-god and frees the land. Peter and Susan learn that they are now too old to return, a decision that will matter later in the series.
On Screen
The book was filmed in 2008 by Andrew Adamson, as the second of the Walden Media Narnia films. The film adds battles; the book has more wonder and a gentler sense of humour, and Pauline Baynes’s illustrations in this edition capture it well.
Where It Fits
Lewis wrote it as the second Narnia book, and it reads best right after The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, whatever numbering your edition uses. It is a story about faith and about remembering: the children have to learn to trust Aslan again even when others cannot see him.
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