![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lotesseIn the winter, I have to walk back and forth to campus - too snowy for my bicycle to manage. Which means my little iPod shuffle always has audiobooks loaded on it, to keep me from thinking about how bloody cold it is outside. And I just last week torrented the Derek Jacobi recording of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, which I've been lusting after for years. I bought Prince Caspian, but Dawn Treader is and always has been my dearest, truest love.
(Isn't it odd how clearly we inflect books, sometimes? When Jacobi reads, at the very beginning, "the picture was moving," he inflects in as "was moving," which in my head is just wrong, because clearly it's "was moving," with reference to Lucy's remark about why she likes the painting.)
But I've been falling in love with Caspian all over again, or rather finding new reasons and understanding of why I always have loved him, because of course he was my first fictional true love. There's a darling moment, when Lucy and Edmund are first come aboard the Dawn Treader, and Caspian and Drinian are recounting the adventures they've had since they sailed from Cair Paravel - Terebinthian pirates and all that. And Drinian is talking about their stay in Galma, and, well, here's the passage:
"We were in port for a week, for the Duke of Galma made a great tournament for his Majesty and there he unhorsed many knights--"
"And got a few nasty falls myself, Drinian. Some of the bruises are there still," put in Caspian.
"--and unhorsed many knights," repeated Drinian with a grin.
And it makes me love Caspian so damn much. Because on the one hand, Caspian is as close as Narnia ever gets to Prince Charming: the boyking of Narnia, the golden-bright adventurer-prince. Brave, sweet, dashing, Aslan's beloved. But underneath all that gold, there's a boy who can't believe any of it's real. When Aslan asked him, at his coronation, if he felt himself fit to be king of Narnia, he says, "I - I don't think I do, Sir. I'm just a kid." And Aslan replies, "Good. If you had felt yourself sufficient, it would have been a proof that you were not."
Caspian grew up the neglected dreamer-child of a family who disliked him, and who he disliked in turn. He was nurtured and loved by his nurse and Cornelius, but never treated with respect, or as if he was a lordly figure. Caspian was never the sort of boy that Miraz would have had any use for. And everything that the Caspian of Dawn Treader has, the Caspian of the previous book believed to be nothing more than a dream of things long past or unreal. I don't think he always can believe in it, even after Aslan, or always believe in himself. Something in him wants to pull back from the heraldic, to say not me, I'm not Prince Charming. I'm not the savior or the hero or the king. I'm just a good-for-nothing dreamer-child. Drinian locates him within a chivalric narrative, and Caspian only want to deny it - but Drinian, of course, won't let him.
I think om the moment when Drinian repeats that chivalric story, he loves Caspian very much, He's saying, in effect, yes you really are. You're really something. You're the bright golden boyking and I love you for it, and for the sweetness and humility of your self. Or maybe that's more what I'm thinking, because oh Lord do I love me some Caspian. That duality especially: the dreaming boy and the boy king, all at once, the dream and the morning.
Oh, Caspian.
(Isn't it odd how clearly we inflect books, sometimes? When Jacobi reads, at the very beginning, "the picture was moving," he inflects in as "was moving," which in my head is just wrong, because clearly it's "was moving," with reference to Lucy's remark about why she likes the painting.)
But I've been falling in love with Caspian all over again, or rather finding new reasons and understanding of why I always have loved him, because of course he was my first fictional true love. There's a darling moment, when Lucy and Edmund are first come aboard the Dawn Treader, and Caspian and Drinian are recounting the adventures they've had since they sailed from Cair Paravel - Terebinthian pirates and all that. And Drinian is talking about their stay in Galma, and, well, here's the passage:
"We were in port for a week, for the Duke of Galma made a great tournament for his Majesty and there he unhorsed many knights--"
"And got a few nasty falls myself, Drinian. Some of the bruises are there still," put in Caspian.
"--and unhorsed many knights," repeated Drinian with a grin.
And it makes me love Caspian so damn much. Because on the one hand, Caspian is as close as Narnia ever gets to Prince Charming: the boyking of Narnia, the golden-bright adventurer-prince. Brave, sweet, dashing, Aslan's beloved. But underneath all that gold, there's a boy who can't believe any of it's real. When Aslan asked him, at his coronation, if he felt himself fit to be king of Narnia, he says, "I - I don't think I do, Sir. I'm just a kid." And Aslan replies, "Good. If you had felt yourself sufficient, it would have been a proof that you were not."
Caspian grew up the neglected dreamer-child of a family who disliked him, and who he disliked in turn. He was nurtured and loved by his nurse and Cornelius, but never treated with respect, or as if he was a lordly figure. Caspian was never the sort of boy that Miraz would have had any use for. And everything that the Caspian of Dawn Treader has, the Caspian of the previous book believed to be nothing more than a dream of things long past or unreal. I don't think he always can believe in it, even after Aslan, or always believe in himself. Something in him wants to pull back from the heraldic, to say not me, I'm not Prince Charming. I'm not the savior or the hero or the king. I'm just a good-for-nothing dreamer-child. Drinian locates him within a chivalric narrative, and Caspian only want to deny it - but Drinian, of course, won't let him.
I think om the moment when Drinian repeats that chivalric story, he loves Caspian very much, He's saying, in effect, yes you really are. You're really something. You're the bright golden boyking and I love you for it, and for the sweetness and humility of your self. Or maybe that's more what I'm thinking, because oh Lord do I love me some Caspian. That duality especially: the dreaming boy and the boy king, all at once, the dream and the morning.
Oh, Caspian.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-14 12:25 am (UTC)Course, I can't write that till I finish the long AU fic I have on what would happen if Lucy didn't die in the train wreck. Because I'm horrible that way. :D
no subject
Date: 2008-02-14 12:32 am (UTC)The first is that they stole Caspian's story for Peter in the first movie, and I don't much see the point in two movies about unassuming boys becoming more kingly than they thought they could be. Redundant.
The second is that VDT!Caspian always was the one I loved. I need the duality of him - as a boy he's too simple, too insecure, for me. Lucy is my True Believer par exellance, and I'd rather have her than any other little boy listening to stories. But a young king who was once a little boy listening to stories? That's awesome and meaty and I have total lust for VDT!Caspian, Mir, seriously.
The only thing I'm really worried about is the hair. The blond thing matters. Oh, and of course the spectre of Caspian/Susan, which would make me stabby but I'm pretending that if I ignore it it will go away.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-14 03:11 pm (UTC)I wish I could remember my first fictional loves. Caspian certainly changes a lot between Prince Caspian and Dawn Treader. It could be that, when Drinian repeats the tournament story on the ship, it's showing that sometimes he has to trick Caspian into believing that he's what they say he is.
The trailers with Dark-haired!Caspian still annoy me a bit, just like I do a double-take whenever I first see Blond!Jadis in the movie (and the giant shoulder pads but aside from that, she's fabulous).
no subject
Date: 2008-02-14 04:44 pm (UTC)If they can give me my Caspian, I don't really care a fig for his haircolor. Lucy's is wrong too, at any rate.
Why can't you remember? Out of curiosity. Nothing makes me happier than going back to my first loves - it's like they're part of me. I've really never lived without Narnia.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-14 07:12 pm (UTC)For character loves: I think it's because so many of my favorite books I read years and years ago, and didn't think to note it down. (Hooray that my handwriting in my paper journal has improoved!) I'm pretty sure that all the girls in my class and I had a crush on Gwydion when we first read The Book of Three. It was so disappointing when I was older and found that he's a jerk in the original myths. I know that I love Schmendrick from The Last Unicorn. I'll have to look at my bookshelves for others.
It's so odd: I read the Narnia books during elementary school and I always enjoyed them, but they weren't my favorites. So I was mystified as to why I got so excited when the first movie came out, and now I've re-read the entire series. (My best friend and I did have a "hide-out world" in my attic when we were little, and the password was "Jadis."
no subject
Date: 2008-02-14 08:44 pm (UTC)Also, I absolutely have to track down that recording now. Even though it might make me cry - the voices of dead beloved authors always do. Douglas Adams is murder :)