On the topic of possible historical precedents for several lesser monarchs ruling under a High King, I've been thinking there's something different about the situation with Narnia under the Pevensies. As far as I can see, in all those historical situations, the lesser kings each ruled their own individual country or province while being subject to the rule of the High King. That didn't happen in Narnia, going by what little we know from the Chronicles. The land of Narnia was never divided into individual states or provinces and there's no indication at all that each of the Pevensie siblings were given a specific region to govern. All four of them live at Cair Paravel and rule from there. (The idea that each of the four rulers corresponds to a compass direction is alluded to in Aslan's speech in the Walden movie — I think it's Peter for the North, Susan for the South, Edmund for the East and Lucy for the West — but that was totally invented for the film adaptation and is not in the books at all.)

Anyway, none of that explains how the four thrones got there in the first place, whether there was a previous time in history when Narnia had four rulers simultaneously and that's why it was prophesied that the four thrones must be filled in order for the Witch to be defeated. I don't get the impression Lewis thought that out himself. I'm pretty sure the "real" (out-of-story) explanation for the four thrones is that he was writing a story with four children as the main characters and he wanted to give them all the same reward at the end!! But it's fun to imagine what the "in-universe" explanation might be.

So I'm reasonably happy with my theories about the Four Thrones conundrum and the White Witch mystery.... However the one part of the overall puzzle posited by this thread which I can't quite wrap my head around, is how to explain away the origin of the Stone Table.

For a start, I just can't believe that there was ever a version of Narnia, at any point in Narnian history, in which Ritualistic Sacrifice and the Death Penalty were ever considered morally acceptable. Not only that, but that ritual sacrifice was such a common occurrence that they felt the need to build a permanent structure to facilitate the activity.

Then there is the fact that when reading LWW, the Stone Table seems to belong to a long forgotten neolithic civilization from ancient Narnian history - like Stonehenge relative to a Medieval King. The Stone Table feels like one of those things who's origin's is supposed to be shrouded in an unknowable mystery.

And yet in MN the land of Narnia has from it's very inception a very traditional monarch installed as it's leader. Not only that, but a monarch from Victorian London who is presumably much more sophisticated than the Neolithic cultures who might have built a giant stone table for carrying out ritual sacrifice.

Therefore I just can't see how Narnia could have descended from this initial starting point of bright optimism under King Frank, into such a dark period of history that they would have felt the need to build such a thing as the Stone Table.

Posted by: @icarus

For a start, I just can't believe that there was ever a version of Narnia, at any point in Narnian history, in which Ritualistic Sacrifice and the Death Penalty were ever considered morally acceptable. Not only that, but that ritual sacrifice was such a common occurrence that they felt the need to build a permanent structure to facilitate the activity.

Just going by the very little that Lewis says about the Stone Table in LWW, I get the impression that it wasn't the Narnian people in general who decided that ritual sacrifice and the death penalty were morally acceptable and so they built the Stone Table to facilitate this. Going by the White Witch's own statements, the death penalty for treachery was laid down in the moral law of Narnia at its beginning, under the Deep Magic from the Dawn of Time, implicitly by the Emperor-Over-Sea himself — and not only that, but the Witch herself (not any other person or creature in Narnia) is the one specially appointed to perform those sacrifices. And indeed, if she doesn't get to carry out the death sentence, all of Narnia will be destroyed:

[The Witch to Aslan] "Tell you what is written on that very Table of Stone which stands beside us?... Tell you what is engraved on the sceptre of the Emperor-Over-Sea? You at least know the Magic which the Emperor put into Narnia at the very beginning. You know that every traitor belongs to me as my lawful prey and that for every treachery I have a right to a kill."

"Oh," said Mr Beaver. "So that's how you came to imagine yourself a Queen — because you were the Emperor's hangman. I see."...

"And so," continued the Witch, "that human creature is mine. His life is forfeit to me. His blood is my property....

"... do you really think your master [i.e. Aslan] can rob me of my rights by mere force? He knows the Deep Magic better than that. He knows that unless I have blood as the Law says all Narnia will be overturned and perish in fire and water."

"It is very true," said Aslan, "I do not deny it."

So there it is. It's an awkward turn of events in the plotting, because it's a sudden revelation that is never fully explained, but it's how Lewis gets us to the point where Aslan offers his life in place of Edmund's, with the Witch not knowing that Aslan is invoking the Deeper Magic that will crack the Table and undo death itself. This is, of course, how Lewis quietly but deliberately echoes Jesus' self-sacrifice on behalf of sinners and his subsequent resurrection from death. (Lewis seems to be basing this on the theology known as Christus Victor — which holds that Jesus essentially tricked Satan by offering up his own life, and Satan took the bait, thinking he could now destroy God's own Son and not realising that this was the very means by which Jesus would break Satan's power. But that's getting a little off topic here.)

And on top of all this, we can't suggest the Witch was lying about her own role and status in order to get away with killing Edmund. Aslan confirms she is correct in everything she states about the Deep Magic and her rights under it and the consequences if her demands are not fulfilled. And when Susan asks him fearfully if there isn't something he can do to work against this...

"Work against the Emperor's Magic?" said Aslan, turning to her with something like a frown on his face. And nobody ever made that suggestion to him again.

This is where the disparities between LWW and MN are at their greatest and, I think, most irreconcilable. In LWW — which of course was written first — the Witch has had the role of executing traitors on the Stone Table from "the very beginning" of Narnia. It's something Aslan's father, the Emperor, has outright appointed her to do. It's not some nasty idea that the peoples of Narnia came up with after somehow degenerating so far from how Aslan intended them to be that they came to believe ritual sacrifice was necessary. It's written into the cosmic law that has governed Narnia from its beginning, and which is overcome only by the fact that Aslan knows a higher law — a Deeper Magic — that the Witch doesn't.

(Again, theologically speaking, I'm pretty sure Lewis here is getting at the change from the Old Testament — ritual sacrifices of animals to pay for humankind's sins, as per the ancient Jewish law — to the New Testament in which the Son of God has given his own life as the perfect atonement and thereby done away with the old system of blood sacrifices entirely.)

And as you've pointed out, icarus, all this is totally at odds with what we see in Narnia's origin story as written by Lewis several years after LWW. In MN, Aslan creates a whole world through his song, with no indication or mention of "the Emperor" being involved; there's no mention of Deep Magic or any requirements for the ritual killing of evil-doers; the Witch / Jadis is not a divinely appointed executioner who's destined to get too big for her boots, but an interloper from another world who flees in terror as soon as she finds she can't harm Aslan with the iron bar she hurls at him; and the original King and Queen are never told anything about the need for "traitors" to be put to death in order to keep Narnia from "perish[ing] in fire and water" (and I also can't imagine Frank and Helen, from what we see of them, ever being happy with such a requirement even if they were told about it).

That's what it comes down to... I can only conclude that Lewis, with all due respect, pretty much had a total memory failure somewhere between writing LWW and writing MN. That's the only way to explain the huge discrepancy, outside the story itself. I have never been able to think up any "in-universe" explanation that would make it all make sense, try as I might. Which has a lot to do with why I put this up as a topic for a forum discussion!!  

@Courtenay: How did the Tree of Protection ultimately die or get destroyed, enabling Jadis / the Witch to return?

I thought the tree planted in Narnia had been planted by Digory with the apple that he had brought from the garden on top of a mountain, with the help of Polly and Fledge, the cab-horse that became a Pegasus, then. Digory was rewarded with an apple to give his dying mother, & when she ate it, he took the core into the garden where they were staying, planting it there, along with the rings Polly and he had been using for their otherworldly explorations. An apple tree grew up and yes, its apples were beautiful, bringing some healing to the eater, at any rate. We were told at the end of MN, that one day a bad storm blew up and the tree in London was finally blown down. When it would move when there were no winds moving in London, it retained a connection to the Narnian tree, so it might have been then that the Narnian tree was destroyed. The Professor hated to lose the tree, so he got a wardrobe made from the wood, or just some of it, just like that Coronation Diamond Jubilee coach was made from mementos from historic occasions. And we know all about that wardrobe, don't we? When it was the portal for Lucy and her siblings to enter Narnia, in the first place. Then in VDT there was a picture frame, perhaps also made of wood, maybe similarly made from that apple tree, just surmising . With the destruction of the Narnia tree, Jadis certainly could come back, when by that time it seems that there was no Queen Swanwhite or some of the characters Tirian & Jewel the Unicorn told us about.

On the other hand, when did the Calormenes turn up? In HHB, though the Tisroc had heard about the White Witch, she had the power to keep them out of her hair, ergo he wanted nothing to do with her, & therefore Narnia, if he could help it. Were they there before the Tree of Protection ultimately died, or was destroyed, for instance? And when the Calormenes had various gods & goddesses, were often quite bloodthirsty, and did believe in sacrifices, it is not hard to see where those rituals might have originally come from, originally. 

@Courtenay: it's how Lewis gets us to the point where Aslan offers his life in place of Edmund's, with the Witch not knowing that Aslan is invoking the Deeper Magic that will crack the Table and undo death itself. This is, of course, how Lewis quietly but deliberately echoes Jesus' self-sacrifice on behalf of sinners and his subsequent resurrection from death

An author called Neil Gaiman wrote a short story in 2004, called the Problem of Susan. An old chestnut on the original Narnia Web board when I joined Narnia Web in 2009, it harks back to a debate at the time about why Susan was left in the world, & how unfair atheists might see it when all she is accused of really, was too much of a debutante-like interest in lipsticks, nylons & invitations. That Fragile Things short story was rather horrifying, as Gaiman intended, when, as he says, if one takes out that bit about Aslan invoking the Deeper Magic, & therefore the allusion to Jesus' self-sacrifice, the whole story of The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe falls down, and the reader is left with only the wardrobe, and two equally immoral & nasty fictional characters in collusion with each other, which we know is not the case in our beloved Narnian stories. 

As for the stone table, a table is again a double symbol, when the Christian Altar is considered the Lord's table, where we go to have Holy Communion. There are sacrificial altars galore in the Old Testament, when it was said that children were sacrificed to Moloch. Then there was the altar, or table, used for Abraham sacrificing his son, Isaac, to God, though an entrapped ram was used, instead. Plus, the altars to the Phoenician gods like Baal, introduced to Northern Israel when King Ahab married Jezebel, a Phoenician princess. When Jadis was there at the creation of Narnia, the Stone Table likely was there all the time, because of Jadis, herself, & Aslan's awareness of her. 

As a reader, I was always under the impression that Aslan was the originator of the prophecy and the one who placed the four thrones in Cair Paravel. That was why the witch never went there, it was protected somehow.

As for why, who knows with Aslan?

If CS Lewis have wanted to write about what happened in between, he could have. Then of course, he chose not to. We're left to our imagination and speculation.

We could even have a whole discussion about what may have happened in the other gaps (like between HHB and PC, between VDT and SC, between SC and LB, and even between the first and second chapters of LB).

The timeline may not be a 100% accurate, but it does kind of give us an idea.

I think dragons would have started appearing, because they're not mentioned at the creation of Narnia. It may be possible that when Aslan turned the Calormenes in Telmar into dumb beasts, one of them was a dragon. Then of course, Jewel mentions in LB of how King Gale saved the Lone Islands from a dragon.

Then there's Queen Swanwhite, known for her great beauty. I kind of wonder if she was the last Queen of Narnia before the White Witch took over, and started the 100-year winter. I even wonder if there were any surviving members of the royal family. I've actually recently saw the musical version of Anastasia, who was supposedly the last surviving member of the Russian royal family. So I kind of wonder if there were any surviving members of the Narnia royal family when the White Witch took over. They could have fled to Archenland.

Before reading the rest of the comments I will answer your questions according to my perspective.

• Posted by: @courtenay

  And from there, how did the Stone Table (seen in LWW and briefly in Prince Caspian, but never referred to in MN or in any of the other books) come to be built as the place for traitors to be sacrificed?

  Aslan knows everything about to happen which leads me to think that he put the stone table there a few years before the conquest of Jadis, he knew that there could be traitors among his people and he warned to the kings and queens about this. It was used a few times and then during the conquest, Jadis made use of it. In lww, Jadis herself mentions that it will be a long time before the table is used correctly again, so I sense that by using it it will he did it wrong

  Posted by: @courtenay

  How did the four thrones at Cair Paravel come to be made, along with the prophecy that the White Witch's reign (the 100 years of winter) and her life would end when two Sons of Adam and two Daughters of Eve sat in those thrones as Kings and Queens of Narnia?

  Here goes my fanaticism for the Pevensies. Narnia was a country created for the Pevensies. When did the thrones arrive at Cair Paravel? I believe that as each Pevensie was born, Aslan ordered the thrones to be created and It probably occurred during different reigns. When the last Pevensie was born, the conquest of Jadis took place and some centaur of the revolution was shown the prophecy through the stars. It's just my theory.

  Posted by: @courtenay

  What happened to the original line of Narnian monarchs descended from Frank and Helen, as they had obviously disappeared well before the events of LWW — to the point where the Beavers, at least, are convinced there have never been any humans in Narnia before?

  As far as we know, Swanwhite was the last queen descended from Frank and Helen. The fact that the Narnians question the existence of humans makes me wonder how long she had been really Jadis reigning. 

  Posted by: @courtenay

  How did the Tree of Protection ultimately die or get destroyed, enabling Jadis / the Witch to return?

  We have the answer almost at the end from the magician's nephew; The magic that floated over Narnia at its creation diminished and with it the tree's protective barrier to keep Jadis away. During his conquest he took advantage of the tree's weakness and cut it down. 

@waggawerewolf27 I'm just re-reading this thread. I'd like to know more about the Iceland volcano, and the Dark Ages. Can you please PM me with a link to one or more sites where I can read up on it please?