Through the Wardrobe

by Herbie Brennan

  So, while King Miraz dismisses Doctor Cornelius as minor and without merit, while the king assumes that Doctor Cornelius is just another useless little thing, Prince Caspian sees the reality of his new tutor. It’s Doctor Cornelius—the small, unassuming little Dwarf—who educates Prince Caspian. It’s Doctor Cornelius who enlightens Prince Caspian in all the ways the prince so badly needs and craves, showing great courage in defying King Miraz’s orders and in bringing Prince Caspian to a full understanding of his birthright and the untapped potential and plight of the barely surviving, carefully hidden citizens of Old Narnia.

  Doctor Cornelius also possesses some bits and pieces of the magic of Old Narnia, and an appreciation for little things. He has spent many years and cast many spells to bring the prince the one (and surprise, surprise small) artifact of a bygone era that might be of use to Prince Caspian: the horn of Queen Susan, which the prince blows to summon the saviors of Narnia.

  Finally, in an act of true and noble heroism, Doctor Cornelius puts his own safety at risk to spring Prince Caspian from King Miraz’s castle. Because of Doctor Cornelius’s bravery, Prince Caspian gets away clean from King Miraz and his forces before the king can murder him and obliterate the bloodline of the true kings of Narnia.

  Prince Caspian then travels through the woods, into the heart of Narnia itself, and finds the Talking Animals, such as Trufflehunter the Badger. Trufflehunter is the first to swear allegiance to Prince Caspian as Narnia’s true king, stating, “And as long as you will be true to Old Narnia you shall be my king, whatever they say.”

  Trufflehunter serves as a guide for Prince Caspian, leading him to other Talking Animals, such as Pattertwig the Squirrel, Reepicheep the High Mouse, Camillo the Hare, and Hogglestock the Hedgehog. Even though King Miraz doesn’t think Talking Animals are worth much, these very small, seemingly insignificant creatures form the very army that follows Prince Caspian and rises up against the usurper king. Imagine King Miraz’s surprise when he meets Prince Caspian on the battlefield, and the prince’s army of Talking Animals holds off the royal forces.

  Maybe the king should have paid more attention to those Animals he forced into hiding.

  Even though he’s a good guy, Prince Caspian himself starts off making the same mistakes as his uncle King Miraz. At first, Prince Caspian underestimates the smaller, weaker beings who have great influence on his life. His first potentially fatal excursion into his uncle’s foolish oversights involves his own underestimation of Doctor Cornelius.

  Prince Caspian goes to meet Doctor Cornelius on a deserted castle tower, alone, unprotected, and unarmed. When Prince Caspian really sees the true Doctor Cornelius for the first time, the prince thinks with a jolt, “He’s a Dwarf, and he’s brought me up here to kill me.” Only Doctor Cornelius’s pure intentions save the young prince that night. Had the small Dwarf been harboring ill or murderous intentions, no doubt Prince Caspian would have died before sunrise.

  King Miraz’s soldiers also exhibit this blatant disregard of anything smaller than themselves. Following King Miraz’s lead, the soldiers underestimate a Dwarf they capture as he is on his way to search for the miracle the prince has summoned with the horn of Queen Susan. This Dwarf, ultimately known as Dear Little Friend (DLF), seems too small and weak to be a threat to the soldiers. As such, they dally and toy with him before finally losing him as a prisoner—a mistake that allows the return of Miraz’s much more powerful enemies, the old kings and queens of legend.

  One of those very same kings, High King Peter, makes a similar mistake. In the midst of the big battle with King Miraz’s forces, he dismisses the worth and prowess of Reepicheep the High Mouse—and all his tiny warriors.

  “Come back, Reepicheep, you little ass!” Peter shouts at Reepicheep and his soldiers when they join the fight. “You’ll only be killed. This is no place for mice.”

  The Mice ignore him—and serve the greater good of Narnia. But the Mice “[dance] in and out among the feet of both armies, jabbing with their swords. Many a Telmarine warrior that day felt his foot suddenly pierced as if by a dozen skewers. . . . If he fell, the mice finished him off; if he did not, someone else did.”

  At this point, Peter finally grasps the truth, as he doesn’t make this error again.

  As for Prince Caspian, after he escapes from his uncle’s castle, the prince seems to finally get the lesson about appreciating the power of small things. He knocks off dissing the little creatures. In fact, by the time he starts meeting the creatures of Old Narnia, he accepts each being for its own gifts—or accepts that they have gifts, even if he can’t see them readily as yet. He doesn’t ridicule or dismiss the smaller warriors, but welcomes them all into his army. He also values the small horn of Queen Susan, and he uses it when Narnia’s moment of desperation arrives. Maybe more important than all of that, Prince Caspian catches on to the serious danger associated with the dark Dwarf Nikabrik—the little freak who almost resurrects the evil White Witch in the prince’s presence. Because Prince Caspian knows little creatures can be strong, he is able to recognize the evil Dwarf’s threat. The prince saves his own life and the lives of many of his inner council.

  So in doing so, Prince Caspian proves himself to be a hero who can learn, and perhaps a hero because he does learn, to accept the value of the smallest of creatures. He finds his way to an unlikely victory—a victory built on the little things.

  Disregarding the Children

  If anybody takes it in the dignity as much as tiny mice, it’s children. Almost everybody in Prince Caspian, villain and hero alike, underestimates the kids.

  King Miraz kicks it off by underestimating Prince Caspian. King Miraz treats the young boy as inconsequential and disposable. He assumes that no one so slight and young can stand up to him, much less wriggle out of his grasp. That’s how King Miraz finds himself facing an army of Talking Animals led by this young, slight, and inconsequential child—who is in fact the land’s rightful king.

  The usurper king doesn’t learn his lesson, though. Even after Prince Caspian surprises King Miraz, the king still screws up and decides that Edmund and Peter, because of their youth and size, cannot be the mythical kings from those nursery tales of grand Old Narnia. They are nothing but children, and therefore he sees them as no true threat to his safety. “Do you think I am asking you if I should be afraid to meet this Peter (if there is such a man)?” he asks his counsellors, who are exploiting this very prejudice to goad Miraz into accepting the challenge to single combat with Peter. “Do you think I fear him?”

  In the battle itself, it isn’t long before Miraz begins to feel the consequences of his error in judgment: “ ‘Well done, Peter, oh, well done!’ shouted Edmund as he saw Miraz reel back a whole pace and a half. . . . But then Miraz pulled himself together— began to make real use of his height and weight.” Thus, in this battle for his life, Miraz employs the same belief he had all along: that his superior size, his greater height and weight, will give him the advantage and bring home the fight in his favor. He thinks he’s going to win simply because he’s bigger and older, and therefore more experienced.

  As the fight plunges onward, King Miraz gains the advantage over Peter, only to be thwarted at a crucial moment by the strength of Dwarf-wrought chainmail, which refuses to break under a death-blow. The craft of smaller, putatively weaker creatures proves to be the usurper’s undoing. Before King Miraz can recover from Peter’s next onslaught, King Miraz’s own people murder him, and the usurper’s story is forever finished.

  If King Miraz hadn’t assumed younger people were no threat to him, he might have been more alert. He might very well have stood victorious over all of Narnia, new and old.

  Earlier in the story, Prince Caspian, for all his heroism, makes exactly this mistake when he fails to grasp the power and importance of his uncle’s newly born son. The baby, after all, is only an infant, so tiny and helpless. When Doctor Cornelius insists that the child’s birth places Prince Caspian in mortal peril, that the baby is r
esponsible for King Miraz’s change of heart and tactics toward Prince Caspian, the Prince responds with, “I don’t see what that’s got to do with it.”

  Doctor Cornelius has to remind Prince Caspian about the patterns of history, that when two heirs exist for the same throne, one heir almost always ends up dead. Prince Caspian now stands between King Miraz’s son and the rule of Narnia; he’s the “spare heir” and a potential usurper against King Miraz’s blood-family. Thankfully, the prince understands before it’s too late and runs away from his uncle.

  High King Peter, in concert with Susan and Edmund, himself blunders in not trusting the smallest and youngest of his party, Lucy. Despite what occurred in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, when no one believed Lucy about her discovery of Narnia, and despite knowing that Lucy has a long history of truthfulness, insightfulness, and honesty, and that she is deeply connected to Aslan and the spirit-heart of Narnia, Peter still dismisses Lucy’s claims of having seen the Lion. He also rejects Lucy’s recommendations about how they should find their way to their destination.

  When Lucy insists she has seen Aslan, Peter replies with, “Yes, Lu, but we don’t, you see.” Then, in making his decision to go against Lucy’s pleas, Peter says, “I know Lucy may be right after all, but I can’t help it. We must do one or the other.” Peter chooses against her, effectively dismissing her perceptions, and leads his party to near-disaster. At least Peter is able to admit his mistake later, after everyone in his party almost gets killed—and after he realizes the truth of what Lucy told him, Peter finally sees Aslan again for himself.

  Even poor Lucy underestimates a child—in a surprising way.

  Lucy seems to have gotten so used to the belief that younger, smaller people are not as capable as older, larger ones that she fails to trust herself. When Aslan comes to her, and she knows with all certainty and absolutely no shade of doubt that Narnia’s savior is at hand, she still doesn’t have the faith in her own perceptions and strength to do what she needs to do. She lets her older siblings tap dance all over what she believes and doesn’t stand up for her own assertions about the direction they need to take.

  When Aslan confronts her later, she expresses her lack of faith by not believing he would have expected her to leave the others and follow him all on her own. Aslan gives her a look to let her know that, yes, that’s exactly what he wanted her to do.

  Lucy takes her lesson to heart, and in her next confrontation with her older brothers and older sister, she shows great courage and refuses to back down. She expresses her faith in herself and her own perceptions so strongly that they begin to believe with her. In turn, they rediscover their own ability to see Aslan, and they safely make their way out of the wilderness into the battle they need to join.

  A Mighty Small and Large Lion

  Contrary to the other inhabitants and visitors to Narnia, the Lion Aslan knows children and other tiny creatures have a power and strength all their own. He both seeks and counts on the smallest of creatures in all the land. He appears first to Lucy, the youngest of all, and offers her a fascinating paradox.

  “Aslan,” said Lucy, “you’re bigger.”

  “That is because you are older, little one,” answered he.

  “Not because you are?”

  “I am not. But every year you grow, you will find me bigger.”

  Thus, unlike everything else in life, Aslan gets bigger in perception as people age instead of smaller. He understands how children have been taught by society to see themselves as weak, how children are taught to be fearful. As a kindness, and because children are so important to him, he allows young people to see him at whatever size they can manage or accept. Aslan knows and respects the importance of little things so much that he specifically makes himself and all of his strength accessible to children in a powerful but non-threatening manner.

  Aslan is also fierce with little creatures, children, and tiny animals. He doesn’t let them off the hook when they don’t achieve their own potential. When Lucy attempts to tell Aslan that her failure to win her siblings to her beliefs was not her fault, Aslan responds by looking her straight in the eye and letting her know he expects more of her, that she isn’t excused from right action simply because she’s small—or because what she’s supposed to do is difficult. “It is hard for you, little one. . . . But things never happen the same way twice. It has been hard for us all in Narnia before now.”

  Aslan furthers his demonstration of respect for the little things by collecting the children of the village and treating them as important—even allowing them to ride on his back.

  Additionally, unlike Peter and Caspian, Aslan fully blesses the efforts of Reepicheep and his Mouse warriors, granting them healing and honor. He reminds everyone that were it not for the tiny mice, his original victory against the White Witch would not have been possible, noting, “You ate away the cords that bound me on the Stone Table.”

  Aslan won’t forget that kindness. He expresses the truth of his beliefs clearly in the statement, “Ah . . . You have conquered me. You have great hearts.”

  The Youngest, Smallest, Tiniest, Truest Truth

  The littlest creatures and the youngest children are the real heroes of Prince Caspian. Though Peter, Edmund, Susan, and Caspian are knights and warriors who battle valiantly, they tap a courage they already know they have. They use abilities they know they possess and strength that, given their size and prowess, is no significant surprise. Essentially, these characters fulfill function and duty in a noble fashion. But heroes? Perhaps in form and function, but not so much with respect to heart.

  For heroes in the truest sense, dig deeper into the pages and characters of Prince Caspian and understand that, yes, it’s the little things. The bravest of characters in this tale are Doctor Cornelius and the Animals and Dwarfs who shelter and then join what appears to be a hopeless battle in support of Narnia’s true King Caspian—especially Reepicheep the High Mouse and his warriors—and Lucy. They are the characters who face the overwhelming odds head-on, despite the failures and liabilities that make them doubt their ability to succeed. They throw themselves into the battle without hesitation or question.

  Though young or small or in Lucy’s case, both, they reach within themselves for a deeper, more powerful courage. They find strength that larger or older characters take for granted, and though they’re frightened and outmatched, they battle anyway.

  As noted by Aslan, these characters, these creatures and mice and children, are the genuine heroes who conquer with superior hearts instead of greater strength or weapons. It’s the little things who rise, the little things who win the real war against society’s dismissal and their own fears about their competence—and the little things who ultimately guard the world of Narnia with dignity.

  Susan Vaught is the highly acclaimed author of Exposed, Big Fat Manifesto, Trigger, Stormwitch, and a number of books for adults. Her most recent releases include Oathbreaker Part I: Assassin’s Apprentice and Oathbreaker Part II: A Prince Among Killers, an epic fantasy co-authored with her son JB Redmond. She is a practicing neuropsychologist and lives with her family in Kentucky.

  As a youngster, Orla Melling was, by her own admission, “a scruffy, dishonest kid, living by the seat of her pants.” She led a gang that let the air out of tires, threw stones through windows, and bullied other children. She was out of control, clearly headed straight for juvenile court. Then something magical happened. . . .

  Being Good for Narnia and the Lion

  O.R. MELLING

  Which of your evil characters do you like the best?”

  The question threw me for a loop, not the least because it was asked by a curly-haired girl-child, about eight years of age, with a face like a cherub’s.

  “Well, um, actually,” I said, hemming and hawing to buy myself some time.

  How could I answer without implying some kind of criticism or making the other kids laugh? I did a quick mental review of my published books at the time. Was Queen Mae
ve evil or simply acting the way a warrior queen should? What about the Tuatha De Danaan? They were a good race gone bad, but they do repent in the end and head off to be gods. As for Finvarra, the High King of Faerie, he was such a charmer even Gwen forgave him for the hard time he gave her.

  “That’s a very interesting question,” I said finally, doing my best to be honest and careful. “I’m almost stumped. But, you know, I’m not big on evil characters and I’m not sure I really have any. I’ll have to think about that some more.”

  Twenty years later, I am still thinking about the question and what it implied. Why are evil characters attractive? And should children’s writers make evil characters attractive to their readers?

  I’m not talking about attractive anti-heroes, like, for instance, Robin Hood. He may have been considered a criminal by the authorities, but we all know he was good at heart. Robbing the rich and feeding the poor, he was a hero who defied the evil rule of the Sheriff of Nottingham and his overlord, the bad King John. Luke Skywalker and the Star Wars rebels are a similar type. In both these cases, we can see quite clearly who’s good and who’s bad.

  However, we begin to stray into the gray when we meet the handsome highwayman/bandit/pirate type, like Dick Turpin or Captain Jack Sparrow. Here we have robbers and even murderers who win their way into our hearts because they are good-looking and witty and roguish. We weep when they hang at Tyburn or cheer when they make their last-minute escapes.

  Is it much of a step from liking that charming cut-throat to finding evil itself fascinating and attractive?

  I recall a certain Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode—you can catch episodes in reruns, if you’re curious—in which our gallant crew ended up in an alternate universe where they encountered versions of themselves who were cruel, violent, and vicious. But also gorgeous. Was it one of the characters or a reviewer who commented on the confusion caused by discovering that your evil twin is hotter than you?