Narnian headcanon week, 6

[heliopausa]

Oh my!  running late(ish).  But all sorts of things have been happening today (all good).

Sixth in the series:

 

King Lune was once Prince Lewin – he had an older brother, the heir apparent, Prince Lew, who was lost at sea.  In the Archenlandish way, this tragedy (this particular kind, of a complete and mysterious disappearance) was not referred to again, after one year's full mourning. 
In the same way, the loss of Prince Cor was not mentioned after the end of the mourning period; hence Corin himself had never heard of his brother, nor had the younger members of Lune's court, nor the Narnians (who had been still caught in Jadis's Winter when it happened).  For this reason, Lucy and Edmund and Corin don't any of them, on seeing the brothers together, draw the conclusion which would have been obvious, had they known the story. 

“Why, so he is your double,” exclaimed Queen Lucy. “As like as two twins. This is a marvelous thing.”

When Lune speaks to his two sons about kingship, he is doing so remembering, and even repeating, partly, the same words used by his own father to him, the bitter night they accepted that Prince Lew was lost forever.  (Hence, by the way, his use in this passage of the archaic forms he does not usually adopt.)

Comments

Re: head-canon collision

[autumnia]

Finally, someone else who sees Peter as dark-haired. Like you, my visual cues have been taken with Baynes' illustrations (so for me, Peter is dark, Edmund is blond) though of course, there is the issue of Lucy. But having Lewis be more description with the the girls, it's easier for me to move past the point where she is drawn with dark hair sometimes while others, she is blond (in the Friends of Narnia illustration in TLB for example).

Re: head-canon collision

[transposable_element]

I've always taken a lot of cues from the Baynes illustrations because C.S. Lewis rarely gives detailed physical descriptions of his characters. But I have read that he wasn't happy with many of her illustrations, especially early on in the series.

Re: head-canon collision

[heliopausa]

The PaulineBaynes illustrations were enormously important for me as a child - and so for sure they've stayed as important influences. But we're running into the same squashed-up-layout difficulty. If I open a thread on the NFFR site, could we talk more about them there? (http://www.narniafanfiction.net/forums/index.php)