[Fic] "The Golden Age: A Historical and Cultural Survey" -- Chronicles of Narnia

[edenfalling]

Summary: An excerpt from the introduction to The Golden Age: A Historical and Cultural Survey, published by the University of Redhaven in the year 1667. (225 words)

[ETA: The AO3 crosspost is now up!]

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The Golden Age: A Historical and Cultural Survey
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The so-called Golden Age of Narnia is best understood not as a distinct historical era but rather as a later attempt to construct a new national ideology in the wake of the Long Winter and its concomitant destruction of both material and performative culture. The Pevensie tetrarchs ruled for a mere fifteen years, much of which was spent rebuilding a shattered land, warding off attempted conquest on several fronts, and mediating the legal and social complications of mass repatriation. Their reign was by no rational standards a time of stability, let alone of prosperity. Their abrupt and still unexplained departure did not tragically precipitate chaos, as legend would have it, but was merely one of a nearly uninterrupted string of crises that began with the Pevensies' arrival in Lantern Waste and continued throughout Lord Steward Peridan's reign. Narnia's political fragility cannot truly be said to have ended until the year 1102, when Lady Steward Evelyn declared herself Queen Evelyn the First of Her Name, thereby raising House Scrapemoss to royal status in law as well as in fact.

Why, then, is such an ephemeral and troubled period remembered as a paradise?

The question can be answered in part by a simple comparison of the Pevensies to their immediate predecessor, Jadis the Usurper, whose dictatorship, enforced by both magical and mundane cruelty, ground Narnia nearly to oblivion over the better part of a century...

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Inspired by the 7/12/15 15_minute_ficlets word #231: ephemeral

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Writing fake history is fun. :D

Comments

[branchandroot]

*sparkles* Excellently cool fake history! Also, so very, very true. I mean, Lewis glosses it as a golden age, but when you look at what he actually says it's mostly "didn't poke their noses in everyone's business".

[edenfalling]

I think a fair bit of the whole Golden Age shtick is a pure and simple comparison to Jadis. And let's be honest: almost anything would look wonderful in comparison to Jadis's rule. Another part is probably related to Aslan's personal presence at the start of their reign and occasional appearances thereafter. Presumably those tapered off after the Pevensies vanished, though they may not have stopped altogether until around the Telmarine conquest. Thirdly, I think Narnians needed to construct a new national mythos to hold together both those who had suffered through the Long Winter and those who returned to their ancestors' homes after a century of exile and at least partial assimilation in other lands and cultures. The end result is the recasting of the Pevensies as the True King(s) whose ascension ended chaos and in whose reign everything was Good, regardless of the actual facts on the ground.

This is not to say that they were bad rulers -- I think they did the best they could under the circumstances, and clearly by the time of HHB they'd managed to get the southeast (which borders Archenland) into a safe and stable state -- but they were facing a LOT of complications and it's equally clear they fought a LOT of battles over those fifteen years. I mean, apparently they built a navy to rival that of Calormen! You don't spend that kind of money without a very compelling reason.