It's an interesting idea - my initial thoughts are that she might be Jadis' sister, but would it have been possible for Mrs Lefay to have brought her there?
I'll read your post more closely later (I'm not online much this weekend) and also read about Mrs Lefay in Magician's Nephew again, and give my thoughts when they are more developed

What an excellent topic for discussion, Dr_Cornelius! Thank you for bringing this up!

Here are some of my own thoughts based off of your thoughts:

We know from LWW that it's widely believed among Narnians (represented by Mr. Beaver) that Jadis is half-giant, and TLWTGK comes from the North, the land of the giants, so I think it's reasonable to assume that the owls mean something like "clan" when they say "crew".

This is something that I had never really thought of before. Both witches did have associations with giants, but I don't think that that is all that important. The Magician's Nephew describes Jadis as being quite tall. She towers over Uncle Andrew, who was a rather impressive figure to begin with. This is different from the LOTGK, who appears to be human sized. Is that to say that they couldn't be sisters? Not necessarily, but I think that the evidence here could go either way insomuch as saying that on one hand they could be related due to their associations with giants, but on another, they couldn't be related due to their genetic size differences.

The connection with Mrs. Lefay is an interesting one, and one that works somewhat decently as far as speculation goes, but for which I think you'll have trouble backing up textually. Uncle Andrew didn't even know what the dust was when he received it (which isn't to say that Mrs. Lefay didn't know its true nature,) but it took him years of research to figure out A: What the dust was, B: What it could do, and C: The correct form in which to mold the dust in order to jump from world to world. Now, in order to assume that your Lefay hypothesis is correct, we have to assume that she did the exact same research as Andrew did, in which case she would have had magic rings herself. If she did, why did she not bequeath those to Andrew with strict instructions to destroy as she did with the Atlantean dust?

There's also this: Let's assume that Lefay did get into Charn somehow. She would have had to been a pretty smart fairy godmother to find out what had gone on there, who had been killed, and how to bring them back. From what we see of Charn, I think that its history would be very difficult to "assume" from what one sees. Let us then assume that Mrs. Lefay (being part fairy) did have a way of doing all of this. . . then yeah, your assumption works, but it has a lot of "what-ifs."

The most reasonable conclusion we can come to is that the dust was somehow linked to the reason she was imprisoned, and in something like an act of kindness she was trying to protect Uncle Andrew from getting involved with it.

I don't think we can assume that the dust was the reason that Lefay went to prison. She went (we must assume) to a British prison, and therefore landed there due to an infarction of British law. I'm no expert in British law, but I'm assuming that the possession of other-worldly dust is not against the law. Perhaps she stole the dust from a museum, having learned what it really was? Or perhaps she was arrested for another matter entirely. . . like using her magic to get information about the British government and selling it off to Britain's enemies

Secondly, she gave Andrew a highly dangerous magical artifact. I don't think she was trying to protect Uncle Andrew from it. If she'd been trying to protect him from it, she'd've seen to its destruction herself. I can only assume that her intent on giving Andrew the dust was either to have her life's work with the dust continued (which plays very nicely into your "Lefay visits Charn" hypothesis) or else she wanted him dead because he knew too much already, and she (like LOTGK) wanted her knowledge to die with her (much like the LOTGK wanted her realm to crumble with her).

Could these two stars symbolize Jadis and her sister, the huge, angry, burning figure (Jadis) and its brighter companion (her sister)? TLOTGK certainly is a "brighter" personality than Jadis, in the sense of being more externally friendly and charming (though Jadis is capable of turning that on when she needs to, especially after centuries of working on it--compare her failed temptation of Digory to the more practiced and effective temptation of Edmund).

This would also seem to correspond with Jadis' description of her sister: "she was always a weakling." Certainly TLOTGK seems less externally harsh than Jadis; she is musical, bubbly, even seems less cruel to her slaves (which may be related to why her army was more successful than Jadis'), even if she would ultimately have been just as tyrannical an empress.

I REALLY like this idea. It's just so fitting with the way that Lewis writes. I don't think you'd ever be able to prove this hypothesis, but it is very interesting just the same.

That being said, if we look at Charn as a literal world, there is hardly room to say what happens in the cosmos, and perhaps t'was just a coincidence that the two heavenly objects just happened to be in that place of their cosmic orbit at the time when Digory and Polly visited.

Remember that the Tisrocs of Calormen are descended from Tash, who is an outright demon, yet they call him a god and are proud of their descent from him. Could there be something similar going on with TLOTGK?

Eh. . . not really. They claim this out of their arrogance and pride, but when it comes down to it, Lewis' Narnian timeline says that they are just renegades from our world. Calormene culture (particularly the aristocracy) is so prideful.

Overall, it is a very interesting hypothesis, and I think it "works." I'm still of the opinion that LOTGK was Narnian in nature, and it would take a lot of textual evidence to change my opinion on that. I say that because the way that the owls talk about the "crew" suggests to me that there have been several "Northern Witches" in the history of Narnia, and I find it difficult to accept that all of them could have come from other worlds.

Prof. Kirke,

Thanks for the response!

I guess my idea was that TLOTGK was initially trying to do to Earth what she had previously done with Charn and was planning to do in Narnia: Attempted a coup. In Narnia, we see she does this by patiently lying in wait and building up her campaign gradually; maybe she did the same on Earth with Mrs. Lefay. What would that have looked like? I'm not sure. Would they have stockpiled weapons? Stolen from museums? Coulda been. As far as the dust goes, I'm not sure Mrs. Lefay necessarily had to do a lot of research about magic; wouldn't her fairy ancestors have passed this knowledge down verbally? And I don't know that she would have needed rings to go to other worlds; the dust itself inherently contains the property of going between worlds, and maybe there is some way of unlocking that power that doesn't involve making them into rings that she knows (or is capable of) because of her fairy blood.

As far as Mrs. Lefay needing to be pretty smart to figure this stuff out; like I said in my last paragraph, if Jadis was smart enough to leave a clue that would trick any visitors into waking her up, couldn't her sister have been that smart as well? She *was* the better military tactician, it would seem. Maybe there was another pillar with another poem somewhere that Mrs. Lefay discovered....

Regarding the Telmarines: Lewis tells us that in 204, "Certain outlaws from Archenland fl[ew] across the Southern Desert and set up the new kingdom of Calormen." Of course we can only speculate here, but isn't it possible that the reason these rebels fled was precisely because they had become worshippers of Tash and fled southward in order to properly worship him, like how Jim Jones' cult fled to Guyana so they could set up a society dedicated to him? He could have taken a concubine, or even a harem, and their descendants could have been the Tisrocs, who would have been like the Calormen equivalent of the caliphate, or even the sayyids (descendants of the prophet Muhammad).

Certainly Calormen and Charn seem to have certain properties in common. Both are descended from a race that was once noble, but began to spread out and become a terrible empire; both also began to employ slave labour and human sacrifice. If the Calormen dynasty proudly claims descent from a demon, couldn't Charn be equally proud of its own descent from a demonic figure, in this case Lilith?

By the way, if Mr. Beaver is right and Jadis is descended from Lilith and Jinn, then we have nearly irrefutable evidence that *some* inter-dimensional travel has already occurred with Charn, since Lilith was originally put on Earth before she was banished from Eden. How did her descendants get to Charn? Maybe one of her great-grandchildren was already experimenting with inter-dimensional travel long, long before Uncle Andrew was, and ended up in Charn...Maybe she even came back and told stories about it, stories that got passed down and disseminated until they reached Mrs. Lefay..Maybe she explicitly set out to get to Charn...Maybe, maybe, maybe. It does remind me of the discussion in *Prince Caspian*: "I mean, when a magician in *The Arabian Nights* calls up a Jinn, it has to come...One doesn't really think about where the Jinn's coming *from*."

Oh, and one last point I had forgotten to make. When Digory and Polly are passing through the Hall of Images, Lewis mentions that the House of Charn was wearing robes "of crimson and silvery grey and deep purple and VIVID GREEN: and there were patterns, and pictures of flowers and strange beasts in needlework all over them." So there's precedent for a member of Charn's royal family to wear clothing that's "as green as poison".

You have a lot of great observations, Dr_Cornelius! Welcome to NarniaWeb forum, by the way!

Your idea of comparing "she was always a weakling" to the LotGK's personality is really intriguing. When you contrast Jadis's style of dealing with things she perceives as a challenge—throwing a piece of a lamp-post at a lion, or threatening to blast people—with the LotGK's much more stereotypically feminine and subtle means of achieving her ends (poisoning and/or getting someone else to do her dirty work, i.e. the Harfang giants), you can easily imagine why Jadis would consider her a weakling.

It's also easy to see how the LotGK would be triumphant in a war against Jadis. While Jadis's loyal and committed followers were primarily those who were depraved as well, the LotGK had the insidious skill of a great orator and was able to sway far, far more people (even good people, like Rilian) into taking up her cause. The LotGK had the ability to make vast (and normally unwilling) armies believe in the cause, something Jadis couldn't do.

Your ideas about Mrs. Lefay are really intriguing! She's such a mysterious character and you can't help but wonder if she played a larger role behind the scenes. Like you, I've considered the possibility of the LotGK being Jadis's sister from Charn as well, and these are two ideas I've thought of in the past for how this could work:

1. The sister knew something about the nature of the Deplorable Word that Jadis didn't. (Perhaps a prophecy that stated blood relatives would survive somehow; who knows.) When you think about what the sister was doing—waging total war on her sister, knowing that her sister had discovered the Deplorable Word—you cannot help but wonder if she was trying to provoke Jadis into saying it. Even Jadis herself is incredulous that her sister thought she would refrain from speaking the Word. It makes you wonder if Jadis was being played like a pawn.

(Also, in the Pauline Baynes' illustrations of The Magician's Nephew, the illustrations of Jadis show a small, green snake curled around her bicep. No way to know for sure, but I've speculated that this might be a hint as to how the LotGK got into Narnia from Charn.)

2. Lewis originally planned for Jadis to be a native of Narnia, and for the LotGK to be her sister. I personally think this is fairly likely, since we know that Lewis didn't plan the Chronicles beforehand, and that he had difficulty writing MN and wouldn't finish it until after he completed The Last Battle.

We have no idea when he came up with the idea that Jadis was from another world, and looking at the fact that the story about the warring, weakling sister survived the final draft of MN, and that in SC, we're told that the White Witch and the LotGK are part of the same crew or group... it makes one wonder if Lewis didn't just rework a Narnian-based plot element to fit the world of Charn.

For instance, the ruined city of giants seems a lot like the ruins of Charn in many ways; they both once housed powerful cultures and then their inhabitants disappeared. It's easy for me to imagine that Jadis and her sister had fought for control of the city of giants near the end of its existence, with Jadis eventually killing off everyone there, destroying the noble giant race of which Father Time had belonged, and possibly cursing her sister with the form of a snake. (Based on what Mr. Beaver said, we might guess that Jadis and her potential LotGK sister were half-blooded; on the paternal side, descended from the noble, ancient giants, and on the other, the children of Lilith.)

Again, lots and lots of speculation. Great discussion; thanks for sharing your ideas!

I honestly really like the notion that the LotGK is Jadis' sister. It doesn't sit right with me that "Oh, she's just some witch, you know how witches are." It strikes me as much more meaningful--and, well, cool--that the sibling rivalry in Charn could have somehow continued into Narnia. Given the dearth of specifics, I don't think it would be very difficult to come up with a way to make it true. One could even argue that Jadis' sister escaped Charn somehow, unbeknownst to Jadis, before the latter uttered the Deplorable Word. (I really like Rose's idea about the sister having provoked Jadis into saying it...wicked cool.)

Either way, I'm totally behind the idea, and being about as much of a Narnia nerd as you can be, I will now enjoy reading all the responses to this thread so far.

One could even argue that Jadis' sister escaped Charn somehow, unbeknownst to Jadis, before the latter uttered the Deplorable Word.

The book says that Jadis waited until her sister was so close that they could see one another's faces. Her sister looked at her and said, "Victory!" to which Jadis replied "Yes, but not yours."

Now could the sister at the battle have been an imposter created by magic? Possibly, but I think that if you want to go with the sisters route, that the "Who ever heard of a witch who really died? You can always get them back!" route is the way to go

As a side note. . . I am loving this conversation! It is making me think about things that I'd never really thought of before

Well if Jadis could make a spell that would cause her to sleep/become an image when she spoke the word, couldn't her sister have done something similar? Perhaps something to make her reappear whenever or wherever Jadis did? Her sister knew she had the secret of the Deplorable Word, so wouldn't she prepare the that eventuality? I always imagined Jadis in her own world as a sort of Uncle Andrew, sure she looks cool in our world because she is a giant, not human, but what if she was the younger weaker sister with no real right to the throne at all. Remember the line "…If she would only yield me the throne. But she would not." Her sister already had the throne, and so the brooding little sister who found out a secret she was never supposed to know, used it to take her vengeance. It would make sense, then, that her older more powerful (in most respects) sister would be able to protect herself from Jadis, and include herself in whatever plans Jadis had for the future.

We were discussing what sort of backstory the LOTGK might have on the Cast and Character Discussion forum. Some have already suggested the LOTGK could have been Jadis' sister, even if we are all agreed she was a different person to Jadis. Of course this CCD discussion was referring to the movie more than what could be found in the books. And Dr_Cornelius explanation, which references Mrs LeFay is an intriguing idea.

In that thread there was even a suggestion that LOTGK, being a shape-shifter, escaped the deplorable word, and I surmised that the deplorable word might not really work properly on a blood relative of the person who uses it on others. Others had ideas just as thought-provoking. Rose-tree Dryad thought that maybe LOTGK could have been a naiad, for instance.

However, there are many ways of looking at the relationship assumed about sisters. Yes, people can be biological sisters, even when their sisterhood is not very evident on either physical appearance or in their attitudes to each other, Jadis' dysfunctional backstory in MN being a prime example. Often the word "sister" is used rather loosely. Sister can be a term for a senior registered nurse. Or it can be the term for a junior nun in various denominations of the Christian church. And when the owls consider that LOTGK and the White Witch are akin, it might just as easily be in a spiritual or occupational sense, rather than a biological sense.

Whilst LOTGK might need a backstory for the film's purpose, and it is really fun surmising how she got to be part of the "same crew", it might all boil down to villains thinking in similar terms, no more than that. I'll admit to disagreeing that LOTGK could be Jadis' biological sister, because of the time-frame involved. And also because I put forth an idea that she could just as easily have been an evil sister to Ramandu's Daughter, whom she killed.

And also because I put forth an idea that she could just as easily have been an evil sister to Ramandu's Daughter, whom she killed.

Well, I certainly never considered that, and that's pretty intriguing, too! I just like the idea that she is more significant and has a greater role in Narnia than what we're just seeing here. Something about her just being a random witch isn't as impressive to me, though it could have been what Lewis intended.

2. Lewis originally planned for Jadis to be a native of Narnia, and for the LotGK to be her sister. I personally think this is fairly likely, since we know that Lewis didn't plan the Chronicles beforehand, and that he had difficulty writing MN and wouldn't finish it until after he completed The Last Battle.

Whatever C.S.Lewis originally planned, it didn't end up that way, once MN was published, though. Jadis was a native of Charn, of Bramandin, of Felinda and Sorlois.

Just because she was there at the beginning of Narnia doesn't make her a native of Narnia. Aslan found a use for Frank and his wife: they became the first King & Queen. And Digory, whose fault it was that Jadis was there, got a job to do to keep Jadis away for a while. Polly, having forgiven him, accompanied him, whilst Uncle Andrew had an interesting, out of this world experience, you might say.

On the other hand we have no evidence in the texts that LOTGK was not a native of Narnia. She could have been, even if she was related to Ramandu's daughter, a daughter of one of that world's stars, who also resided on Ramandu's Island. But if she was related to Jadis as people have been saying, then she, too, would have not been native to Narnia. She would have ultimately been a Charnian, rather than a Narnian.

I don't think the Lady could have been Jadis' sister or anyone from Charn - sorry I know this goes against what everyone else has been saying!
Jadis had exterminated and erased every living being using the Deplorable Word. She had a back-up plan for her own survival though - casting spells to sit like a living waxwork until someone comes and strikes the tempting bell. (Bit of a rubbish plan when you think about it - destroy every living thing in the world and then have to wait for a living thing to wake you - what were the chances of that happening?)
We know that Jadis headed north and Aslan said "would grow in dark magic" (haven't got the book in front of me for exact quote). Why shouldn't she have come up with back-up plan 2 to continue her work, if ever she were killed - use her magic to create another being and train that being to hate Narnia and plan its overthrow? A bit of a Frankenstein-type character. Having learned about Aslan's greater power in Narnia Jadis would learn to keep well away and bide her time, planning at a distance. Apart from the Lady's appearance as a snake when she kills Rilian's mother and when she lures Rilian himself away, she stays well to the north of Narnia, plotting to invade via Underworld. She is a much more devious person, using sweetness and prettiness to fool Jill and Eustace but is just as evil and single-minded.

Has this upset the apple-cart? By the way, the "green as poison" makes me dislike the Lady instantly as my school uniform was green and I still loathe the colour!!