The Telmarines are a serious problem! The extra-canonical timelines I've seen generally have them arriving about 450 years after the creation of the Narnian world, which is fine as far as it goes. They also came in a group (minimum twelve people: six pirates, their 'wives' (aka the women whose husbands and possibly children they killed, and whom they then raped and enslaved), and potentially a few children) which would make it easier to hang onto parts of their culture, whereas Frank and Helen's contributions may well have been overwritten by the native Narnians, especially if the two humans were trying not to be too authoritarian.
However, the Telmarines are stated to come directly from Earth -- specifically from a small and presumably isolated island in the South Seas (ie, Polynesia) -- and they have a noticeable Spanish influence in their names. They also, logically, had to come from after 1900 since that's the approximate date of MN. This is, frankly, weird. It's possible they were Spanish and/or Filipino sailors who turned to piracy after the US conquered the Philippines, but then why would they bring specifically English month-names instead of Spanish or Tagalog month-names? (I assume that proper names and similar things do not get auto-translated into English by the Deep Magic, with Calormene noble titles as my primary evidence.) Additionally, the description of the pirates sounds much more Golden Age of Piracy than early 20th-century, but that would mean they left our world before MN, yet arrive in the Narnian world several centuries later, which is just not on. (While I will buy that time in one dimension has nothing to do with time in another dimension, I will not accept that time can go backwards; the laws of thermodynamics continue to apply.)
This problem, of course, arises because Lewis had not yet written MN when he wrote PC, and -- sing it with me -- he couldn't maintain inter-volume continuity if his life depended on it. *sigh*
At one point, speakr2customrssuggested that the Telmarines were a mixed Spanish/English crew who fled the Caribbean around 1720 after Woodes Rogers went pirate hunting, which makes as much sense as any other explanation I can kludge together and does fit the Golden Age of Piracy feel to Aslan's tale of Telmarine origins. The trouble then is how to account for the time travel... but I can handwave that their dimensional-gateway cave actually ran through at least one intermediate world between Earth and Telmar (they never noticed because they were still underground), which removes the problem. (I have a similar handwave for the Calormenes, which involves their ancestors leaving the general vicinity of the Punjab sometime after the Mongol invasions, spending a thousand years or so in an intermediary world, and then stumbling into the Narnian world.)
The other problem, of course, is that Caspian and Professor Cornelius don't blink twice about the use of 'Greenroof,' though if it's part of a different calendar you might expect them to be a little surprised and/or to comment that Miraz won't know what date Peter means. One could probably handwave even that by saying that Archenland keeps to the old Narnian calendar, but really, the whole thing is just a mess. *beats head repeatedly against laptop*
(no subject)
Date: 2016-07-03 04:57 am (UTC)However, the Telmarines are stated to come directly from Earth -- specifically from a small and presumably isolated island in the South Seas (ie, Polynesia) -- and they have a noticeable Spanish influence in their names. They also, logically, had to come from after 1900 since that's the approximate date of MN. This is, frankly, weird. It's possible they were Spanish and/or Filipino sailors who turned to piracy after the US conquered the Philippines, but then why would they bring specifically English month-names instead of Spanish or Tagalog month-names? (I assume that proper names and similar things do not get auto-translated into English by the Deep Magic, with Calormene noble titles as my primary evidence.) Additionally, the description of the pirates sounds much more Golden Age of Piracy than early 20th-century, but that would mean they left our world before MN, yet arrive in the Narnian world several centuries later, which is just not on. (While I will buy that time in one dimension has nothing to do with time in another dimension, I will not accept that time can go backwards; the laws of thermodynamics continue to apply.)
This problem, of course, arises because Lewis had not yet written MN when he wrote PC, and -- sing it with me -- he couldn't maintain inter-volume continuity if his life depended on it. *sigh*
At one point,
The other problem, of course, is that Caspian and Professor Cornelius don't blink twice about the use of 'Greenroof,' though if it's part of a different calendar you might expect them to be a little surprised and/or to comment that Miraz won't know what date Peter means. One could probably handwave even that by saying that Archenland keeps to the old Narnian calendar, but really, the whole thing is just a mess. *beats head repeatedly against laptop*