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Chapter Text

Not every king or queen, no matter how great they have been for Narnia, is called a Legendary. To be a Legendary, one must have protected (or attempted to protect) Narnia from great dangers, or have reshaped the very functioning of the realm, or simply have marked the end or beginning of an era. As of the present day, in the year 3458 of Narnian history, the kings and queens who have been elevated to Legendary status may be classified into different categories, linked to their historical eras.

First, one cannot speak of Narnia without mentioning the Age of Conquest, often also called the Time of All Beginnings, or The Time When Everything Was a First, a fittingly verbose Narnian name, as tradition demands.

Of course, we begin with the founders of the Old Dynasty: King Frank I the Builder and Queen Helen I the Creator. Among their descendants, some have been forgotten, while others have left indelible marks upon history. Among the latter, we might cite Prince Col of Narnia, the youngest son of King Frank V, who founded Archeland and became King Col I.

Then there is Queen Vera II, the Dragonslayer, who drove the dragons of Narnia from our borders into the deep sea, where her great-grandson, King Gale III of Narnia, would deliver the Lone Islands from a dragon and be made Emperor by their grateful inhabitants. His sister, Princess Misla, became the first Duchess of Galma. The full history of Galma merits a chapter of its own, but briefly: Gale and Misla disagreed on nearly everything, except the necessity of avoiding civil war within Narnia. Thus, Princess Misla established herself on the island after marrying one of its original inhabitants. The history of Galma is complex, and I must admit that our beloved country has not always played a noble role therein. Due to the enduring sibling rivalry, Galma remained a sovereign nation, yet, owing to the belief that war must be avoided at all cost, Galma continued pledging alliance to Narnia and maintaining close relations. The relation between Galma and Narnia was deeply impacted and slightly altered by the Pevensies, but even they could not change the principle that it was a relationship of both rivalry and alliance.

A further chapter of our course shall focus on Narnia’s acquisition of Terebinthia and the Seven Isles. Here, it is important to mention King Olive IV of Archeland and Queen Helen VII of Narnia, the Built-Bridger, who forged strong diplomatic ties with Calormen. Their work remains, to this day, the foundation of our diplomatic relations.

And, last but certainly not least, Queen Swanwhite of Narnia: The Queen Who Stood, The Lost Queen—the final monarch of the Age of Conquest. She resisted, and ultimately fell to, Jadis’s invasion. The old Narnians called this struggle the Battle of Ice—Joyful Ice against Deadly Ice—and that is still how we remember this defeat.

This naturally led to the Golden Age of Narnia, the Age of the Kings and Queens of the Old, who freed Narnia from Jadis. Naturally, all four of them bear the title of Legendary: High King Peter the Magnificent, High Queen Susan the Gentle, King Edmund the Just, and Queen Lucy the Valiant. These four are renowned not merely for freeing Narnia, vanishing only to return millions of years later, but also for strengthening the realm, defending it against the giants of Ettinsmoor and the Dark Age of Calormen, quelling conflicts among provinces, rebuilding the justice system (whose foundations we still use), creating laws still in practice today, establishing an educational system for all Narnians, reforming taxes and finances, and much more. Narnia was transformed at its very core under their reign; they are arguably the most important sovereigns of Narnia alongside Frank I and Helen I. Multiple chapters shall be devoted to them.

The Legendary title is also bestowed upon King Corin the Dutiful, first prince of Archeland and later king, who sought not to be king yet proved a remarkable sovereign, carrying forward the great works of the Pevensies. No king of Narnia has ever borne so little love for the throne, yet this never prevented him from performing his duty to the best of his abilities, with grace and sympathy for his people.

We must also speak of the two monarchs who marked the end of this period, father and daughter, who lost the fight against the Telmarines: King Cosa IV, who died at thirty-seven defending his people, and his daughter, Queen Sol, crowned and deceased at the tender age of thirteen. Legend says that she knelt in her father’s blood to receive her coronation. This image, so poetic and symbolic, is likely untrue, yet it captures the grief of the Narnians at losing their country and the tragedy of this dark episode in our history. The tales of her siblings, Prince Hol and Princess Livie, are among the least-known in our chronicles, yet they remain crucial to understanding how parts of Narnia both succumbed to and resisted Telmarine rule. Be warned, however: these stories are far from pleasant.

Later came King Caspian the Seafarer, also known as the Navigator, the King of Renewal, who reunited the old Narnia of the Narnians with the new Narnia of both Narnians and Telmarines. His son, King Rilian the Disenchanted, left a personal legacy marked by diplomatic relations with the ancient peoples of Narnia—the merpeople and the people of the Underland—who had long kept their distance. It was during his reign that the Underland became formally part of the Narnian realm. It is said that his long captivity at the hands of the Snake-Witch left him perpetually wary of enclosed spaces, a trait akin to claustrophobia. This, in turn, explains the shift in Narnian human architecture toward more open designs.

And since that time, only one has been called Legendary: Queen Silva the Regretful—but that is a story we shall not cover in this course, for historians still struggle to decipher how her tale will mark our broader history.

This concludes our introduction. We shall meet again next week to begin our in-depth lectures, starting with the first sovereigns: King Frank and Queen Helen. Be warned, dear students, that little documentation has survived from this era. Much of what we shall recount comes from legends, folk tales, and stories passed down through the ages, tales that time has not left unscathed. As such, reality, veracity, and historical accuracy may often be elusive. Nevertheless, these narratives it is through them that we may best understand our past.

Chapter Text

Welcome back to class, dear students. In order for you to see our past more clearly, the following chapter will be dedicated to establishing the chronology of our history. Every major episode of our story will be presented briefly and succinctly. After these two introductory chapters, we shall begin the detailed study of specific reigns. Let us start, as is proper, at the beginning: with the Age of Conquest.

This age is marked by the reign of the First Dynasty, the direct descendants of King Frank and Queen Helen. It extends from the Year 0 to the Year 898. Let us now review the principal events of this first and most formative era. (You may find this part of the course somewhat tedious, but alas, it is a necessary one.)

Year 0: The creation of Narnia. The arrival of the children Digory and Polly, and with them, the nightmare of nightmares: the White Witch, Jadis. Digory plants the Tree of Protection where now stands the Lantern Waste—one of the holiest places in Narnian myth and history.
It is said, whispered even, that this Tree could not fully repel her, but that the deep resentment she bore for it forbade her from coming within a hundred miles of its roots. Thus, the Witch fled northward into the frozen lands. What she did there, and how she at last destroyed the Tree, remains unknown. We have only legends, stories whispered in fear by the Marshwiggles, a people famous for their pessimism.

Now, before moving on, I would like you to consider something about the Marshwiggles. They live in the marshes, right next to Ettinsmoor, home of the Giants—Giants who are known not only for starting wars with Narnia every so often (thus placing the Marshwiggles right at the crossroads of battle) but also for eating them. They dwell near the desolate lands where Jadis hid herself and wove her dark magic, and near the old domain of the Snake-Witch, where it is said she had lived for centuries before kidnapping Rilian and being defeated by the children. When one considers that they have lived for centuries at the very frontier of danger, surrounded by war, hunger, and shadow, it becomes rather evident that their negativity is not an inherent trait, but a survival skill, born from centuries spent as the first to see disaster coming.

When King Frank and Queen Helen had their first child, it was a boy, named Frank as well. Their second child, also a boy, is lost to history, but it was the eldest, Frank II, who succeeded his father. Now, since they were the only humans in Narnia, the question of how their lineage continued must have been a question for them, but the archives are discreet and don’t evoke such a debate, perhaps deliberately so. We only know that Frank II married a Dryad of an oak tree, named Olaka, in what is considered the first Narnian marriage. This union established marriage as a Narnian custom, adapted and reshaped by other creatures in their own ways. Every descendant of Frank and Olaka followed this pattern, marrying beings such as fauns, naiads, dryads, minor deities, or merfolk. Thus began the First Dynasty: a lineage as human as it was divine, as mortal as it was rooted in the living magic of Narnia.

Years 50–60: It is said that only after the death of Frank and Helen did the first divinities that still grace our land begin to arrive. It is during this decade that we find the first appearances of Bacchus and his Romp, of Epona and her Horde, of Father Christmas and his gifts, and of Albina (the goddess of dawn and ill-fated love) whose last recorded manifestation was during the reign of the Pevensies.

180: Prince Col, younger son of King Frank V, led a group of followers into what would become Archenland. The reasons behind this departure, why he left, and why some Narnians chose to follow him, remain veiled in shadow and uncertainty. What compelled him has been lost to time; we only know that he departed, and that a new kingdom was born from his exile. What is known, what any Archenlander could tell you, is that their country was founded by Col I and his beloved: the spirit of a Pine. It is widely believed that this spirit was that of the Eternal Pines standing upon Archenland’s highest summit, a tree that never dies. This would not surprise us, for Prince Col, on his father’s side, descended from several ancient species imbued with magic, and his mother, Albina, goddess of the dawn and ill-fated lover, passed her own curse to her son. Thus, Col’s love was condemned to remain forever in the land where their love blossomed, alone, yet eternal.

Archenlanders tell this tale better than any historian could, for their whole culture is steeped in it. Their legends say that the spirit of the Pine remained by Col’s side throughout his life, retreating only to his tree upon Col’s death. The curse was never deliberate, but the inevitable echo of his divine bloodline—and the spirit accepted it willingly, out of love. It is said that to this day, every descendant of Col I is destined to know a love as wondrous and as tragic as his own.

Year 204: The gods Tash and Epona began the painting of Calormen, aided by the Great Lion himself. Calormen is a land born of color and brushstroke, of vivid emotion and divine artistry. Dear students, never succumb to the simplistic notion that Calormenes are our eternal enemies. They are a people born of different art and under different gods. There were many times in our history when we were friends. We only mistake them for foes because our Golden Age coincided with their Dark One.

Year 215: Queen Vera II, niece of King Col I, earned the title the Dragonslayer by driving the dragons of Narnia beyond our borders and into the deep sea. Once, Narnia was saturated with dragons—so many that no other creature was safe. Some say they came from Calormen, having escaped the brush of the gods during creation; others argue they were born of Narnia itself, creatures of fire and desire that belonged wholly to our land, and that by banishing them, Queen Vera upset the balance of creation so profoundly that even the gods had to intervene. We will never know the truth.

Year 300: The empire of Calormen spread mightily. Calormenes colonised the land of Telmar, west of Narnia.

302: King Gale of Narnia freed the Lone Islands from a dragon and was made Emperor by their grateful inhabitants. The original people of the Islands are believed to have been the children of merfolk and stars—beings of both sea and sky, belonging fully to neither. They were said to be immensely cultivated, refined in art, music, and philosophy, but of fragile constitution; their very bodies seemed torn between air and water. To such beings, dragon fire must have been unbearable. Their request for protection from Narnia is thus understandable. But to this day Narnian are uncomfortable when it is pointed out that they solve a problem they have themselves created.

307: Princess Misla became the first Duchess of Galma. She married one of the island’s original inhabitants, like most islanders, a child of merfolk and stars, or of wind divinities and humans carried away by tempests. Misla spent ten years on Galma before marrying him. It is said that her father, the Dowager King, sent her there in exile when her growing rivalry with her brother, King Gale, could no longer be ignored. Where Gale believed in benevolence and the will of Aslan, Misla believed that neither Aslan nor Narnia were free from fault. Gale governed with light; Misla with severity. Their differences (ideological, spiritual, and personal) were irreconcilable. When Misla married her husband, she declared Galma independent, though bound to Narnia by alliance. Yet uncertainty remains: what did the Galmans themselves desire? We do not know. The island’s name before Misla renamed it Galma has been lost, as have all traces of its original customs. Some say that Misla’s greatest ambition was to shape Galma into Narnia’s sophisticated younger sister: refined, elegant, touched by Calormene color and sea-born grace.

Year 440: The Calormenes of Telmar fell into wickedness, and Aslan turned them into dumb beasts. Their country lay in ruin. This moment, dear students, is key to understanding the Calormene hatred for our Lion, and it raises difficult theological questions, ones that scholars still debate. Was Aslan, in that moment and many others, a just god, or one who abuse a little to much its power?

Year 460: Humans from another world arrived in Telmar—said to come from the same world as the Pevensies. The Telmarine archives record that they called themselves “Polynenian” or something close to it.

Year 898: The White Witch, Jadis, returned from the Far North. Thus ended the Age of Conquest, with the dreadful Battle of Ice, the focus of our next lecture.