I thought I was done with the White Witch pics for the summer, but then I came across this gorgeous AI one. But note there was no white horse in the story!
White Witch, kinda Tilda Swintonish.
Malice in Jade [Narnia Fanfic]
A Chronicles of Narnia fanfic — NSFW
Malice In Jade
I find such pleasure in tormenting this fool.
Worldbuilding Wednesday 8/2/23: The House of Caspian (Narnia XLV)
Hey look, there’s Caspian Whats-his-name!
As I speculated in last week’s Worldbuilding Wednesday post, the family line of Caspian never had a proper name. English history had the Plantagenet kings, the Lancasters, the York, Tudors, and Stuarts… all the way down to the House of Windsor, that of the newly crowned King Charles III. What gives?
I know, writer forgetfulness again. But if the line did have a name, it might be one of these.
Names for the House of Caspian
| Rohall
Dracwood Huntglass Marstone Veltdwater Hushwood Vorgrin Argonel Stangrist Geldspar Landseer Stivund |
Pellicard
Brienhart Treubet Salgaine Rheund Vretspur Chelon Traegish Windglory Rhalindor Rubram Larkwater |
When Aslan’s Not so Perfect
A child’s vision
As the title says, Aslan depictions have their off days, when the lion is not grand and noble as he should be, but suffering from poor skill on the part of the artist, or deliberately depicted as less than than impressive to make some satirical point. Which could be construed as a form of sacrilege, for Aslan is the God / Jesus character in the books.
Take the pop-up book panel on the left. Not only does Aslan look massively clumsy in his paper form, but also incredibly sad. He’s a bit of a doofus. Has he been taking too much Valium?
Not impressed with this Aslan either, though it seems he’s unrelated to Narnia Aslan.
Aslan stage costumes are especially prone to misfiring on the conceptual side, as I talked about in these posts. This one, however, hits a new low. It’s way too cheap and shoddy-looking. And the way the photo is posed, he looks like he’s about to eat Lucy.
I get why the stage designer wanted to emphasize the size of the lion head for this Aslan, and de-emphasize the human body with a black body stocking like a bunraku puppet. But it just looks goofy for him to be a disembodied skull and paws.
I am not a fan of the 1979 cartoon version of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and this storyboard for the film shows why.
Though it’s in Spanish, it’s easy to get the joke behind this panel from a Simpsons comic book.
Cartoon by Eric Matthews
This artist makes a telling point. What did all those poor Narnian animals think of the kids’ fur coats?
Even Pauline Baynes, the “official” artist of the Chronicles, misfired sometimes. This color depiction of Aslan from The Magician’s Nephew looks kind of scrawny, like he hasn’t had a good meal in a while. Lewis once said she didn’t know how to draw a good lion.
Someone had fun with the Aslan puppet on the set of the BBC production of LWW.
As terrible as all these Aslans are, they don’t approach this Aslan made of bread dough, and baked. But I bet he tastes good!
Turkish Aslan! I like how they stuck a random painting of a Turkish battle in the bottom half to fill up space.
Let’s be thankful Aslan was not based on the Medieval bestiary idea of a lion.
Here’s what Aslan himself thinks of all this.
The Lady of the Green Kirtle: Deadly Dyes
Previous parts of this series: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV
A dress dyed with Scheele’s green, which contains arsenic. Conservators must handle it with gloves.
It was not only the green hue of absinthe that broadcast the deadly nature of the Lady of the Green Kirtle. It was the color itself, which received a such a bad rep in the 19th century it became synonymous with disease and death.
I’m talking about Scheele’s Green, a pigment I researched for this Worldbuilding Wednesday post.
The pigment was invented in 1775 by Carl Wilhelm Scheele, a German chemist. Its formula is CuHAsO3 which means it contains both copper and arsenic, the latter a deadly poison. Scheele’s green replaced copper carbonate, a bluer shade of green compared to the new color’s rich lime shade. Previous green pigments were derived from plants, which meant they faded over time, or the mineral malachite which turned black. In that context, the bright, almost shocking, hue of Scheele’s green was a godsend. It proved very popular and in the first decades of the 19th century it was widely used for paints and dyes, which included interior paint for houses, fabrics for clothing and household furnishings, paper, kitchen implements, children’s toys, candle wax, even dyes for foods.
Worldbuilding Wednesday 7/26/23: Rilian’s Brothers (Narnia XLIV)
Prince Rilian: A pampered only, and lonely, child?
A few days ago, in the Narnia subreddit, I discovered a glaring discrepancy in The Silver Chair I had never noticed before.
At the end of The Voyage of The Dawn Treader, Lewis has this to say about Caspian and Ramandu the Star’s Daughter:
 |
Caspian married Ramandu’s daughter and they all reached Narnia in the end, and she became a great queen and the mother and grandmother of great kings. |  |
Yet, none of Rilian’s brothers are mentioned in The Silver Chair. This implies that the outcry and tragedy of his disappearance means he’s Caspian’s only child, or at least the only son. Without him, the king’s line cannot continue, according to the patriarchal notions of Medieval English kingship. (Interestingly, the Caspian kings never received a familial name.)
It’s a discrepancy ripe for fanfic. Did the other siblings die? Were they females, and thus married off, perhaps to the kings of another land? Strange, however, that they weren’t mentioned. Perhaps the other sons did something terrible, and Caspian disinherited them. Or maybe they had enough of the prince business and disinherited themselves. Who knows. Likely, it’s just due to a writer’s forgetfulness.
And the way it’s worded can mean Star’s Daughter begat two kings, and she was mother to one and grandmother to another; or she was grandmother to several kings. It could be taken as just a fancy way of saying that many of her male descendants turned out to be great kings — Rilian, Erlian, Tirian — and since it wasn’t specified they were all Narnian kings, her daughters might have borne kings as well.
But, in case Rilian did have brothers, here’s some names for them, in keeping with -ian names of the Telmarines.
Prince Rilian’s Brothers
| Sabrian
Wilmian Rhysian Aeflian Mischian Hadlian |
Hethrian
Prytian Killian Lycian Torian Josprian |
Read what C. S. Lewis Read
(Lewis Bits and Pieces)
Aslan wants you to patronise your local library.
The Librarything site (of which I am a member) has a section for the books read and/or kept in personal libraries by famous writers, and C. S. Lewis’s is here.
There’s 44 pages to it, each page hosting 50 books… so yeah, there’s a lot, especially of history, natural history, religion, and philosophy. But taking a look at the books classed as fantasy, of which there are 85, I see fantasy pioneers James Branch Cabell, L. Frank Baum (creator of Oz), pulp writer H. Rider Haggard, George MacDonald, Charles Kingsley (The Water Babies), Lord Dunsany, Edith Nesbit, and William Morris. All of these authors have been mentioned by Lewis scholars.
I was also right about Lewis being a fan of the Lovecraft Mythos, as was hinted at in The Silver Chair; one of the books was by Robert Bloch, Lovecraft’s longtime collaborator.
For Lewis’s post-1920s books, there were a few surprises, like Jane Gaskell, Isak Dineson, Virginia Wolff (author of the gender-bending Orlando — whose titular character was portrayed in a movie by Tilda Swinton, the later White Witch!) and James Thurber.
Other tidbits:
Courtesy of the Narniaweb site: C. S. Lewis wrote two poems inspired by Narnia, known collectively as the Narnian Suite, a marching song for Dwarves and a contrasting one for Giants.
Brent Dickieson’s wonderful site A Pigrim in Narnia site has this informative post on where and how to find more obscure articles about C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and the other Inklings.
Through the above, I found this paper on Disney’s film adaptation of Prince Caspian.
And also movie-related, this podcast on the failures of Disney’s The Voyage of the Dawn Treader movie.
Worldbuilding Wednesday 7/19/23: From the Spellbook of the Green Witch (Narnia XLIII)
The Lady of the Green Kirtle, IMO, is one of Lewis’s most terrifying creations in the Chronicles… so terrifying she doesn’t even get a proper name! Duplicitous, poisonous, beguiling, only when her power is defied does she show her true nature: she morphs into a giant snake that is more dragon than serpent. Her role as the villain in The Silver Chair is part of Lewis’s experimentation with the dark side of Medieval Romance, a theme that continued into The Last Battle (last in the series, but written after Chair) and The Magician’s Nephew, where the darkness is relieved by laughter at Jadis’s and Uncle Andrew’s expense.
As sorceress as powerful as she surely had some spellbooks and magic items in her closet. Unlike the White Witch who used the physical assaults of cold and stone, her powers are those of the mind: seduction, enslavement, control. Here’s a few of them.
The Green Witch’s Spells and Magic Items
| Bathtub of Fragrance: This ornate silver tub has no plumbing fixtures. Instead, the bather is cleansed and refreshed without water in a haze of magical perfume, which adds +2 to their charisma and +1 to their mind control attacks. The effect lasts for 8 hours, less if the bather is exerting themself and sweating heavily. Enchant Gaze: An adjunct spell cast in addition to any mind control spell, which lets the user “save” the spell mentally until the recipient meets his or her gaze. Foul Blast: The opposite of the Green Witch’s image of demure prettiness, the Foul Blast is an area effect spell that assaults the senses with a horrible stench and a feeling of being engulfed in sewage, offal, and slime. The blast is invisible, which makes it that much harder to avoid. Those caught in it will struggle not to vomit and feel they are being choked. The Green Witch used this spell as her last resort (fortunately not on Puddleglum, Eustace, and Jill.) Intellectual Vertigo: Numbs the victim’s mind, so when they try to think about their former lives above ground in the sunlight, they become dizzy, uncomprehending, and give up. The Green Witch’s hypnotizing powder was made from this spell cast on Becalming Dust (see below.) Lunar Sail: A silk sail the pale green color of a lunar moth’s wing, the witch used this to travel at night, powered by the moon as the wind powers an ordinary canvas sail. Mental Confinement: Locks the victim inside his or her mind, unable to move or talk, for a certain period. The time depends on the victim’s magic resistance, intelligence and wisdom, and mental fortitude. On ordinary folk, it lasts for a few hours. Orb of Sunshine: A clear yellow orb that, when stroked, emits a strong yellowish light. The witch used this to convince her victims that it was the Sun, and that the Sun was owned by her and under her control. The orb is as smooth and heavy as a solid globe of glass. It can also be used to keep undead and other dark creatures at bay. Ring of A Thousand Tassels: One of the rare magic items owned by the witch that had no evil function. When worn, the ring creates decorative tassels on anything made of fabric, rope, or leather: harnesses, curtains, clothing, etc. Some say it was a courting gift to her from the Tisroc of Calormen. Syar, the Ring of Armoring: The witch wore this when she went into the upper world; it protects her like a full suit of +2 plated armor. Like physical armor, it can be damaged by attacks from weapons and eventually fail. The Becalming Dust of Empress Anullé: When thrown on a fire this powder creates a thick, perfumed green smoke that envelopes those in the vicinity in a benumbed torpor. In this state, they are ready victims for any of the witch’s other spells. The powder came from a distant nation of the world of Narnia, and there is a limited supply. |
Narnian Witches: The Lady of the Green Kirtle
Now let’s take a look at more depictions of The Lady of the Green Kirtle, aka the poisonous, hypnotic Green Witch.
The simple pic at the right puts her in a stuffy Medieval headpiece similar to the one worn by Barbara Kellerman in the 1989 BBC version. But she’s more at ease in it, bending over to kiss a horrified Prince Rilian who is strapped to his chair.
“Make it STOOOOPP! Make it SSTOOOOPPP please!”
Besides the Silver Chair, the Green Witch’s other magical items include her mandolin and a hypnotic smoke generated by a green powder she throws on the fire. (I always took the powder to be a stand-in for opium.) Wickedly complacent, the witch strums her lute as the prince, none too securely bound, rolls his eyes and begs for mercy.
The following are not depictions of Lewis’s Green Witch, but they could be.
Envoy, by Sedone Thongvilay
From a turn of the century children’s book. I like the slinky dress and the old-fashioned chivalry that’s implied, chivalry that’s presented as less than wholesome by Lewis in the book. Plus, she’s wearing a souped-up version of a green kirtle. If you’re wondering what a kirtle is, skip ahead. I also like the little dogs.
Lady Owein, by Alan Lee
There’s another dog, a greyhound, in this watercolor by Alan Lee who is known for his illustrations of Middle Earth. Again, not the Green Witch, but I like the Medieval feel of it and the calculating, slightly demented look on the woman’s face, whose hairline is shaved back in the standard of beauty of the time.
Melancholy, by Alvor
The Green Witch is a master of putting on a false innocence.
To the left is a Medieval kirtle. Basically, what we would consider now a dress, but in the Middle Ages it served as the middle garment of three for most women. The base garment was a chemise or smock which was worn closest to the skin, then came the kirtle, then a gown or surcoat, the multiple layers necessary in a time without central heating. The kirtle was designed to be close-fitting and served as support for the body, important in a time without corsets or brassieres. That the Green Witch rode around in just her kirtle would have been a little racy or inappropriate for Medieval society, as that was considered an “at-home” style. The low-hanging belt on the kirtle was a common accessory and emphasized the lady’s waist and hips.
Pauline Baynes’ illustration of the witch doesn’t exactly show this garment, but by the Baroque period, the kirtle had many variations, some being indistinguishable from modern dresses… that is, those with a fitted bodice and gathered skirt sewn on separately.
The kirtle was revived in the late Victorian period as the “tea gown,” a loose dress worn by the wealthy for lounging in during the day, opposed to the tight, corseted affairs worn for dinners and social outings. Tea gowns were beloved by the pre-Raphaelites, and the pre-Raphaelites, I believe, to Mr. Lewis.
The Mandolin Player, by Charles Fairfax Murray
I wonder if Lewis had seen this image somewhere and based his witch on it?
White Witch, plus Elephant
I forgot to add this picture to my previous post. Not sure if it’s meant to be the White Witch, but it could… except for that elephant head peeking out from top left, and the cathedral-like imagery.