it's so much easier to suppress word of mouth vs printing
Yes, that's true. But that presumes you're willing to repress and suppress unflattering commentary in the first place. Which Edmund isn't, for various reasons. Poor kid.
Insofar as Lewis portrays Narnia as having any sort of coherent political system, it does seem to be a feudal monarchy (or tetrarchy, under the Pevensies). And yet, there are aspects that clash heavily with that, such as the schools and whatnot seen in passing during PC, and the bureaucratic government of the Lone Isles in VDT. (Which Caspian overturns and replaces with a Duke -- back to feudalism!) And then you run into the mess of SC, in which it's hard to make out whether Narnia has any sort of organized government, beyond Caspian as an absent figurehead, and TLB in which I can't tell if Tirian has any effective authority at all!
But generally speaking, I do think the ideal is feudal, with an understood exchange of loyalty and duty between subject and ruler. How that plays out in practice is, of course, another question altogether.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2014-07-07 12:37 am (UTC)Yes, that's true. But that presumes you're willing to repress and suppress unflattering commentary in the first place. Which Edmund isn't, for various reasons. Poor kid.
Insofar as Lewis portrays Narnia as having any sort of coherent political system, it does seem to be a feudal monarchy (or tetrarchy, under the Pevensies). And yet, there are aspects that clash heavily with that, such as the schools and whatnot seen in passing during PC, and the bureaucratic government of the Lone Isles in VDT. (Which Caspian overturns and replaces with a Duke -- back to feudalism!) And then you run into the mess of SC, in which it's hard to make out whether Narnia has any sort of organized government, beyond Caspian as an absent figurehead, and TLB in which I can't tell if Tirian has any effective authority at all!
But generally speaking, I do think the ideal is feudal, with an understood exchange of loyalty and duty between subject and ruler. How that plays out in practice is, of course, another question altogether.