On Thanksgiving Eve, I blew up the Last Battle

[rthstewart]

I posted the last chapter of Star Husband on Wednesday, Chapter 5, Further Up and Further In, Part 2.

And a lot happened.  A number of readers were unhappy that I split the chapter up but in all it was 18,000 words.  And A Lot Happened.
As I mention in the notes at the beginning, if you're looking for canon-compliant fic, best jump off the train now.
I'm just going to put a few things down here.  No need to read on!  If you enjoy the story, thank you for reading.

1.  The Conflict Between Peter and Susan
The roots of this conflict go back, most explicitly, to Peter's discomfort with Susan's exploits in TQSiT. 

If a time came, Peter, where I could not tell you the truth, I would say nothing rather than tell you the lie."

If he did not ask, Edmund would not have to say anything. Peter wondered if his brother had ever faced this dilemma of truth, falsehood, or blessed silence. He decided he did not wish to know such a thing, ever, and so would not ask.

"I understand, Edmund."

"And so it was with Asim. He could not tell you the truth and did not wish to lie to you. So, he came to me, to one to whom he could lie, with impunity, if necessary."

So this was the truth. It was reassuring, Peter supposed, to know that it wasn't a lie.

"Spies really do live by a different code, don't they?" Peter asked, still cradling the bitterness.

"Yes, brother, we do."

Quietly, Edmund shut the door.

Later, first with Edmund in TQSiT and later with Susan in AW (Queen Susan in Finchley), Peter acknowledges a certain amount of hypocrisy in himself.   He is uncomfortable with Susan's work, though he recognizes its necessity now, in the exigencies of war, and further recognizes that there were uncomfortable things done to further Narnian security that Susan and Edmund did, or that he undertook himself.  He vows to never criticize for what was done in the past but he's similarly not going to let these things continue unremarked.  It's a legitimate viewpoint -- spying and espionage are not for every person -- not everyone is comfortable living a life of lies -- and it's not a big leap to, it's just the wrong thing to do when you carry a charge by Aslan.  What Peter acknowledges the necessity of in World War 2 with 6 million dead civilian Jews and Hitler isn't something he's necessarily going to countenance during the Cold War and the fight against communism, and especially given his tilt towards more liberal politics.  This conflict, very much rooted here, is part of their conflict in SH.  

2.  The Foolish Faun, faith vs action, and the White Stag

In PC, Peter tells Caspian, Aslan will come but in his time, not ours and in the meantime, he expects us to do the best we can so I'll just challenge your uncle to single combat to the death.  SURE PETER.  That piece of dialogue has become a huge thematic element of the Narnia side of my work.  Have faith in Aslan?  Or do your best to solve your own problems because Aslan's got better things to do then save you.  Hence the Foolish Faun.  

A related point is Peter's recurring dream of following the White Stag.  He dreamed of following the Stag in I love not man the less but nature more when he's tripping in the Centaur cave.  He loses Susan in the fog and refuses to follow until he finds her.  In Rejection of the Terms, and somewhere else, Peter is with Dinan, his Dryad lover, when she reports that the sighting of the Stag and he dreams of following it.  Peter wants to chase the Stag and wish for a blood heir.  Dinan specifically tells him, why do you wish for what Aslan hasn't granted?  And Peter's wholly reasonable response is, well, Aslan expects us to act, so maybe that's what I'm supposed to do.

It's this same tension that underlies Susan's violently disagreement with Peter's insistence upon acting on Narnia's peril by trying to get the Rings.  She knows Peter can't stand by and watch Narnia perish a second time but she's equally certain that acting on the basis of wishes and dreams is a TERRIBLE idea and especially when Aslan was explicit to never use the Rings.  And as Peter is railing against her, she flings back something that they never speak of -- that it was Peter's concerns about assuring a blood heir and a succession that lead them all riding out to chase the White Stag.  It's heretical to chase the Rings just as it was heretical to go chasing a wish that Aslan hasn't seen fit to grant and Lucy and Edmund lost their families as a result. 

Peter's response is that to sit and wait and hope for Aslan's deliverance is the Foolish Faun and soon you're sitting on the roof in a flood, letting the boats go by until you drown. 

 Peter's not wrong.  Neither is Susan.  And as Jill says, eh, sure, get the Rings, but if Aslan doesn't want us there, we're not going to get there, Rings or not.  In the end, Susan was right.  They didn't need the Rings, never even saw them, as Eustace points out, and yet Aslan still brings them to what they eventually learn is Narnia-Plato-heaven. 

I've always felt that Peter's statement in TLB that Susan is not a friend of Narnia is a much harder thing to explain that Eustace, Jill and Polly's carping, which seem fresh and resentful.  Peter's is much, much deeper and Lucy and Edmund say nothing at all and immediately change the subject.  This is my answer to Peter's condemnation of Susan -- it's a legitimate, terrible dispute and they are both stubbornly holding to their own views, which is why it's so upsetting for Lucy and Edmund as they can both see the reasons for the dispute.

3.  Eustace, Jill and not knowing about the spying
Some of it does read a little bit contrived.  Susan could just order Asim away and disclose all to Eustace.  Asim tries to leave, but Susan is making a point.  SEE, I can do it too.  Asim has, at this point, left the intelligence services to pursue the hadiths in a more meaningful way.  But he's still bound by the Official Secrets Act.  We also don't know if Susan and Tebbitt are using the Narnia code -- they might very well be.

But, the seeds were planted 10 years ago in Oxfordshire 1942 when Edmund came up with the idea of using Narnia as a code and that they would pretend it's just a silly children's game.  You can bet that Edmund feels lotsa angst for how this ended up.  And, of course, he's bound by the Official Secrets Act himself, which is why he tells Lucy in code, you explain it to them, I can't.  And then he goes off to pummel Peter for saying those awful things about Susan when, in fact, Susan was right and they didn't need the Rings to get there. 

4.  Aslan causes a train crash for Peter to get a clue
I had written a lot more about Peter, angst, and figuring out what was going on, and the decision for him to make.  I've ended up saving it and kept it a bit more vague.  Peter is, actually, I think further along than he currently appears to be.  But, well, that's his story more than Eustace and Jill's, and so that will be told later, in a different way.

5.  Jumping off the canon train.
A reader, AlexR, pointed out, about a year ago, I think, how Last Battle is very dissatisfying because it doesn't follow the narrative of the other stories.  Aslan doesn't come to save the day.  He burns everything down and makes it so that you can never go there, unless you're dead.  If TLB had been true to the spirit of the other Narnia books, it would have been some sort of reconciliation to the loss of Narnia.  And, having created this big, crazy world, where the Friends took Aslan's instruction very seriously -- find me in your world, do my work in your worlds -- it's really hard to ignore all of that sense of purpose because Aslan changed his mind and decided to the Friends with him in his world rather than them finding him their world.  In the end, I liked what I'd created more and couldn't bear to see it all eaten up by Narnia canon.  So, I jumped off the train and waded into AU.  I don't regret it.  Marching toward nihilism was a significant part of the writer's block.  I'm free and I'm very happy for it.

Thank you for reading.  I'll undoubtedly have more but this is a start.