AUTHOR: Mnemosyne
Disclaimer: The characters and events of the Narnia series are the property of C.S. Lewis, et al.
SUMMARY: An introspective piece from Susan's point of view: the lapsed queen of Narnia.
RATING: PG
SPOILERS: Through The Last Battle
NOTES:
Susan has always been an interesting character to me in the Narnia series, since she seems to be the one who undergoes the most profound changes. This was just an opportunity for me to try and get into her head and find out what makes her tick. I hope you enjoy!
The false jade, the-" and here he added a great many descriptions of Queen Susan
which would not look at all nice in print."
Prince Rabadash in a fervor about the flight of Queen Susan --
The Horse and His Boy, chapter 8
When she was a child she thought as a child, and mannered her actions after a child, and lived her life in the ways of a child; this was what Susan believed. Childish things were best left forgotten, like shoes that had gone out of style and were dusty with disuse in the back of a cupboard. Or perhaps, more amusingly, a wardrobe.
Oh, those had been days. She remembered with fondness the dappled sunlight on the Professor's lawn, as she and Peter and Edmund and Lucy had all romped in the fields and the forests around the stately home. But of course there had been rainy days, and quiet days, and days devoted to the guileless introspection of childhood, when each would retreat to their own private nook in the paneled rooms of the majestic house. They would read old books of arcane lore or draw pictures of distant lands; images wrought by crude, childish hands, but beautiful nonetheless for the potential they presented.
This was how she remembered Narnia: as a picture done in watercolor on a blank canvas of fine parchment paper. Surely it had been Lucy who had done the first pencil sketches, but they'd all added their touches of color and drama to the magical kingdom. Whose idea had been the Lion? Was that Lucy's as well? What an imagination her young sister had! To think of a land ruled by a dumb beast! But then, they'd all let themselves believe it; Lucy was not the only Pevensie given to flights of fancy.
It made Susan blush now to think back on those days, when she'd let herself believe everything and had taken the world at face value. A few months in the sphere of adulthood had cured her of all that. There was no room for imaginary kingdoms and kingly Lions when she had bills to pay, and a husband to find, and the usual duties required of a young lady of good standing in the London social scene. It was different for the others: Peter and Edmund were boys, and Lucy had always been a bit of a tomboy. They didn't have to worry about things like gossip and bad manners; they could go on pretending.
Well, what right did they have to look down on her? She had responsibilities. Someone had to represent the Pevensie name, if everyone else was going to go on imagining the rest of their lives. Didn't they realize it was nothing but a game? Had they all gone mad? How could she ever look Penelope Ivers in the face again if the other woman ever found out Susan's family had all gone insane? Penelope Ivers -- wife of a Lord! Susan would never be able to show her face in polite society again. She may as well retire to the country and take up spinning wool.
She married a banker, because he had a good, respectable job; no one could ever say he was flighty. No one could ever say he was anything but solid and grave. No one could ever say he was much fun, either, but there was more to marriage than fun, and he let her have her parties and weekly teas without any fuss. He was a good man with the imagination of a brick, who believed the best sort of holiday was one where he could stay indoors all day drinking port and smoking his pipe while the women did "what women do."
Oh, and she was good at that: being a woman. There were hardships, yes, but there was also lipstick, and dresses, and nylons that her mother hadn't had during the War. There were luxurious comforts like champagne and caviar, and tennis, and shopping. Wardrobes had become nothing but handy closets for storing her wealth of clothes and accessories, worn once and then forgotten. From the time she was a little girl all she'd ever wanted to do was grow up, and now that she'd arrived she didn't want to leave. She'd already had to do that once.
But no -- that was just her imagination again. No one could ever live twice.
And yet… and yet… and yet…
She didn't let her mind stray in that direction. There there be monsters.
The bodies had been remarkably untouched after the accident. The identification had been quick, for which Susan had been thankful. All three, gone; it didn't bear thinking about, how quickly they had been taken from this Earth. They had grown apart in the intervening years, but she'd still loved them dearly, even if they were all a little eccentric; she had to believe they'd loved her as well. Where is your Lion now, Lucy? she thought tearfully as she stood over her younger sister's grave and gazed down at the grassy hillock, dew-dipped in the morning mist. They'd been buried in the country, not far from Professor Kirke's home, where all their playtime adventures had begun. Where is your guardian Faun? They couldn't protect you from the real world, now could they? It got you in the end.
Just like it got me.
As she stood in the mist, dressed sedately in traditional mourning black, she thought how much brighter the graves seemed to be than the rest of the green, rolling countryside, as if lit by their own private sun. The dew seemed to glimmer with an internal fire that cast them like diamonds on the grass. Good diamonds; true diamonds; not these baubles she wore that only playacted at being the real thing; they were just hunks of pressurized coal. Dew diamonds were far more precious because they'd be gone before the sun reached its zenith; melted away like so many dreams. They came to earth, lived a few incandescent hours, and then were gone.
These stones around her throat? They'd outlast her by centuries. They were beautiful, but they had no more meaning than a pebble on the road; their value was just an illusion.
She had no doubt her sister had understood the true value of dew diamonds; Lucy always had a romantic soul. Oddly enough, Susan had believed the same of herself; until now. So which is more precious? she wondered in vain, as the sun crept higher in the morning sky. Beauty or truth? And where between those do I stand?
If beauty is truth and truth is beauty, what is beauty where there is no truth?
Perhaps, Susan thought, thinking back on their childhood games, it becomes a false jade.
THE END