:headdesk:

[burntcopper]

Right. So. Writing the Archenland bit. For now this is action fest.

(in which I finally have a Narnian that isn;t middle class, he appears to be East End - but for some reason has told me that the wolves would rather like Saxon names, please. oh-kaaaaay. Well, considering the Archenlanders told me very early on that they were Welsh, thankyou, i can't really grumble.)

Except. Er. I have the Archenland lot making a trip to the Narnian court. (for those of you who watch merlin, 'Mercian entrance!' scrawled in the side notes may make some sense) Only. Um. I'm presuming Archenland has talking beasts and so on, since CS Lewis never mentioned them doing a concerted silencing and wiping out as the Telmarines explicitly did. Only...uh... how the fuck did the Telmarines come to believe talking beasts and centaurs are myths and died out if they're right next door in Archenland? I know they're isolationist, CS Lewis *says* they're isolationist, but how the fuck do I square them being *that* dumb?

No, seriously, do the Archenlanders hide them away or something when there's court visits? Did Telmarine Narnia never venture outside their own lands in the last hundred or so years?

HELP.

Just watched a documentary on Leslie "hutch" Hutchinson, a cabaret artist who was... fuuuuck. One of the most famous of the 20s-40s, slept with *everyone* (including half the royals), and has been completely wiped from history, partly due to influence by upper classes (all the scandals) and the rest because he was black. i must track recordings down - what they were playing was gorgeous.

Comments

[countertony.livejournal.com]

Hmm - while Lewis didn't say there was any official persecution of talking animals in Archenland, it wouldn't have surprised me if there was the kind of (comparatively) low-level harassment from humans, given that ideas - even unpleasant ones emanating from pariah states - do have a habit of spreading. One might well posit circumstances where the talking animals retreat from human society in order to ride out the storm. Add an isolationist Narnia into the mix and the few official (read: scripted and controlled) visits by Telmarine Narnians to Archenland might well have been talking-animal-free.

The situation that sprung to my mind was kind of n unholy alliance of (a) the treatment of Jews in England by Hitler-inspired fascists during the 1930s (persecution, but neither state-sponsored nor to the same degree as Nazi Germany would take it a few years later), and (b) a level of Telmar-Narnian isolationism similar to that of Japan during the Tokugawa shogunate or North Korea today.

Just kicking that one out there.

[burntcopper.livejournal.com]

huh. So if the Archenland court and so on (far more tribal and not so completely town-focussed as the Telmarines) tend to regard the Telmarines as fascist nutters, it's probable they keep any beasts and centaurs and so on out of the way to preserve the illusion? And any traders and so on who did come back with tales probably either said nothing because they knew they'd be disbelieved or anything they did say was laughed at as a joke or wild stories.

I suppose that works.

[countertony.livejournal.com]

The traders question fits nicely into the shogunate isolationism hypothesis - during that era trade was restricted to only take place in a few towns, on pain of death (to foreigners - not sure whether the same punishment was meted out to Japanese trading abroad, but it may well have been.) Such special-economic-area type places could be either in Narnia itself (thus avoiding the question of Talking Animals entirely) or in Archenland (where the local lord/chieftain might well see profit in keeping the Telmarines happy by keeping TAs out.)

In fact, to me the more decentralised nature of Archenland's government makes it more plausible that Archenlandite persecution of TA's might take place without sanction from the Court - central policy would be more difficult to enforce, with firebrands having a greater influence at local level. This might well be enough to drive the TA population 'underground' for fear of Telmarine-style systematic pogroms becoming Court policy from the bottom up.

[omylouse.livejournal.com]

Archenland has always bothered me. It became populated with humans early on (The Magicians Nephew) & was still populated when Peter & co ruled (The Horse & His Boy) - I'm guessing those mountains that separate Archenland from Narnia are pretty tough to get through otherwise why did the white witch not try to wipe them all out too?!

[countertony.livejournal.com]

SFAICT (and please correct me on this) there's no known interaction between Narnians and Archenland-as-a-nation between the time of King Col (Year 180) and the end of the reign of Jadis (1000.) The Narnia wki says "In the year 407 Olvin of Archenland turned the two-headed giant Pire into stone. The dead giant was later called Mt. Pire or sometimes Olvin" but doesn't state the provenance of this information - that is, whether it (and therefore the existance of Archenland as a nation) was known to Narnians at the time.

Speculation follows:

1. Prior to 180, although Archenland may have been ruled by Narnia (the second son of Frank I) in theory, it was de facto governed by the local talking animals, if any - at most, an extremely decentralised government based on individuals and fmaily co-operation. The most that Narnians knew for certain about Archenland was that there was probably land beyond the large mountain range that delimited Narnia's southern inhabited area. Communication between Narnia and Archenland: nil.

2. In 180, Prince (later King, of Archenland) Col decides to make reality match the claims of Narnia, and leads a (large, self-sufficient) expedition to explore and (if possible) colonise Archenland. Assuming that Narnia is not yet a seafaring nation in any significant sense, the expedition has to cross the mountains - a journey that would be worth making only for great reward, such as conquest.

3. Nothing is heard back from the expedition after some point, and it is assumed lost. This is because of the difficulty in passing through the mountiains, as the conquest of Archenland is actually successful. Realising that it is not viable as a colony, Archenland secedes.

4. At some later point, Narnia grows less expansionist and claims of ownership over Archenland die out. Eventually the existence of the land, already a matter of opinion, passes into legend. Jadis never learns of the existence of Archenland as a nation - only the putative geographical area that may lie south of Narnia. It is re-discovered in the early years of the Golden Age of Peter/Susan/Edmund/Lucy.

Idle speculation, but certainly stranger things have happened, even in the real world.

[burntcopper.livejournal.com]

see below - remember the whole 'Sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve' prophecy? The descendants of Frank and Helen married dryads and naiads. Possible negation of that particular prophecy (the reason the White Witch wiped all humans) due to no longer being considered pure-blood enough to fulfil it? After all, no-one thought the Telmarines qualified until Aslan told them about the pirate thing.

(frantic justification? Narnia fanfic writers' major source of headaches)

[omylouse.livejournal.com]

It can't be all that hard 'cause Shasta walked it in about a night (albeit with Aslan keeping between him & a drop!) & then the Narnian army got there in time to help battle the Calormenes.

[burntcopper.livejournal.com]

CS Lewis -->logic gaps, he has them.

I'm currently going 'Jadis just thought they weren't enough trouble to bother with.' Like I said, the Welsh. that country's history contains a lot of potential conquerors throwing their hands up and going 'argh, too much shite to deal with' - terrain being the main reason. Jadis was also empress of the islands to the east but there's nothing about her trying to wipe humans from there.

It's possible that the prophecies no longer considered the Archenlanders human *enough* to fulfil the 'Sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve' prophecy, since the descendants of Frank and Helen married dryads and naiads. Considering Caspian is surprised by Aslan confirming that the Telmarines do actually fit that qualification due to being descended from Earth pirates and islanders.

[omylouse.livejournal.com]

hmm.... interesting point re the mixed blood. They seem to have retained enough human qualities for them to be recognisable in TH&HB though. Which genetically speaking is very interesting (or at least is to me).

I think Logic Gap sums it up best though!

[burntcopper.livejournal.com]

oh, yeah. would count as human to anyone who looked, just not for the finicky prophecies.

Of course, this is the same CS Lewis who said the Calormenes are descended from Archenlanders - and their genetic makeup changed that fast (skin colour darker at *birth*, facially distinct, etc) in 800 years from first settlement by the time of LWW...

Seriously. They're descended from northern europeans, there weren't any other humans in Calormen prior to that, how the hell did their skin colour darken that fast? I know lightening can be pretty fast due to breeding, but I thought darkening was an evolutionary reaction - less skin cancer for those with darker skins, so your kids survive to produce the next generation.

[gmh.livejournal.com]

OTOH, if a bunch of South Seas pirates (or sundry schoolchildren) can come through a gap between the worlds, I really don't see why a bunch of medieval Moslems couldn't do the same thing; it may not be canon, but it's consistent with the magical background and doesn't require the kind of fudging you'd need to make Calormenes and Archenlanders second cousins twice removed.

[burntcopper.livejournal.com]

huh, true, hadn't thought about that.

Ah, making sense of CS Lewis so our brains don't break.

[clanwilliam.livejournal.com]

Except they can't be Muslims.

Because the Tash worship doesn't evolve in its theology as far as we can see between Horse and his Boy and the Last Battle.

Based on what Tash looks like, they could be a bunch of renegade Djinn worshipers in an Islamic world, or a bunch of Islamicised Hindus a generation or two after the Mughal conquest. Tash doesn't owe his image to any depiction of God in the Islamic world after all. But he could be derived from either a Hindu god, an Islamic djinn or something even further east.

All the humans who come to Narnia are escaping something the first time. (Okay, in Eustace's case, he's being escaped from...) Digory and Polly are escaping Jadis and Uncle Andrew; the Pevensies are escaping the housekeeper; Eustace (second time but first without a previous traveller) and Jill are escaping the school bullies.

Frank is pulled along on the escape and Helen is called to him.

The Telmarines are escaping bloodshed on their tropical island.

Why not the Calormenes escaping religious persecution of some kind? And even better, why not have Tash himself pull them through? Therefore Aslan doesn't take much interest in them, since they're not his people, but he and Tash probably sit down every now and then and have a nice cup of tea and discuss what's going on.

[burntcopper.livejournal.com]

... you realise we're putting too much thought into this. and of course I'm never goign to explore it in nano.

[clanwilliam.livejournal.com]

G said exactly the same thing when I expounded it to him tonight.

On the other hand, with a good understanding of the background, you can throw it all away in 200 words and explore it later if you feel like doing so...

[omylouse.livejournal.com]

*nods* That's what my brain automatically assumed - another rift let a bunch of Saracens or Arabs through.