Posted by: @cobalt-jade

She wasn't even mentioned as being present in the closing scenes of The Last Battle.

She was, as I've already pointed out in response to this same claim as of yesterday — even though she still isn't given a name or identified by anything other than her relationships to her father and her son and her husband. But she is very specifically there. Here is the exact quote from the final chapter of The Last Battle:

Everyone you had ever heard of (if you knew the history of those countries) seemed to be there. There was Glimfeather the Owl and Puddleglum the Marshwiggle, and King Rilian the Disenchanted, and his mother, the Star's daughter, and his great father, Caspian himself.

(Are people confusing her with Doctor Cornelius, I wonder, as he's just about the only significant good character from the past who isn't mentioned in that scene, to the surprise of a lot of readers?)

Posted by: @icarus

Posted by: @thef-maria

Every time I mention this argument I get responded with the same thing “Lewis didn’t intent romance”. I get it, I understand it but I’d honestly rather if he didn’t add this at all. 

Genuinely interested - is there a different answer you are looking for?

Seems like everyone agrees with you that she's not a fantastically well written character. Not sure what more there is to say about that 

This, exactly. 

And indeed, if what you're saying, @thef-maria, is that you'd rather Caspian didn't marry anyone at all than marry somebody who's so vague and nebulous as a character... well, it's essential to the plot of The Silver Chair that Caspian has a wife and a son, and that his wife is killed and their son disappears while trying to avenge her. So in order for the stories to work out as they do, Caspian needs to marry someone. Would you rather we were never told anything about his wife at all — that she wasn't in VDT, and the only thing we learn about her in SC was that she was bitten by a serpent and died? That would be even less satisfactory, I reckon. 

And yes, it's a shame that Lewis apparently didn't see any need to make Caspian's wife a more interesting and fleshed-out character. Perhaps he chose to keep her mysterious on purpose, for whatever reason? That really is the only answer I can think of as to why she's not better written. (If ALL the female characters in the Chronicles were so vague as to be almost non-entities, then we could conclude it's sexism. But there are plenty of examples of strong and interesting female characters in the books, most or all of whom are not defined solely by their marriage or other relationships to male characters, so that's not what it is.)

But it does seem a bit strange that we've all been going over these same points over and over again and yet it still seems you aren't satisfied, as icarus was also saying. I mean... is it just that you feel so strongly about this one character because (as you said earlier) you had a crush on the movie version of Caspian, and so you find it upsetting that he didn't marry someone who is portrayed more excitingly? That's understandable, but you know, no amount of fan fic writing is actually going to change the canon — or indeed the opinions of other Narnia fans who don't see this as such a big deal. 

@narnian78 THIS. Thank you very much! 👏🏻

@courtenay Why do you keep mentioning this? Like I get it I shouldn’t care that much, I get that everyone has said their opinions, I’m just responding to comments that are directed to me… I don’t think I keep up with all the comments anymore. 

I don’t think I’m contradicting anyone’s point I did have many people agree with me! I’m just responding to comments now. I don’t care as much at the moment I’m just online discussing, okay…?
I’ve said everything I want to say about this. 

About fanfics and all, I could scroll for fun and list many stories that could satisfy the need for a good queen for Caspian. Like the first three stories would be enough for me. And that’s for those who indeed want to add romance in Narnia, because apparently some others don’t want it and it’s completely understandable. I did as a little girl though imagine romance in Narnia even when I first discovered it when I was 8 but that’s on me. 

Oddly enough I do keep the canon in my story with their relationship but as I’ve said it’s for character development. Back in the days where I started developing Ellita (my oc) I stubbornly wanted her to be with Caspian but then I realized “Why not keep canon and Ellita as well?”. It’s just that Ellita isn’t completely a hero. 

I would appreciate if you stop mentioning my activity in this, as of now I am simply having conversations. I’m even agreeing with people. That’s all. Ok? 

Posted by: @thef-maria

I would appreciate if you stop mentioning my activity in this, as of now I am simply having conversations. I’m even agreeing with people. That’s all. Ok? 

Well... it's just that you started this discussion, and have been participating in it regularly, and it's obviously a topic you feel strongly about. How can I (or anyone) contribute meaningfully without mentioning and responding to things that you've said?  

@courtenay I don’t think I think about it as much as before tbf. Maybe I’ll develop it in my story but I’m not thinking about the actual plot in the book right now.

I’m just responding to comments which say something different which just proves I’m chronically online not that I care as much as the day I started this topic lol. 

@thef-maria I’m just responding to comments which say something different which just proves I’m chronically online not that I care as much as the day I started this topic lol.

Just like myself, I guess.   (I like that emoji, when it sort of goes with my username. ) But I also wanted to let you know about a romance that C.S Lewis actually did write, after he completed the Narnia series. I am quoting below a blurb from an online audible, which tells you all about Till we have faces, the title of the original book. Yes, C.S Lewis was a classicist to have written the Narnia series at all. Thus, his most beautiful main character comes from Greek Mythology, which I have linked to, which you might like to investigate at your leisure. These observations also inform his own ideas about the relationship between Lucy and her older sister, Susan, considered the beauty in her family, but more like Aphrodite than Psyche, in C.S. Lewis' VDT, which half explains why someone or other just might be so eaten up with jealousy & anger that they want to put to death someone like Ramandu's daughter, who gets little physical description, even in VDT, apart from her having yellow hair, which at least distinguishes her from the equally nameless Duke of Terabithia's red-haired daughter and Caspian's disliked Aunt Prunaprismia, whose very name has a classroom connotation, about which both @courtenay & @pete might also remember. 

Till we have faces: C. S. Lewis reworks the timeless myth of Cupid and Psyche into an enduring piece of contemporary fiction in this novel about the struggle between sacred and profane love.

Set in the pre-Christian world of Glome on the outskirts of Greek civilization, it is a tale of two princesses: the beautiful Psyche, who is loved by the god of love himself, and Orual, Psyche's unattractive and embittered older sister, who loves Psyche with a destructive possessiveness. Her frustration and jealousy over Psyche's fate sets Orual on the troubled path of self-discovery. 

Lewis's last work of fiction, this is often considered his best by critics.

Interestingly, there is another myth, C.S. Lewis might have borrowed from, coming from Medieval France about Melisande or Mélusine, with connections to the House of Lusignan, famous for its association with the Kingdom of Jerusalem (1099 to 1291) as well as the British monarchy, which sort of relates to LOTGK, when it seems Melisande would turn into a snake every Saturday, or something like that. Dr Philippa Gregory has written historic novels using this myth, by the way. However, Melisande was never considered poisonous or murderous, though her husband wasn't supposed to disturb her when she was either bathing or birthing. 

@courtenay (Are people confusing her with Doctor Cornelius, I wonder, as he's just about the only significant good character from the past who isn't mentioned in that scene, to the surprise of a lot of readers?)

That was a very big paragraph that I quoted from, on page 167 of The Last Battle which starts with Everyone you ever heard of, to list Glimfeather the Owl, Puddleglum of course, then King Rilian, and his mother and the Great King Caspian, then goes on to mention Lord Drinian, the Lord Berne, Trumpkin the Dwarf, Trufflehunter and Glenstorm... [plus] "100 other heroes from the Great War of Deliverance" which presumably includes Doctor Cornelius. The paragraph continues to list characters from HHB then LWW, finishing with King Frank & Queen Helen from Magician's Nephew. I suppose Lewis felt he had to keep that list a bit shorter. From a cinematographic point of view, a crowd of extras, one dressed as Dr Cornelius would supply the omission.  

Posted by: @waggawerewolf27

That was a very big paragraph that I quoted from, on page 167 of The Last Battle which starts with Everyone you ever heard of, to list Glimfeather the Owl, Puddleglum of course, then King Rilian, and his mother and the Great King Caspian, then goes on to mention Lord Drinian, the Lord Berne, Trumpkin the Dwarf, Trufflehunter and Glenstorm... [plus] "100 other heroes from the Great War of Deliverance" which presumably includes Doctor Cornelius. The paragraph continues to list characters from HHB then LWW, finishing with King Frank & Queen Helen from Magician's Nephew. I suppose Lewis felt he had to keep that list a bit shorter. From a cinematographic point of view, a crowd of extras, one dressed as Dr Cornelius would supply the omission.  

Oh yes, I've always assumed Doctor Cornelius was there. (How could he not be, with his steadfast faith in Aslan and Old Narnia, and with all he did for Caspian?) It's just that I've seen others on NarniaWeb point out that his name isn't mentioned and they found that troubling. So, since we've had two incorrect claims that Ramandu’s daughter is not among that crowd, I just wondered if people were getting mixed up over which character surprisingly didn't rate a mention.

(As for the cinematographic point of view, I'd expect that by the time a movie version of LB is filmed, all the previous Chronicles will already have been filmed and they will just bring back whichever actor played Doctor Cornelius for that cameo, along with all the other actors for the other key characters. The main thing is for all viewers to be reassured (as readers of the book are) that everyone who truly loved Aslan is safe and happy and alive forever in Aslan’s country.)

What's the literary connection with Queen Prunaprismia that I should know about? I'm aware that there's a Charles Dickens novel in which "prunes and prism" are among the words a young girl is told to say to give a prettier shape to her mouth, but I only know that from a commentary on PC that I read years ago — I haven't read the Dickens in question!  (I also recall, probably from the same commentary, that Lewis himself absolutely loathed prunes, and this may have something to do with his choice of name for a character we're told very little about, but who is clearly not meant to be a likeable person.)

Also interesting that you mentioned Till We Have Faces, which I haven't read and I know I should. Am I right in thinking that in writing that last novel, he was vitally influenced by the one truly great romantic relationship in his own life — his love for Joy Davidman Gresham? 

@waggawerewolf27 I didn’t know about Lewis other works to be honest so I might look into it because if he has indeed wrote romance in other works I am interested in how he interprets it. After everything everyone mentioned about Lewis disagreement for romance in his Narnia books I just thought that he did his thing in “The horse and his boy” where Shasta and Aravis have meaningful time together and their relationship indeed would lead to marriage some day. I don’t think I need to elaborate more on the Ramandu’s Daughter thing because I realised no one really cares as much as I do. 

Now the jealousy theme you mention is something very important that I expanded in my own story as well:

To anyone who doesn’t want to know skip this next part: Jealousy is basically the reason all the different plot of my future books unfold. I think you have seen me mentioning that Ellita (Oc) gets in love with Caspian and he in fact admires and respects her as a person. She isn’t as beautiful as Lilliandil but she is very intelligent, witty and passionate. He maybe admires her personality more than Lilliandil’s but with her they share a different bond. Maybe in Ellita he sees himself because, they share a similar backstory. They spend some meaningful time together but he doesn’t respond to her romantic requests, because Ellita is younger than him and he doesn’t want to take advantage of her. All they really do is share one kiss. Caspian in the end chooses Lilliandil because he had was already promised to her and it was a move of nobility. 

Ellita is also hurt by the way everyone adores Lilliandil and feels rejected, hurt and upset because after many losses in her life and loneliness that the war has forced her to live. She fills with anger and decides to abandon her royal title, duties and obligations to learn magic and then when discovers another heritage she belongs to she becomes a queen of a kingdom centered around astral magic. So yeah jealousy is a thing I have really expanded in my own story as well.

Okay, something as an update here.

So after a long term of conversations I have realised I have somewhat neglected my other stories and I have to say that I’ll take a small break from the fandom and Narnia for now. I’ll try to focus on my other stories for a while.

I start to feel a little fatigued and overwhelmed by this whole topic and after many many discussions I don’t think I’ll get anywhere or change my mind on things. I don’t dislike Ramandu’s Daughter any less today or will change my mind so there’s no point in keep saying the same things. 

To some I may seem too overwhelming at this point and I don’t have anything else to say on this topic. This will probably be the last thing I’ll say here, I’ll just keep liking your comments to support y’all and that’s it. 

I did have fun discussing with all of you though and I found many of your opinions interesting so thank you for taking time to share your thoughts and opinions. I’ll come back when I have a fresher mind. 

Love u all  

Posted by: @courtenay

What's the literary connection with Queen Prunaprismia that I should know about?

Actually, I didn't know about the Dickens reference you mentioned, though we did study David Copperfield when I was put in an OC class for 5th & 6th class at Lakemba Central Girls' Public School, right near Wiley Park Station. The PC reference is at the beginning of Chapter 4; The dwarf tells of Prince Caspian, which starts with: "PRINCE CASPIAN lived in a great castle in the centre of Narnia with his uncle, Miraz and his aunt, who had red hair and was called Queen Prunaprismia".

Admittedly, I was at a private boarding school, where my 2nd class teacher was really into things like getting us to repeat "Prunes and Prisms" among other phrases, which I thought was a way of getting us to talk BBC English rather than "Strine", allegedly a Western Sydney suburbs dialect. At least repeating Prunes & Prisms was more bearable than eating Prunes & Custard, I suppose.   When my husband, who also complains about my Aussie accent appears to have had the same experience in his Scottish primary school, telling me how his teacher got them to say Prunes and Prisms, so I should do the same, I thought it was more likely to get him & his classmates, there, to speak English more intelligibly, like us Aussies, & less like Rabbie Burns. When the NSW Dept of Education tends to standardise education across the state, I rather thought you and @pete might also have had similar experiences to what I did, even if living in Victoria.

@thef-maria I do understand about involving Susan in a fanfiction. Because she was considered beautiful, she had that scrape where Rabadash wanted to marry her, then in Walden's Prince Caspian, we got "Suspian". Ten to one, when Eustace said his piece about her in The Last Battle, I thought she'd rushed off to get married to a Prince Caspian look-alike, perhaps. In my particular fanfiction, I invented an American-born husband-to-be, whom she met when in USA, called "Chuck", a cadet during WW2, who had also met Susan's older brother, when he visited England after the war, but with whom she wouldn't share any memories of Narnia, out of embarrassment. I imagined how difficult it would be for her if she started talking in her sleep about Rabadash. Her husband would definitely want to know "Who's that Rabadash"?  Without admitting to the reality of the "children's games" that Eustace mentioned, she couldn't possibly explain away that particular adventure, without telling downright lies.  

Posted by: @waggawerewolf27

Admittedly, I was at a private boarding school, where my 2nd class teacher was really into things like getting us to repeat "Prunes and Prisms" among other phrases, which I thought was a way of getting us to talk BBC English rather than "Strine", allegedly a Western Sydney suburbs dialect. At least repeating Prunes & Prisms was more bearable than eating Prunes & Custard, I suppose.   When my husband, who also complains about my Aussie accent appears to have had the same experience in his Scottish primary school, telling me how his teacher got them to say Prunes and Prisms, so I should do the same, I thought it was more likely to get him & his classmates, there, to speak English more intelligibly, like us Aussies, & less like Rabbie Burns. When the NSW Dept of Education tends to standardise education across the state, I rather thought you and @pete might also have had similar experiences to what I did, even if living in Victoria.

Not at all, in my case — by the time I was at school in the 1980s and '90s, most of the traditional "cultural cringe" had lifted off and having an Aussie accent was definitely preferable to trying to imitate the posh Poms.   Actually, my own accent is what most Aussies would class as "Melbourne private school / ABC presenter", but that's probably from having grown up watching and loving a lot of British TV shows (I did go to a Melbourne private school, but only for my last three years of high school), plus 14 years of living in England. I do loosen it up a bit when I'm back in Oz, and like most Australians, can go full-on Strine (that's what broad Aussie dialect is called everywhere, not just in Sydney) whenever I want. Think Kath and Kim.

Mind you, all this is totally irrelevant to the topic of Ramandu’s daughter, or of romance in Narnia or elsewhere!! 

"Prunes and prisms" seems to have been a speaking exercise, especially for young ladies. It is mentioned in a number of things I've read, and clearly Lewis had heard of it too - although not being forced to do it himself!

I actually used Ramandu as a user name on the forums of a former website known as The Stone Table. Would someone ever have Lilliandil or Ramandu’s daughter as a user name on a website? Was she interesting enough for someone to use her name as an identity? User names don’t mean that much beyond protecting one’s privacy and personal information. The name Lilliandil is actually more beautiful and meaningful than the character it was given to.  I don’t know how Walden and Douglas Gresham thought of it. Perhaps it was from another story. It sounds like something from mythology, and it was greater than the character for whom it was intended. 🙂

@narnian78 On the contrary, I don't like the name Lilliandil at all. Not only because it's not canonical, but also because:

a) it sounds like a cheap rip-off of one of Tolkien's Elvish names (like Eärendil);

b) it also sounds like a very old-fashioned name from our world — Lillian, which was my great-grandmother's name (she was born in the mid-1890s) — with "dil" stuck on the end, sounding like a colloquial term for a silly person.

In other words, as an attempt to cobble together an impressive-sounding name for a mysterious and beautiful woman... it just falls completely flat, for me at least.

I alluded to this before, but thinking about it, I really am leaning towards the idea that Lewis kept her nameless and almost totally undescribed for a purpose. He could easily have given her a name if he wanted to, and the fact that many of his other female characters are much more rounded out goes to show that he didn't have anything against writing women who are interesting and complex and play an active and vital role in the plot.

So for whatever reason, I can only conclude he must have decided it was a good idea to keep Caspian's wife mysterious and enigmatic. Some readers will see that as a massive let-down; others may see it as an intriguing opportunity to imagine her background and all the unknown aspects of her life-story for ourselves.

I did just have an idea even as I'm writing this: maybe by the time Lewis got to writing the part of VDT where Caspian's bride-to-be appears, he already had it in the back of his mind that there would be a future story in which she is killed by someone evil, and her and Caspian's only son disappears while on his quest to avenge her? If Lewis already had that plot in mind, even vaguely, it might explain why he chose not to tell us very much about Caspian's wife — because he didn't want readers to be upset and mourn the death of a really wonderful character whom we felt we knew and loved.

That's the best explanation I can think of, anyway!  

@courtenay 

I always thought the name Lilliandil meant something like lily, which is a flower.   I guess if you don’t like it you may react differently to it.  I guess it all depends on one’s point of view.  Maybe your great grandmother would have thought more of it.  Some of the older names for people might seem a bit silly today such as Gertrude, but the people were named in a different time. Back then (a hundred or more years ago) people were more formal than today. I don’t find the name Lillian offensive in the least. Probably it didn’t mean a silly person at all a hundred years ago.