Disclaimer: The Chronicles of Narnia is the intellectual property of C. S. Lewis and his estate. No money is being made from this story, and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
Author's Note: Once again I failed to get the history lesson into the chapter, though with the hints here and in ch. 3, you are hopefully starting to get the picture of the cultural perception gap Cor and Aravis are tripping over.
Thanks to hungrytiger11 and rthstewart for their helpful comments! Also, a clarification: Sir Cereus is the senior ambassador from Narnia. Lady Eena, the donkey jenny mentioned in ch. 2, is the junior ambassador. Basically, Cereus does the ceremonial stuff and the paperwork, while Eena makes sure Cereus doesn't get carried away and make impractical or impolitic promises. (She also runs the local outpost of the Narnian intelligence service. *grin*)
Still book canon only.
Summary: Sometimes Cor feels as though he's fallen through a mirror into a world where everything is backwards and all the people around him insist he's the one who's crazy.
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Chapter 4: The Law That Makes Him King
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Father had promised to make Education happen to Cor, but that fell to the side in the first months after Rabadash's humiliation. Apparently a prince couldn't simply sit in on the lessons given to the servants' and villagers' children - Cor was secretly relieved, as he felt quite enough of a fool already - but Corin's old tutor had been dismissed several months ago when Corin began preparing for eventual knighthood.
Eventually Aravis realized that Cor still couldn't read, and took matters into her own hands. "This is the letter A," she told him, sketching its shape in the damp earth at the bottom of a local gorge. "It starts my name. This is the letter B. It starts Bree's name. This is the letter C."
"My name?" Cor asked, having seen that written on several dreadfully official-looking documents when Father had called the Great Council to affirm that he was, indeed, the long-lost prince rather than an ambitious pretender (though they had stopped short of actually confirming him as Father's heir).
"Yes," said Aravis, giving him a glimpse of her bright, flashing smile - her true smile, not the softer one she used for everyday manners. "Now. This is the letter D."
She spent a week teaching him his letters and some ways to sound out simple words. Then Aravis declared herself done and told Cor the only way to improve was through practice - "just like swords and riding and anything else worth learning" - and handed him a copy of the Great Chronicle of Archenland which she had borrowed from the castle library. "You should learn the history of the country you're going to rule," she said. "Ignorant princes are weak. Weak princes lose wars. I will not return to Calormen in chains."
Cor began muddling his way through the chronicle that afternoon.
It was slow going. The book began as the day to day record of the first settlers, under King Col the First, and mostly concerned things such as the distribution of firewood and the construction of log houses. It continued through the establishment of other villages and keeps, the creation of the Great Council to write laws and ratify or strike down the king's decrees, and endless dithering about hunting rights and boundary lines.
Cor took to using the book as an insomnia cure. Two pages a night sent him to sleep like a pinched-out wick.
Now he was beginning to think that might not have been the best idea, since he couldn't remember enough of what he'd read to have the slightest idea why Father had said it was out of the question for him to marry Aravis, nor why the few nobles he'd asked about royal weddings had recoiled at the thought of her as his bride, nor why the old rumors of his incompetence and unsuitability to inherit had once again started hissing around the corridors of Anvard, the way they had swirled thick as blackflies in the first years after he and Aravis had come north from Calormen.
There shouldn't have been a problem. Yes, the Great Council could refuse to confirm him as crown prince for any number of reasons, and there was at least one prior case where an heir apparent had been disinherited over an unsuitable marriage, but Aravis wasn't under suspicion of poisoning two prior husbands. Cor had been certain the assembled nobles and village speakers would accept her, as they were slowly coming to accept him now that Father had begun to let Cor join him on tours and sit in on meetings so people could see he was neither a fool nor ill-disposed toward the country of his birth.
Aravis had come north with him, freely choosing Archenland and Aslan as her new land and lord. She had received Aslan's blessing and welcome. She was quick and smart, graceful and striking, at ease with all the trappings and pitfalls of rank that Cor still struggled with.
Why did it matter that Aravis had been born in Calormen? Why did anyone care that she had started a courting dance instead of waiting for Cor to learn Archenland's marriage customs? Love was love, wasn't it?
There must be an explanation for this sudden upwelling of hatred and suspicion that he had somehow missed seeing all these years. Calormenes didn't hate northerners, after all. They simply didn't think about them. And Archenland was supposed to be better than Calormen.
Cor wanted Aslan to appear and fix everything, but that was a selfish wish. He would have to solve this problem himself.
That didn't mean he couldn't ask someone to explain things.
Father had gone out with Hwin for the afternoon and Bree, for all his bluster, was not much use as an authority on Narnia, let alone on Archenland. Therefore, once Cor had satisfied the Horse that his riding skills hadn't rusted since they last met, and that he hadn't mortally offended Aravis (at least, he certainly hoped he hadn't), he made his way to the bare courtyard where Corin liked to box anyone he could rope into a match.
Cor got on well with his brother, but they spent surprisingly little time together. They'd grown up apart, they were being trained to different tasks, and they shared few interests. Also, as Father put it, Corin leapt without looking while Cor (who had had enough of being rash to last him a lifetime and beyond) looked without leaping. "Should learn to mime each other's virtues," Father often told them. His lectures tended to result in Cor beating Corin in a swordfight, Corin knocking him down in a boxing match, and the two of them stealing an afternoon for some minor adventure while Aravis called them both fools. Then they resumed their separate ways.
Corin looked remarkably foolish now, being stripped to the waist, dripping with sweat and blood, and sporting the first bloom of a first-rate black eye. His opponent, the senior Narnian ambassador, looked equally battered. Both man and satyr were grinning like maniacs.
Cor stuck his fingers into his mouth and whistled for their attention.
Corin flung up his left arm. "Hold!"
The ambassador, Sir Cereus, fell back one pace and turned to follow Corin's gaze. "Prince Cor," he said, offering a polite half-bow. "Is this court business or a family matter?"
"The latter," Cor said awkwardly. He had grown used to strangers bowing when introduced to him, but he hated when people he already knew kept up the habit.
"Then I will leave you in peace, your highnesses," the satyr said, smiling with bloodstained teeth. "Perhaps we can determine a victor tomorrow, Prince Corin." He trotted out of the courtyard, his hooves thudding against the dry, packed earth.
Corin seized a towel from the low stone bench that ran the length of the southern wall, and mopped his face. "This had better be important," he grumbled. "Cereus and I have each won a round and that was meant to be the tie-breaker."
"You can knock him down just as well tomorrow," Cor said without much sympathy. "I need to ask you about..." He paused, wondering how to put all his worry and confusion and anger into coherent words.
"About why you can't marry Aravis?" Corin guessed. He dropped the towel to the ground and sprawled on the bench. "Because she's Calormene. It's not complicated."
Cor sat down beside his brother, yanking his summer cloak off his shoulders and unlacing the strings of his shirt. The shade of the courtyard wall did little to soften the summer heat, and he didn't need to be formal in front of Corin. "That's the problem," he said. "I don't understand why anyone cares that Aravis was born in Calormen. I was raised in Calormen. Besides, Aravis discovered Rabadash's plans - without her, Archenland wouldn't still exist. So why can't she marry me?"
"Because she's Calormene," Corin repeated, as if talking to an idiot. "It doesn't matter that she betrayed the Tisroc. We're very grateful, and of course she can stay in Anvard as long as she wants. But you're going to be king someday and she can never be queen. Nobody would trust her, and nobody would trust you if they knew she had your ear."
Cor threw up his hands in frustration. "She already has my ear! Everybody knows she has my ear!" Even if he hadn't reciprocated her steps in the dance, Aravis would always have been the person whose advice he trusted most. "And I think a good third of the Great Council - Marchwarden Pel, Dame Chancellor Blenith, and the rest of their faction - won't ever trust me no matter who I marry. What is it about Calormen that makes everyone in Archenland go insane?"
"Maybe the way that the Calormenes try to invade and murder us all every few generations?" Corin said, his voice rising. He twisted to grab Cor's shoulders and stood, shoving his brother against the wall.
Cor's head struck the rough granite wall and he went very still, blinking rapidly through the dazzle of pain. He barely heard Corin's next words.
"Maybe the way they want to turn us away from Aslan and force us to make foul sacrifices to Tash the unspeakable?" Corin shoved again. "Maybe the way the Tisroc takes every chance he can find to humiliate and dishonor our kings and country?" Another shove. "Maybe the way they kidnap our children and sell them into slavery and starve them and beat them like criminals? Like they did to you!"
Cor hooked his left foot around Corin's leg and bent his knee, pulling his leg up and sideways. Corin lurched sideways, off-balance, and nearly pulled Cor down in an attempt to steady himself.
"You-!" he said.
Cor grabbed his brother's wrists and steadied him. He didn't say anything. He and Corin set each other off too easily. If one of them didn't keep his head, they'd never get anywhere.
After several breaths, Corin met Cor's eyes and flushed, embarrassed. "Sorry," he muttered, his grip loosening. "The Calormenes call us barbarians, but they have no honor. Aravis betrayed the Tisroc, but she hasn't ever renounced her father. It's one thing to accept her as your friend. It's a completely different thing to accept her as queen consort of Archenland and the mother of the next reigning king or queen."
Cor lifted his brother's hands from his shoulders and held Corin's wrists tightly. "Don't get angry. Just listen. I heard every word you said, and only half of them made sense. I came to ask you because there must be something in the history between Archenland and Calormen that only makes sense from your side. I swear in Aslan's name that Calormenes don't hate northerners. And they would have let Queen Susan marry Rabadash without a second thought."
He held Corin's eyes, telling his brother the truth he couldn't bring himself to tell Father and hadn't managed to explain to Aravis yet. "I'm going to marry Aravis. I don't care how long we have to wait or how many people I have to insult. I'll claim the throne without the Great Council's agreement if I have to. But I don't want to do that. It would break Father's heart if I put myself above the law, and I wouldn't be worthy of the throne afterward. Explain Archenland to me, so I can explain myself and Aravis to my country."
Corin's mouth twisted into a small, bitter smile. "You sound more and more like Father these days. I'm glad I don't have to think about the law and all that responsibility. No one cares who I marry, or even if I marry." He turned his head and spat onto the ground, traces of blood mixing in with his saliva. "Fine. I'll tell you anything you want to know, and I'll even try not to hit you when you say something insufferably Calormene. But let's go somewhere more private first."
Cor let go of his brother's wrists and grabbed his cloak from the ground. "Lead on."
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AN: Thanks for reading, and please review! I appreciate all comments, but I'm particularly interested in knowing what parts of the story worked for you, what parts didn't, and why.
8/20/10: This chapter was edited slightly in response to comments from AM83220 and WiseQueen, to clarify what I meant by my description of the relationship between Cor and Corin, and to show that Cor didn't learn to read in a single afternoon.
8/15/16: This chapter was edited during the process of finishing the story for the 2016 WIP Big Bang.