Heirs (Challenge 3 Fill: Never Born)
Jan. 8th, 2013 04:32 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
starbrowsings.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
nffr_partyI don't like to think of canon characters Not Existing, but since I had the urge to explore the idea of succession in the Golden Age and why the Pevensies never had any heirs, I took the "Never Born" challenge and went in a headcanon-y direction of all the Heirs never born to the Four. The Lucy account borrows from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
pencildragon11's 'verse (thanks for letting me play with your characters! Twas delightful!
1.
Would she be High Queen? No, of course not. She would be Consort, as would any of the royal spouses, and her presence could either be an asset or a calamity to the equilibrium of Cair Paravel.
Peter didn’t like to think about what would happen if he did ever find a woman to marry. There had always been Four Thrones at Cair Paravel. Would he have to add a Fifth? Would she try to assume power, despite the carefully worded marriage contracts that Edmund and Susan were sure to draft, banning the royal consort from any official authority in Narnia beyond that of heir-bearer and helpmate?
It helped that no woman did ever manage to claim his heart. Certainly, some caught his eye. This was easy enough to resist, though. He had plenty of practice, between the scantily clad Dryads and the dripping Naiads and the naked Mermaids who sang their siren call every voyage he took upon the Eastern Sea. With such allurements all around him, Peter was not likely to give in to mere human charms, no matter how enticing.
But when it came right down to it, no woman ever loved him the way Narnia did. No woman could compare with the thrill of vanquishing invading foes, the triumphant joy of his subjects lauding his victory with cries of High King Peter! Our Magnificent King!...and on those nights, Peter would make his bed upon the ground and lay his head to the earth beneath him and feel the pulse of its Deep Magic upon him, and he knew no woman would ever claim his heart the way Narnia had laid claim to it, so completely and utterly.
It was a shame, Peter thought with some regret, that he could not beget an heir without a woman of some kind. And so he saw countless women throughout the years, enter Cair Paravel with great hopes and exit with dashed dreams of the Magnificent King who had not spared a second glance for them. He felt a kind of pity for them, these Princesses who lingered on his every word, but their shallow regard for his person had no effect on a King who had felt the throb of a wild Magic upon the Dancing Lawn, the pull of a land whose very heart was tangled in his own until he yearned to set his desire upon the wind and beg it to return his desperate devotion.
Narnia was his, he knew. With my body I thee worship...
2.
There was always the thought, lurking there in the corner of her mind: I am the one who should make a Great Alliance. She was the proper one for it. None of the others would have married for political gain, even for Narnia. None of the others pored tirelessly over the dozens of offers of courtship, betrothal, marriage, concubinage, and all manner of dalliances in between; not the way she does. None of the others worried about the exact wording of their gracious deferment. None of the others paced at night, knowing that the succession of Narnia rested on their shoulders and in their womb.
She'd thought about it a great deal. She hadn't cut more than an inch or two from her hair since her sixteenth birthday, and Calormene poets wrote erotic poetry about perfumed curtains of darkness, and sun-bronzed ambassadors from the Islands beyond the Sea come to lay costly gifts of jewel-encrusted combs and precious oils at her feet. She dressed in the finest silks, the most carefully cut gowns, the expensive heeled slippers of Galma, and smiled her slow mysterious smile when she read the offers: helpless to the power of the Queen's grace…
She was not hard-hearted, as some of the more spiteful spurned suitors claimed. She secretly hoped she might marry for love as well as for country. Her hopes had seemed not so foolish that week, when the dark-haired Prince of Calormene carried her colors and raised his eyes to hers with barely-contained passion. This was what she had worked for, all these years, the painstaking passage of letters between them, laying the foundations for a union that might keep Narnia safe from Calormen's avarice.
Had it ended as she hoped, the conditions of their marriage would have given no control of Narnia to Rabadash and would ensure that any heirs belonged first and foremost to Narnia, until such time as they should abdicate to their siblings or cousins (should there be any).
Tashbaan changed all that. She could see now that there was no true passion in Rabadash's eyes; only desire to possess and control her and, through her, her country. Susan tore the courtship treaty to shreds with shaking fingers. Better to have no heirs at all than be bound to the lust and cruelty of a rapacious tyrant.
3.
A girl would have been nice, he had to admit. Not one of the simpering idiots who pined after Peter, or the mildly ambitious desperados who applied for his favors; no, a sensible, not too glamorous, rational individual who would argue with him obligingly and then kiss him afterwards and not yell at him when he read in bed and kept the light on late into the night.
She didn’t even have to be a Princess or Noblewoman or any of that rot, a point on which Susan and he disagreed thoroughly. She insisted he at least look at the treaties that, well, not exactly poured in, but came with a dull trickle. Edmund was fairly sure there was no point in looking for any sense in that lot, but he manfully did his courtly duty and received the trickle of desperados, and was eternally grateful to Lucy for her cheerful offers to teach them sparring and dragon-flying and Useful Things, which always did the trick and scared off the purple-eyed simpletons with heartening efficiency. (Who has purple eyes?)
In the end, there was only one woman who had ever made him think he would break his terrific streak of bachelorhood. She did not care that he was a King; she did not care even that he was a Narnian. She welcomed him, mind, body and soul, and Edmund fell, hard. Eventually Susan and Lucy and Peter found out, but they were thoughtful enough not to pry, realizing that Edmund’s chosen lady was not among the stack of Princesses’ treaties in the royal office.
He and Amordath carried on a long exchange of visits and letters and clandestine meetings, and it was enough to sustain him for the present. He was content with their arrangement, as she seemed to be...for now. Edmund knew it would be a Long, Long Time before Narnia would be happy for her Just King to marry a Calormene mystic who helmed a desert oasis... even if she had saved him from freezing in the deadly Nor’eastern snowstorm that fateful winter. Even if she worshipped the Lion Goddess Haidar, who was as near to Aslan as the Calormene pantheon could get.
Edmund still had his last letter from Amordath in his pocket, the day they rode out in search of the White Stag. She was not pregnant, the letter had reassured him. He was not sure why this news disappointed him a little.
4.
Lucy would have been quite happy to dash off a form letter of refusal (“Dear Prince/Lord/Noble Suitor/Person-I-Don’t-Know-At-All: Thank you very much, I’m happy with my dragon and my subjects and my independence. All the best. -Queen Lucy”) to all the ridiculous princes who begged her to be their Queen. She didn't do this, of course. Susan was nice enough to compose beautifully worded "letters of deferment" on her behalf, and kept Narnia from going to war over a hasty refusal. Still, it was a relief that nobody expected her to say yes to any of these offers; nobody in Narnia, at least. She need answer to no one as she moved among her country, wherever she was needed. And she moved a great deal, walking and riding faithful Ashtiel and flying eager Chrysophylax all around Narnia, with thoughts untroubled by suitors till the summer before that fateful year.
She knew perhaps better than her brothers or sister precisely what the Narnians expected, being among them so much and hearing their advice first-hand. In the Great Wood, the Wolf packs were worried that none of the Kings or Queens had a mate or pups; what would happen to the Human pack if another Witch came and laid waste to the Four? And then would the Wolves be once again enslaved as they had been before? Lucy listened to their concerns and nodded, stroking their silvery fur and accepting their chin-nips in silent acknowledgement of their loyalty, but she could not answer their fears with any assurement beyond what she could already bring: that she would defend Narnia and its borders with every breath left in her, heirs or no heirs.
In Owl Wood, the Owls hooted that it was not wise, not wise at all to leave the succession to chance, tu-whoo! The Centaurs in the South searched the heavens for the perfect alignment of Stars that would foretell of the next King or Queen of Narnia, but said that their vision was clouded and they could give no prophecies. The Jaguars and Cheetahs and other Great Cats of the Western Woods were not surprised that their rulers did not marry, but they swished their tails when the subject of cubs was raised, for many of their own had not survived the Long Winter, and their numbers had been slowly restored birth by birth. They had no wish for another Witch's rule. The Dwarfs of the Rushing Wood, for their part, would have paid a pretty penny to know that their mines and smithies would be safe from tyrannical seizure for generations to come, and told Lucy so with great bluntness.
At Beaver's Dam, Mrs. Beaver would sigh and tell her, Dearie, do tell one of your brothers or sister to find a nice steady mate like Mr. Beaver, and the very minute I hear any news I shall set my sewing machine humming with the sweetest baby clothes! Before that summer, Lucy could always meet the motherly eyes with a clear unconsciousness and answer her truthfully, No Mrs. Beaver, there’s no Son of Adam that has caught my eye, but thank you very much. And after that summer, in the days of the falling leaves and autumn harvests and clear cooling skies, Lucy preferred the company of Mr. Tumnus, who asked no prying questions and fed her tea and cakes and sardines with comforting ease.
As she rode with Ashtiel to Bearsclaw Keep that last winter, the Trees, half-sleeping and creaking with snow, had whispered to her that it was Time. Lucy wondered what they meant, but they never answered, and in the welcoming warmth of the Keep and its noble family, the Trees’ mystery was forgotten. She kissed the baby, nearly a year old now, and got down on the floor to play with the little girls’ dolls and leaped up to chase the boys when they attacked, and avoided Carl’s eyes when he joined in the merriment. She missed Elinda, who would have gladly aided in the valiant defense of Dollhouse Keep; but Elinda had her own household to build now, with Peridan, a thought that made Lucy bite her lip and feel for the first time that Elinda had gone to a place that Lucy was afraid to follow.
Lord Carl and Lady Branwen were even more fatherly and motherly than ever, and Lucy wondered just how much her Carl—her Carl?—had told them.
Late that night, the barn was quiet and warm with the breath of animals: the cow Rose, once more round with calf and chewing her cud in the corner; the pretty young mare Tangle who thrust her nose against Lucy’s shoulder and whickered; her own horse Ashtiel in the next stall, gently flirting across the wall; Mossy on the other side, stamping his foot and wanting to know what was going on. “Are we going to have a little colt or filly in the fall?” Lucy said to Ashtiel, stroking his nose as she gave him bits of apple from her pocket.
“Theirs would be a very fine foal, don’t you think?” said a voice from the barn door. Carl—Prince Carl, she used to tease him, Knight Carl, Carl the Younger, Not-a-Lord Carl—came to stand beside her. He was even taller than she remembered; she only came to his collarbone, for all that she had four years’ advantage over him.
“A very fine foal,” Lucy agreed, but she was no longer thinking of horses. She glanced over her shoulder and up. Carl was looking at her with piercing dark eyes. She could feel the warmth of him standing so close beside her.
“Lucy—” He faltered; his hand brushed her elbow, pleading. For a moment he looked so boyish, so eager that she could not help it. She stood on tiptoe, turned her head, found his mouth, kissed him softly and sweetly in the stillness of the barn’s lantern light. His beard—when did Carl get old enough to have a beard?—tickled her face. For a moment, it was enough.
Then Lucy returned to the present. She was Queen. This was Important. Gasping for breath, she broke away. Carl was shaken too.
“Tangle—is she ready to foal?” she asked, searching his eyes.
“She must decide that,” he answered in a voice rough with emotion.
“Ashtiel knows his mind already,” she said quietly.
“Lucy, nothing has changed since last summer. I—I still—”
“I know,” Lucy whispered. “I just...need more time.”
Time.
Carl straightened, nodded. “Of course. Forgive me. I’ll...I’ll take my leave then.” He bowed and strode out of the barn, into the night. Lucy found herself wishing him back with a keenness that surprised her.
She shook her head and stroked Ashtiel. She had time.
That spring, the fateful hunt of the White Stag carried the Four from Narnia, and the heirs of Queen Lucy and Prince Carl that might have been were lost to dreams and fading memories.
pencildragon11's 'verse (thanks for letting me play with your characters! Twas delightful!1.
Would she be High Queen? No, of course not. She would be Consort, as would any of the royal spouses, and her presence could either be an asset or a calamity to the equilibrium of Cair Paravel.
Peter didn’t like to think about what would happen if he did ever find a woman to marry. There had always been Four Thrones at Cair Paravel. Would he have to add a Fifth? Would she try to assume power, despite the carefully worded marriage contracts that Edmund and Susan were sure to draft, banning the royal consort from any official authority in Narnia beyond that of heir-bearer and helpmate?
It helped that no woman did ever manage to claim his heart. Certainly, some caught his eye. This was easy enough to resist, though. He had plenty of practice, between the scantily clad Dryads and the dripping Naiads and the naked Mermaids who sang their siren call every voyage he took upon the Eastern Sea. With such allurements all around him, Peter was not likely to give in to mere human charms, no matter how enticing.
But when it came right down to it, no woman ever loved him the way Narnia did. No woman could compare with the thrill of vanquishing invading foes, the triumphant joy of his subjects lauding his victory with cries of High King Peter! Our Magnificent King!...and on those nights, Peter would make his bed upon the ground and lay his head to the earth beneath him and feel the pulse of its Deep Magic upon him, and he knew no woman would ever claim his heart the way Narnia had laid claim to it, so completely and utterly.
It was a shame, Peter thought with some regret, that he could not beget an heir without a woman of some kind. And so he saw countless women throughout the years, enter Cair Paravel with great hopes and exit with dashed dreams of the Magnificent King who had not spared a second glance for them. He felt a kind of pity for them, these Princesses who lingered on his every word, but their shallow regard for his person had no effect on a King who had felt the throb of a wild Magic upon the Dancing Lawn, the pull of a land whose very heart was tangled in his own until he yearned to set his desire upon the wind and beg it to return his desperate devotion.
Narnia was his, he knew. With my body I thee worship...
2.
There was always the thought, lurking there in the corner of her mind: I am the one who should make a Great Alliance. She was the proper one for it. None of the others would have married for political gain, even for Narnia. None of the others pored tirelessly over the dozens of offers of courtship, betrothal, marriage, concubinage, and all manner of dalliances in between; not the way she does. None of the others worried about the exact wording of their gracious deferment. None of the others paced at night, knowing that the succession of Narnia rested on their shoulders and in their womb.
She'd thought about it a great deal. She hadn't cut more than an inch or two from her hair since her sixteenth birthday, and Calormene poets wrote erotic poetry about perfumed curtains of darkness, and sun-bronzed ambassadors from the Islands beyond the Sea come to lay costly gifts of jewel-encrusted combs and precious oils at her feet. She dressed in the finest silks, the most carefully cut gowns, the expensive heeled slippers of Galma, and smiled her slow mysterious smile when she read the offers: helpless to the power of the Queen's grace…
She was not hard-hearted, as some of the more spiteful spurned suitors claimed. She secretly hoped she might marry for love as well as for country. Her hopes had seemed not so foolish that week, when the dark-haired Prince of Calormene carried her colors and raised his eyes to hers with barely-contained passion. This was what she had worked for, all these years, the painstaking passage of letters between them, laying the foundations for a union that might keep Narnia safe from Calormen's avarice.
Had it ended as she hoped, the conditions of their marriage would have given no control of Narnia to Rabadash and would ensure that any heirs belonged first and foremost to Narnia, until such time as they should abdicate to their siblings or cousins (should there be any).
Tashbaan changed all that. She could see now that there was no true passion in Rabadash's eyes; only desire to possess and control her and, through her, her country. Susan tore the courtship treaty to shreds with shaking fingers. Better to have no heirs at all than be bound to the lust and cruelty of a rapacious tyrant.
3.
A girl would have been nice, he had to admit. Not one of the simpering idiots who pined after Peter, or the mildly ambitious desperados who applied for his favors; no, a sensible, not too glamorous, rational individual who would argue with him obligingly and then kiss him afterwards and not yell at him when he read in bed and kept the light on late into the night.
She didn’t even have to be a Princess or Noblewoman or any of that rot, a point on which Susan and he disagreed thoroughly. She insisted he at least look at the treaties that, well, not exactly poured in, but came with a dull trickle. Edmund was fairly sure there was no point in looking for any sense in that lot, but he manfully did his courtly duty and received the trickle of desperados, and was eternally grateful to Lucy for her cheerful offers to teach them sparring and dragon-flying and Useful Things, which always did the trick and scared off the purple-eyed simpletons with heartening efficiency. (Who has purple eyes?)
In the end, there was only one woman who had ever made him think he would break his terrific streak of bachelorhood. She did not care that he was a King; she did not care even that he was a Narnian. She welcomed him, mind, body and soul, and Edmund fell, hard. Eventually Susan and Lucy and Peter found out, but they were thoughtful enough not to pry, realizing that Edmund’s chosen lady was not among the stack of Princesses’ treaties in the royal office.
He and Amordath carried on a long exchange of visits and letters and clandestine meetings, and it was enough to sustain him for the present. He was content with their arrangement, as she seemed to be...for now. Edmund knew it would be a Long, Long Time before Narnia would be happy for her Just King to marry a Calormene mystic who helmed a desert oasis... even if she had saved him from freezing in the deadly Nor’eastern snowstorm that fateful winter. Even if she worshipped the Lion Goddess Haidar, who was as near to Aslan as the Calormene pantheon could get.
Edmund still had his last letter from Amordath in his pocket, the day they rode out in search of the White Stag. She was not pregnant, the letter had reassured him. He was not sure why this news disappointed him a little.
4.
Lucy would have been quite happy to dash off a form letter of refusal (“Dear Prince/Lord/Noble Suitor/Person-I-Don’t-Know-At-All: Thank you very much, I’m happy with my dragon and my subjects and my independence. All the best. -Queen Lucy”) to all the ridiculous princes who begged her to be their Queen. She didn't do this, of course. Susan was nice enough to compose beautifully worded "letters of deferment" on her behalf, and kept Narnia from going to war over a hasty refusal. Still, it was a relief that nobody expected her to say yes to any of these offers; nobody in Narnia, at least. She need answer to no one as she moved among her country, wherever she was needed. And she moved a great deal, walking and riding faithful Ashtiel and flying eager Chrysophylax all around Narnia, with thoughts untroubled by suitors till the summer before that fateful year.
She knew perhaps better than her brothers or sister precisely what the Narnians expected, being among them so much and hearing their advice first-hand. In the Great Wood, the Wolf packs were worried that none of the Kings or Queens had a mate or pups; what would happen to the Human pack if another Witch came and laid waste to the Four? And then would the Wolves be once again enslaved as they had been before? Lucy listened to their concerns and nodded, stroking their silvery fur and accepting their chin-nips in silent acknowledgement of their loyalty, but she could not answer their fears with any assurement beyond what she could already bring: that she would defend Narnia and its borders with every breath left in her, heirs or no heirs.
In Owl Wood, the Owls hooted that it was not wise, not wise at all to leave the succession to chance, tu-whoo! The Centaurs in the South searched the heavens for the perfect alignment of Stars that would foretell of the next King or Queen of Narnia, but said that their vision was clouded and they could give no prophecies. The Jaguars and Cheetahs and other Great Cats of the Western Woods were not surprised that their rulers did not marry, but they swished their tails when the subject of cubs was raised, for many of their own had not survived the Long Winter, and their numbers had been slowly restored birth by birth. They had no wish for another Witch's rule. The Dwarfs of the Rushing Wood, for their part, would have paid a pretty penny to know that their mines and smithies would be safe from tyrannical seizure for generations to come, and told Lucy so with great bluntness.
At Beaver's Dam, Mrs. Beaver would sigh and tell her, Dearie, do tell one of your brothers or sister to find a nice steady mate like Mr. Beaver, and the very minute I hear any news I shall set my sewing machine humming with the sweetest baby clothes! Before that summer, Lucy could always meet the motherly eyes with a clear unconsciousness and answer her truthfully, No Mrs. Beaver, there’s no Son of Adam that has caught my eye, but thank you very much. And after that summer, in the days of the falling leaves and autumn harvests and clear cooling skies, Lucy preferred the company of Mr. Tumnus, who asked no prying questions and fed her tea and cakes and sardines with comforting ease.
As she rode with Ashtiel to Bearsclaw Keep that last winter, the Trees, half-sleeping and creaking with snow, had whispered to her that it was Time. Lucy wondered what they meant, but they never answered, and in the welcoming warmth of the Keep and its noble family, the Trees’ mystery was forgotten. She kissed the baby, nearly a year old now, and got down on the floor to play with the little girls’ dolls and leaped up to chase the boys when they attacked, and avoided Carl’s eyes when he joined in the merriment. She missed Elinda, who would have gladly aided in the valiant defense of Dollhouse Keep; but Elinda had her own household to build now, with Peridan, a thought that made Lucy bite her lip and feel for the first time that Elinda had gone to a place that Lucy was afraid to follow.
Lord Carl and Lady Branwen were even more fatherly and motherly than ever, and Lucy wondered just how much her Carl—her Carl?—had told them.
Late that night, the barn was quiet and warm with the breath of animals: the cow Rose, once more round with calf and chewing her cud in the corner; the pretty young mare Tangle who thrust her nose against Lucy’s shoulder and whickered; her own horse Ashtiel in the next stall, gently flirting across the wall; Mossy on the other side, stamping his foot and wanting to know what was going on. “Are we going to have a little colt or filly in the fall?” Lucy said to Ashtiel, stroking his nose as she gave him bits of apple from her pocket.
“Theirs would be a very fine foal, don’t you think?” said a voice from the barn door. Carl—Prince Carl, she used to tease him, Knight Carl, Carl the Younger, Not-a-Lord Carl—came to stand beside her. He was even taller than she remembered; she only came to his collarbone, for all that she had four years’ advantage over him.
“A very fine foal,” Lucy agreed, but she was no longer thinking of horses. She glanced over her shoulder and up. Carl was looking at her with piercing dark eyes. She could feel the warmth of him standing so close beside her.
“Lucy—” He faltered; his hand brushed her elbow, pleading. For a moment he looked so boyish, so eager that she could not help it. She stood on tiptoe, turned her head, found his mouth, kissed him softly and sweetly in the stillness of the barn’s lantern light. His beard—when did Carl get old enough to have a beard?—tickled her face. For a moment, it was enough.
Then Lucy returned to the present. She was Queen. This was Important. Gasping for breath, she broke away. Carl was shaken too.
“Tangle—is she ready to foal?” she asked, searching his eyes.
“She must decide that,” he answered in a voice rough with emotion.
“Ashtiel knows his mind already,” she said quietly.
“Lucy, nothing has changed since last summer. I—I still—”
“I know,” Lucy whispered. “I just...need more time.”
Time.
Carl straightened, nodded. “Of course. Forgive me. I’ll...I’ll take my leave then.” He bowed and strode out of the barn, into the night. Lucy found herself wishing him back with a keenness that surprised her.
She shook her head and stroked Ashtiel. She had time.
That spring, the fateful hunt of the White Stag carried the Four from Narnia, and the heirs of Queen Lucy and Prince Carl that might have been were lost to dreams and fading memories.
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Date: 2013-01-08 01:51 pm (UTC)The Susan piece was also very, very good and just spot on.
I adore how you've woven bits and pieces of your own head canon, and SB, and borrowed from other verses as well. This is terrific and so very, very sad.
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Date: 2013-01-08 03:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-10 12:19 am (UTC)I'm glad, reading this, that Peter does feel wedded to the land (and I love that line "lay his head to the earth beneath him and feel the pulse of its Deep Magic"), and isn't planning to marry any woman. The visceral pulling away from women (from Humanity in general?), the seeing them only as (unfortunately necessary) child-bearers, which seems to breathe through his thoughts would have made the marriage equivocal, at best. And possibly disastrous -- for the first time, the White Stag seems to have been a blessing.
Wow! for the Susan story, with her erotic curtain of dark, dark hair, and her commitment to marry or the country's security -- and doubly so for the Edmund story (which we may hear more of???? I hope so!) And Lucy -- "She had time." What a tumult of regret and sorrow (and even bitterness?) you've set out for her!
A fic which is amazingly full of background and implications and possibilities -- terrific, and thank you! :)