A quick note from the author before you, dear reader, proceed: this entire thing is meant to be a compilation of sorts of all the fics I never really finished, edited just enough so that they make sense. Don't expect to read something with a completely structured plot, but if you're here to see our favorite kings and queens (with Eustace and Drinian on occasion!) talk and laugh and tell stories to one another, and nothing more, then here's something you might enjoy. That being said, thank you for taking the time to read this!
With his arms crossed in annoyance of the memory, Caspian mumbled something under his breath that was very impolite (and would probably have made Lucy scold him, if she had heard it).
"I don't believe it's quite as bad as you think," answered Lucy a bit absent-mindedly, scrunching up her face in concentration as she stared at the chessboard. Lucy often played against Reepicheep, and though of course the Mouse was a worthy opponent, their games did not usually last this long, for Reepicheep oftentimes lost when his thoughts wandered from the chessboard into the battlefield.
"It's quite 'bad,' believe me," said Caspian. "And altogether an irritating and uncomfortable business." He leaned forward and made as if to move a pawn forward. But Lucy quickly stopped his hand (without having looked away from the board at all!).
"It's still my turn."
Her eyes scanned over the other side of the board, pausing at where Caspian had intended to move his piece. A moment later she had removed one of his knights. Caspian's black pawn stepped forward immediately, ignoring the imminent danger in which it now lay, as well as having opened a sure gateway to defeat. Lucy wanted to jump in excitement.
"Well, it's just awful!" He went on. "You'd think that, being a king, they wouldn't bother me with all these ridiculous and embarrassing matters."
Lucy nodded as she carefully estimated her next move, remembering that betraying one's emotions on the field of battle is always a bad idea. "Yes."
"But no!—even Trumpkin is badgering me about it! And he's normally not even interested in this type of thing."
Caspian huffed angrily. Lucy masterfully flicked another black piece off the board.
"Checkmate."
"What?" He blinked, lifting his head to stare at the board, having forgotten that they were playing at all.
"Checkmate!" exclaimed Lucy, clapping her hands and smiling. Then, mistaking his woebegone expression for a look of shocked defeat, she at once said, "I'm sorry; I don't usually win at chess (except against Reep.) Peter and Edmund play with me all the time, but they're so much better at it than I am, so I almost never win at all. Anyway, what's all this awful business you've been going on about? I've already forgotten what it was bec—"
"They insist that I be married!" Caspian shouted angrily, pounding his fist on the chessboard and sending all of the pieces flying.
"Oh dear," said Lucy, silently watching the black and white pieces roll about the deck. Caspian had soundly ignored her comments about chess, but something told her that his mind was too distracted at the moment.
"Things are already bad enough with half the kingdom sending their daughters to me," said Caspian. "Can you believe it?"
"I'm afraid I can," said Lucy, trying to sound sympathetic, although she found it rather funny. Part of her did feel sorry for the distraught king, but the other part insisted on laughing and that part was much more dominant at the moment.
"No one is embarrassed in the slightest whenever they bring up their worries about my not having an heir yet. Trumpkin and the rest aren't helping at all! They all think that I've got to be wedded soon. And to the princess of Archenland, no less! One couldn't have been less subtle about how beautiful they think she is, and how nice it would be to see her future golden haired children."
"I see," said Lucy, stifling back a laugh.
"And do you know," continued the enraged and insulted Caspian, "no one has even asked me whether I want to get married—or to whom, if I did!"
He obviously felt strongly about the idea.
"I suppose," said Lucy, "you've no intention of doing so."
She tried as hard as she could to look at it from his way of seeing things. (Having been Queen alongside two brothers and a sister, Lucy had not experienced the same trouble on the question of "heirs" since there were always enough sovereigns at hand when one of them was in some sort of danger.)
"No," Caspian said passionately. "I don't."
There was a short silence in which he looked absolutely thunderous, an awful mixture of frustration and impatience written across his face. He looked as if he might shout and cry and perhaps even laugh all at the same time. Any idea of laughing vanished from Lucy's mind once she saw that it was a serious matter indeed to Caspian. She could tell that this was not only about heirs and marriage.
Caspian was not usually angered about little matters so quickly—in fact, he was normally a very cheerful and optimistic sort of person—so Lucy knew that he had long seethed about it and simply needed to "let it out," as Edmund might have put it.
"Sometimes," continued Caspian (with every word looking less like an insulted king and more like a stubborn, angry little boy), "I wish I could simply run away. No more politics or diplomacy or education!"
He was practically fuming. "If only I was—if I wasn't a king, I could sail about and go voyaging instead of dealing with this nonsense. I might be able to go off on adventures and do all sorts of exciting things, just like in the stories. Can't a fellow have his own way for once? What is the good of being king if all I'm allowed to do is be forced from one unpleasant position to another?"
It was at this moment that Lucy really began feeling sorry for him. Caspian, who had been very grown-up and responsible in the last three years, was after all only a boy, and sometimes he needed to be so. But he seemed to have no close friends or siblings with whom he could regularly confide in, like Lucy had. For his own sake, Lucy hoped that Caspian would one day marry someone who loved him so that he might not always be without family. But it seemed that he wasn't ready for that yet.
At the same time, Lucy was beginning to feel rather irritated. Caspian oughtn't complain about silly things, she thought. And while nobody was perfect (certainly not Lucy, nor Susan, nor Edmund; not even High King Peter) she couldn't stand to see Caspian acting so—so—unlike himself, so unkingly, and so childish.
Lucy suddenly had the unpleasant thought that it was she who must rebuke him, and that it was why she had been sent to play chess with him in the first place. As for who it was that had sent her, there was no question.
"Caspian dear," pleaded Lucy, very gently. "Please don't say such things. You know it's not like that at all—not even in the stories, and I ought to know."
Caspian frowned. Lucy tried her best to remain patient.
"It's frustrating indeed, but you mustn't say things you may later regret. You ought to talk to someone—other than me, I mean, someone back at home, since someday we'll have to go back—so that you don't have to bury all those little things underneath. They have a way of getting under one's skin. But they're nothing more than that, really: little things that won't matter as much in the future."
By the look on his face, she had guessed rightly. Poor Caspian! Not for the last time, she felt sad that he did not have a mother and father anymore.
"I—I... know," he replied quietly, suddenly much calmer. Perhaps, after having spoken his thoughts out loud, and having listened to Lucy, he had realized just how silly his words sounded. "I knew. I'm sorry; I didn't really mean what I said."
"That's alright," said Lucy, who also felt less impatient and sad now that the matter had blown over. "Besides, I'm not the one you ought to be apologizing to anyway."
"But I am still sorry," Caspian said sullenly. After another moment's silence, he gave Lucy a small smile.
"I don't suppose," he said, "you happen to know a way to make everyone stop telling me to 'choose a Queen and get it over with'?"
Lucy suspected that his half-hearted voice impression about choosing a queen ought to be attributed to Trumpkin.
"I don't think they're ever going to stop," Lucy admitted truthfully (and somewhat regretfully), "until you are married."
She could tell that Caspian had started to feel better. It was as if his angry outburst had been no more than a bad dream, and had already begun fading from memory.
"Then I am destined—cursed, rather—to be burdened for the rest of my life," said Caspian with a short laugh.
"Don't you want to get married someday?" said Lucy.
"Someday, yes," he answered thoughtfully. Then to Lucy's surprise, he abruptly turned red. "But—not now—not yet, I think. Barely seventeen sounds a bit too soon for— marriage—and—having heirs."
Lucy burst out laughing. Caspian turned a shade redder. Somehow, she had the feeling that he hadn't only been talking about his age in years, and the still uncomfortable idea of "little golden haired children." Barely seventeen was quite soon, for more reasons than one. But Lucy couldn't help it: she laughed.
"Oh, dear, dear Caspian!" exclaimed Lucy. She had just witnessed him complain about marriages, talk of running away, apologize, and then turn red over a discussion of heirs in a matter of minutes. It all seemed rather funny, somehow. Yes, this boy king of Narnia was not really old enough yet. And there was nothing wrong with that. He still had time, which was what he needed, and possibly an adventure or two (which they were all sure to experience on this voyage).
"Maybe," said she, "by the time you come back to Narnia, you'll be old enough. Sometimes being old enough isn't a matter of years."
Lucy said this very quickly, very earnestly, and very seriously, and so not like the young girl that she was, that Caspian almost thought that he was talking with someone else entirely; someone much older and wiser than he was. Then all at once the spell was broken, and she was just Lucy again, sitting on the other side of an empty chessboard. "Yes," replied Caspian slowly. He smiled as he stared out at the blue sea, tinted golden by sunlight. "I'll think about it."
Lucy thought he looked like he was trying to remember something he'd never seen before—it was a very strange feeling, but she knew what it was like. (If you have had the fortune to have felt it before, in a dream perhaps, then you will know why it feels so strange.)
They silently began to pick up the scattered chess pieces and put them back on the board. Lucy started humming an old tune. And Caspian felt infinitely better than he had in the past hour.
"Shall we play again?"