Philosophy Among Monarchs:
King Edmund the Just preferred to remain alone when working in his office.
He usually used as little light as possible as necessary to review cases and such. And since there was little light coming through the windows at the moment, that was all the better. His quill scratched over the paper, formulating theories.
And then the door burst open, and a light shone into the room.
Three silhouetted figures came through, and he raised his hands before the light. When his eyes adjusted, he saw Peter, Susan, and Lucy, standing before him.
"Alright, Ed, you've had your fun now out with it," said Peter.
"Out with what?" asked Edmund. They didn't usually intrude on his office like this.
"You've been sitting in this office for weeks, taking your meals inside, and only going out for work. We're concerned for you," said Susan.
"Yes, some of us were afraid you'd gone batty," said Lucy with a smile.
"Lucy, I believe we've got enough to do here in Narnia that Aslan won't take us away," said Edmund, trying to be rational. "Ruling part of this one seems work enough for anyone."
"Yes, we know. But you've been uncannily out of it, Ed," said Peter. "What have you been doing in here?"
Edmund thought about what he had been doing and then considered how best to say it. "It's uh...
"A bit of philosophy, actually. I used to scoff at philosophy because it wasn't really real. But now that I'm a King of Narnia, I know that it is real. Or rather, what it's trying to discover is real. And we've got to learn as much as we possibly can about it, or else we might go astray.
"Sometimes I have to pass sentences on people. Once or twice, I've had to sentence someone to death. If I am going to live up to my status as King Edmund the Just, I have to be as good as I can be."
"Yes, but that's no reason to stay shut up in here. What has been eating you?" asked Lucy.
Edmund sighed. "It's something Susan said, actually, a long time ago. It keeps bothering me."
"Me?" asked Susan. "What did I say?"
"It was when Aslan was preparing to die for me, Susan," said Edmund. "You asked him if he could work against the Emperor's magic."
"Oh yes, I remember that," said Susan, looking up. "I felt like a complete fool. I wasn't sure whether Aslan was displeased, amused, or downright dumbstruck.
"But I knew I'd never ask that question again."
"Well, that's really what has been bothering me," said Edmund. "I've been trying to figure out if it is even possible to work against the Emperor's magic. So far as the records say, Aslan is this world's God."
"That's not the way to think about it at all, Ed," said Lucy. "Aslan isn't a different God; he's our god in a different form. Lots of different people in our world see God differently. So it stands to reason different worlds would as well.
"Aslan just shows himself to them how they see him."
"That is not necessarily true, sister," said Edmund, who was always in favor of reason. "It is possible, even likely, that the God of our world and the God of Narnia are the same being. But it is also possible that they are co-workers of a sort, or even working independently of one another.
"Given some of the things that have gone on in our world, one could even interpret them, enemies."
"You can't believe that, Edmund?" asked Lucy, shocked.
"No, I do not," said Edmund. "I am stating that we do not have irrefutable proof as to Aslan's nature. We know he is a god, perhaps the God, but we have to at least consider other possibilities."
"Well, I think that Aslan would want us to think about all this," said Peter. "Even if we came up with a wrong answer, he's the sort of chap that wants you to try things on your own. And I'm sure he could set us straight if we started to go bad."
"But Edmund, what does this have to do with working against the Emperor's magic?" asked Susan. "Wasn't that what the Witch and so many other bad creatures have been trying to do?"
"I considered it, but no, not really," said Edmund. "I don't think they actually are, or at the very least, they were doing a very poor job of it."
"What do you mean?" asked Peter. "The White Witch put Narnia under a spell for a hundred years. It seems a pretty good job of fighting Aslan to me."
"Yes, but it wasn't her magic," said Edmund. "You remember the records of King Frank that Susan and Lucy uncovered? The Witch got her power by cheating.
"She didn't get it from herself; she stole it from the Emperor and other people. And even the power she had on Charn would have come from the Emperor. After all, Aslan was there when the deep magic of this world was written, unless you want to call him a liar."
"I don't think that would be very wise, Edmund. Even considering the possibility is pushing it," noted Peter.
"I am illustrating the possibility, Peter," said Edmund with a sigh. "Even if I don't like a possibility, even if I find it absurd, I have to consider it. An unpleasant truth can be dealt with; a beautiful lie can ruin the Kingdom.
"At any rate, my point is, the Witch was a thief.
"A very powerful thief and she hurt a lot of people, but she was using stolen goods. And her rebellion didn't actually stop Aslan. It slowed him down a bit, and he used it to bring about good things. Good things that wouldn't have happened otherwise.
"And there will be many stories that come from these events which inspire other people."
"Well, it's a jolly nice thing to think about, Ed," said Peter, biting his lip. "So you don't think it's possible."
"That was my hope," admitted Edmund. "However, I began to consider other possibilities of attack."
"Attack?" asked Susan.
"I am taking the role of a villain plotting ruin who views Aslan as an enemy. I cast myself in his role that I might stop his kind," said Edmund. "The villain's kind, I mean.
"The way I see it, the problem with fighting the Emperor's Will is threefold;
"First, working against the Emperor's will is self-destructive. You might get some Turkish delight in the first place, but you'll be made a slave. At best, you'll see short-term goals, and your every victory will bring only ruin to yourself and to others.
"Second, the Emperor is all-knowing. You cannot surprise him, ever. I think we all know that Aslan was there from the start and knew we were coming and how we'd get there.
"Third, the Emperor is all-powerful. Nothing is beyond his reach, and the rules of reality may be dismissed or altered at his pleasure. I suppose he limits himself to them out of professional courtesy."
"This villain is banging his head against a wall, Ed," said Peter.
"I'm not quite finished yet," said Edmund. "You see, there is only one weapon that one has against the Emperor. That is free will. This is not to be contested. The fact that we are having this conversation requires deviation from his plans."
"We could all be automatons unaware of our own pre-destined nature," mused Susan. She had done some studying of it.
"Susan, forgive me, but that is ridiculous," said Edmund. "An automaton is incapable of thought; that is what it means to be an automaton. However, we could be unfortunate spirits bound within a body. One we only deluded ourselves we controlled.
"This, however, is simply silly. Anyone who has done a hard day's work knows that motivation is very important for people. But a train runs much the same no matter how hard it rains, so long as it is maintained."
"Also, if Aslan created us in such a form, it would be cruel," noted Lucy. "And he's not cruel.
"I mean, imagine being preordained to be the White Witch?"
"Well, anyway, this is a bit off-topic," said Peter. "What about free will could he use?"
"Well, that was an area my efforts bore fruit in," said Edmund. "First of all, one person on their own can do very little to contest the Emperor's will. They can become pretty bad, but they'll be shut up in prison sooner or later. However, several people, being very bad, can do a lot worse.
"Now, if those several people get a lot of other people to do a few bad things, it'll set a precedent. Pretty soon, acting contrary to the Emperor's will would be the normal, and then things can get worse."
"So a sort of collective strength? Like what they did in Germany?" said Peter. "Back uh, back in the days before we came here." Things were always a bit fuzzy before they came out of the Wardrobe.
"I see," said Lucy, thoughtfully. "So the Witch didn't really have any power at all."
"What do you mean, Lu?" asked Peter.
"Peter, think about it," said Lucy. "If every single Narnian had risen up and tried to get rid of her earlier, they would have. It wouldn't matter how many statues she created, they'd get her before the end. But she had an army, a lot of Narnians who'd gone bad like her, who got special treatment.
"We spent years rooting them out. And Mr. Tumnus was one of them before he met me, despite being a very good person. How many other people were like him?"
"So the Witch could only keep her power while people let her," realized Edmund. "That would explain a thing or two. Aslan probably could have just waved a paw and ended the whole thing. But he needed us to clean up our own mess, so to speak. I mean, you remember how Mother-"
"Let us leave our room a mess so we'd have to deal with having a messy room, yes," said Peter.
"Right, she wanted the room clean, but she wanted us to do it for ourselves," said Susan. "So she left us to deal with the problem, and we fixed it.
"Similar principal, but uh... much more grown-up kind, I suppose."
"That's how the Witch kept Narnia in permenant ice," guessed Edmund. "The Witch had authority over traitors and their fates.
"Well, she had lots of the trees and birds and every other kind on her side. So she had authority over them as traitors. She'd been turning the whole land into traitors of one kind or another. And she'd been using them to stamp out the ones that wouldn't.
"So she was able to put it all under perpetual ice because that was her right by the Deep Magic."
"Yes, and she ended up paid out," noted Peter. "I suppose she could have turned the whole world into traitors and villains to try and shut Aslan out for good. But that wouldn't do her any good either, since Aslan set the rules. He'd stop her long before she got that far, and if everyone in the world were truly that vile..."
"The great flood, from the Bible," thought Lucy.
"Well, I wasn't going to bring it up. But it does seem a bit less harsh if you imagine an entire world of people acting like the Witch," noted Peter. "They'd likely to better off drowning."
"That's a very uncharitable thought, Peter," Susan chided him.
"Well, Aslan seemed it was perfectly charitable," noted Peter.
"Yes, but he wouldn't have been so cavalier about it," said Susan. "I have the feeling that if it actually came to it, he'd be sadder than anyone on the world he was destroying. And if he felt sorrowful over it, we ought to too."
"I, for one, am in full agreement with Peter," said Edmund. "He'd be doing them a favor."
"Edmund!" said Lucy.
"Lucy, think of how I was before we got here," said Edmund. "Now imagine that I never got better and just got a little bit worse every year. I was a brat back then, but I became a traitor. And in a world where there were no good people, there'd be no one to snap me back.
"I'd just get worse and worse and more spiteful, and I'd go to hell for sure. And so would every single person who'd be born, and that'd be on my head too.
"Now, if I had to choose between that and dying before I became a total monster, I'd choose to die. I expect the Witch might have felt similarly if she'd seen how she ended up before she got there."
"She'd only be sorry she got caught," noted Lucy, who had a particular hatred for the Witch. "But you may be right. Aslan would not have done it if there wasn't a good reason."
Peter laughed. "Well, on the bright side, fighting the Emperor's Magic seems to be a complete wash. You can do it for a bit, but it only ends the worse for you."
"Not necessarily," said Edmund. "I said before that I think the Witch was doing a very poor job of it. You see, the problem with her strategy is this;
"It moved the confrontation onto the Emperor's ground. She is more or less asking him to let her win for a bit, and he eventually refuses to let her.
"In the end, she was embracing a strategy that could not possibly succeed. Aslan will never allow evil to triumph. It flourishes only until he decides it will be dealt with, and it always turns out worse for the person who did it.
"But working against the Emperor's Magic does not necessarily mean being evil."
"What do you mean?" asked Peter. "Isn't that like saying going up doesn't necessarily mean rising?"
"In a way," said Edmund. "But in another way, it's not a contradiction at all. Suppose you were destined to marry someone according to Aslan's will."
"I don't think he-" began Lucy.
"I know he probably doesn't operate like that Lu, it was merely an example," said Edmund. "You meet the person; you get on well with them, you think about proposing, and you don't do it. If it was Aslan's will you marry this person, you would be working against it in some form. But there is no sin inherent in not marrying a person, provided there isn't some real reason that you ought to do it.:
"But that's not the same at all, Ed," said Susan. "Aslan certainly wouldn't mind that, and he'd just adjust his plan. It's not really working against him at all. You're making a request."
"Also, he'd likely know you'd make that request," noted Peter.
"I suppose we have to define what we mean by 'working against the Emperor's magic," mused Edmund.
"Well, how would the White Witch define it?" asked Susan. "That seems a good place to start."
"I suppose, if she were asked, she would define it as bending Aslan to her will. Sort of forcing him to act according to her desires," noted Lucy. "But of course, she would also not want to suffer any of the bad things that come with it.
"It's the sin that brings those repercussions."
"So you'd have to force Aslan to do something without sinning?" asked Susan.
"Well, that's just the trouble, Susan," said Peter. "I don't think Aslan likes being forced into anything, and he won't cooperate. He was willing to do it to save Ed, but it's not the kind of thing you can count on.
"And if he's given us free will, then anything we like, so long as it's not evil, would be part of his will. In a general sense anyway."
"And anyway, trying to force Aslan to do anything would be a sin. So it's all moot," said Lucy.
"What if the attempt to force him was external and unintentional?" asked Edmund thoughtfully. "Perhaps, other people without your orders made a move to force him to do what you wanted."
"Well, you'd have to stop it then, wouldn't you?" asked Peter. "And I don't imagine he'd cooperate in any case."
"These things all seem to have the same ending," noted Susan.
"I can think of one different ending," noted Edmund. "For the sake of argument, let us say that you make a request of Aslan, and he refuses to grant it for a perfectly good reason. Now, you have many close friends who can't stand the idea that you would be denied such a thing.
"So perhaps they plan to cast it down and in so doing make their lives worse out of loyalty to their friend."
"Who in all the world could have such a hold over his people at that?" asked Susan.
"In a situation where Aslan could either grant a boon he believed not to be right to a loyal servant or see great misery done to many other loyal servants, purely out of love..." Edmund paused. "Well, I imagine his hand might be forced."
"Ed, that could happen. But it never will," said Peter in amusement.
"You seem awfully certain for one who could feel the back of the wardrobe," noted Edmund.
"Think about it rationally, Edmund," said Peter. "What needs to happen for this plan to work? First off, you've got to have Aslan in the room with you in a physical sense. That's a pretty rare thing in itself. Then you've got to make the request, and it can't be anything really bad. But it also has to be something Aslan doesn't want to grant you. Then you have to accept the verdict, or else he couldn't grant it to you in any case.
"At that point, you've got to have enough people threaten to do harm to themselves for you. And it has to be out of love, without prompting. And all this happens without you setting it up or expecting it in any way. All of this has to happen at the same time in a few seconds, and if even one of the people has an agenda, the whole plan is shot.
"It's a pretty bad plan that has four steps. I don't like your chances with four hundred."
"Miracles happen every day," noted Edmund.
"Yes, but that all come from Aslan," noted Lucy.
"Come off it, Ed," said Peter. "I don't mean to sound callous, but if I lost my hand and couldn't restore, would you cut off yours?
"It's silly. And I'd have to be a beast to expect it of you or anyone else."
"Yes, there have been some orders that have done that sort of thing," noted Susan. "But they've all been horrible practitioners of the Black Arts. I don't expect Aslan would bend to that, and most of them think they'll be getting power by doing it."
"I think they're right, Edmund. This would never happen," said Lucy. "After all, Aslan would see that situation coming and have it happen in a way that didn't defy his will."
"Do you think Aslan is cheating at his own game, Lucy?" asked Edmund.
"It's not cheating; he's the game master," said Lucy proudly.
"You might not want to speak so confidently," noted Edmund. "People who boast loudest tend to end up looking a bit silly."
"Yes, but those people are fighting the Emperor's Magic," noted Lucy with a smirk.
Several thousand years later, the Pevensies observed an unusual event. Prince Reepicheep of the Mice fulfilled every requirement before their eyes. Edmund smirked right back at Lucy. "...Told you so."
"You're not much of a hero, Ed," noted Lucy.
"I'm fighting the Emperor's Magic, remember," said Edmund.
"Well, you needn't look so pleased by it," said Susan. "Anyone would think you were the one who'd gotten one over Aslan instead of Reepicheep."
"I prefer to look at it as getting one over on the Witch," noted Edmund. "She spent millennia plotting and scheming to overthrow Aslan. We've beaten at her own game without losing his favor."
"You should, perhaps, take heed of your pride, Edmund. It may distract you," said a voice behind him.
Edmund whirled around to see Aslan at hand. "Um, yes, of course, Aslan."
But I'm afraid Edmund did not take his victory with much grace once Aslan left the room.
Although he did no more gloating, he was absurdly pleased with himself for hours. And when you are focused on feeling pleased with yourself, you become distracted. As a result, he put down his torch on a table and forgot to pick it up again.
By the time he realized his mistake, he'd already passed back to our world. And going between worlds is rather like traveling a very long distance, even if it only takes a moment. You can't just turn around and go back, and if you, it's never by the same means.
It was picked up by the Narnians and later enshrined as a holy relic. It was found that it never lost its charge for long. It proved a light for many people in dark places when all other lights went out.
But, so far as Edmund knew, his torch was gone for good, and he didn't find anything out about it for a long time. Fortunately for Edmund, he was quite a bit more mature than most people who try resistance, Aslan. So he took it in good grace. Everyone had a laugh, and it later became a private joke between them.