#prince rilian

[nico-di-genova]

Narnia fandom is as dead as most of the characters, but I love y’all.

[to-the-western-wood]

rilian: i love you guys, you're the best thing that's ever happened to me

jill: we're the best thing that's ever happened to you?

rilian: yeah

eustace: i'm starting to feel a little sorry for you

[thedawntreaders]

the silver chair except eustace's dragon curse never truly left.

it remains dormant on earth of course, for there is no need of dragons there and it certainly is no place for them, but when eustace is put in situations of high, high risk in narnia, it can't help but come out instinctively.

the poor boy doesn't figure this out until it happens.

eustace never had a particular desire to die, but he gave himself no choice in the split second moment he takes to dive in front of prince rilian. for an old friend such as caspian, he would give his life to him and his family as many times as they'd need, even if he only had one to spare. a proper act of sacrifice, he reasons to himself, much nobler in comparison to what he did last time he was in narnia. lucy and edmund would be very proud, wouldn't they?

jill covers her eyes and screams.

but what should have been human skin caught on the witch's serpent fangs turns brittle and cold, like the hardened scales of a dragon's hide. the sorceress flies backwards and releases a piercing screech.

prince rilian shakes jill, begs her to open her eyes. she shakes her head. she can't, she won't. eustace is dead. eustace is dead!

an unfamiliar roar reverberates throughout the dark castle. oh no. jill finally peeks through her fingers, a new bout of fright expelling her grief. what now? hasn't she suffered enough? but her hands fall quickly to her side and she stumbles back, looking, up, up, up.

standing between her, rilian, and the serpent, stood a gallant dragon, one that towered over the two humans and blew fire into the air.

"eustace?" jill whispers.

eustace stares down the lady of the green kirtle in the eyes and grins. why, this evens out the playing field, doesn't it? his snout flares and he roars once more.

you will pay for what you've done, witch.

oh, if only reepicheep were here to see him now.

[pevensiegiigi]

Ao3: An ordinary day between Rilian and Caspian

Rilian loves the little moments his father has to dedicate to him and tell him about Narnia.

[who-canceled-roger-rabbit]

Lewis may not have intended it this way, but Edmund and Rilian are both Very Important to me as representation of male abuse survivors

[wingedflight]

Welcome to the Black Knight’s Crib

A very cracky fic for @edenfalling for the Narnia Fic Exchange 2023!

Characters: enchanted!Rilian

Tags: crack, day in the life, MTV Cribs Crossover

Summary: MTV Cribs gives viewers a glimpse into the lavish subterranean home and lifestyle of the Black Knight, notoriously-elusive companion to the Lady of the Green Kirtle.

Excerpt:

This is a pretty large castle, but today we’re gonna focus on the East Wing ‘cause that’s my zone, you know? Black Knight Central, if you will.

It starts here in the East Foyer, not too large a room but we’ve got some actual yellow-flame lanterns to start things off with a nice homey sort of vibe. Waaay better than those cold lights the gloomy-faced earthmen use, am I right? Hehehe, such weirdos.

Anyway, foyer, where we are. Through that door: big long hallway filled with antiques--I’ll be honest, decorations aren’t really my jam. That stuff’s mostly decided by the Lady, she’s super into those tapestries that tell stories with the pictures. Like this one? This one’s my favourite, it’s got some sort of giant cat getting stabbed by a hot chick. Heheh, it’s wild, isn’t it? Who even comes up with this stuff?

[Read more on AO3]

[peter-wolfsbane-pevensie]

Self care is me thinking about Caspeter married au where they're both Kings of Narnia and Rilian is their son.

(No I do not care how this affects the TCON timeline)

[nuba-t]

[fredbydawn]

Of all the movies that I watched as a kid that did something to my brain, this one remained dormant the longest

[nico-di-genova]

Crying about the idea of Rilian gaining consciousness for one hour a night and swearing that his father will find him. His captor laughing at his nativity from the shadows as Rilian pulls at his bonds and demands to be let free. He’s so sure Caspian will find him, his father who has sailed to the ends of the earth and who has taken down far worse foes than the woman in green. He screams and yells until his voice goes hoarse and raw and until he will not be able to speak come the morning. And his faith in his father never waivers.

Until the day it does. Until Rilian returns to himself for the hundredth time, the three hundredth, until years have passed and Rilian no longer screams. He no longer yells. He no longer demands that he be set free under threat of Caspian the tenth’s wrath. No, instead his eyes will sharpen as they escape the enchantment only to dull over once more when he realizes no one is going to come for him.

And he sits, and sits, and sits. Until overtime he starts to forget the sound of his father’s voice, the shape of his eyes, the feeling of his arms around Rilian in a warm embrace. He forgets little by little, and his hope goes with the memories, until Rilian begins to doubt that there was ever really any Caspian the tenth at all.

Maybe he has always been here, trapped in this silver chair, with wrists rubbed raw from the rope that bites at his skin. Maybe he has always been watched from the shadows like a rabid beast, mocked and laughed at when he dares believe there was any chance of rescue. Maybe his father is a myth, and maybe Rilian really is mad. He does not demand to be let free, not when the decree will fall on deaf ears. He stops deluding himself into hoping, because hope is for naive children who believe in the fairytale of their father coming to rescue them and Rilian is alone. After all, his father had only explored Narnia’s surface and Rilian is trapped far below that.

[to-the-western-wood]

Narnia characters as: iconic tumblr quotes (part 4/4)

rilian, while in underland: there are no gods here

.

jadis: do i look like the kind of woman who dies?

.

oreius: aslan is dead and soon we will follow

.

edmund: impudent of you to assume i will meet a mortal end

.

eustace: hell is empty and all the devils are here

.

edmund, to eustace: one day you'll decompose and i'll be there to watch it happen

.

peter, to miraz: what are you gonna do with that sword? gonna hit me? better make it count. better make it hurt. better kill me in one shot

.

aslan, to lucy: there is not enough time to make all the things one's imagination can conjure

[crazy-narnian]

I must confess…

There is something extremely upsetting to me about the way Caspian X is a constant victim of loss throughout the Chronicles of Narnia series.

Like, I mean, when we first learn about him in Prince Caspian, we are told he lost his mother and his father as a little boy, then later in book he loses his Uncle and then his Aunt because she chooses to live new life in another word.

Moving on to the voyage of the dawn treader, he loses the closest thing he has ever had to family when Lucy and Edmund leave Narnia for the final time. You know that line where Caspian says “I think of you as my brother” to Edmund in the movie? Yeah, cuts me straight through the heart every time, because he doesn’t get to see them again or Peter until the end of the Last Battle, and don’t get me started on Susan.

But that’s not the worst of it, because what follows next is the death of beloved wife and then the loss of his one and only son Rilian in the Silver Chair. Like, oh my lord, this man has taken L after L after L and I wonder if there was ever a point in his life where he just blew up at Aslan for taking everyone that he either loved or cared for away from him. Because honestly, I would too, if this happened to me.

Oh, Caspian X, you might be the telmarine who saved Narnia and one of the greatest rulers the country has ever had, but my word, did that come at a cost. I’m so sorry.

[mildredmost]

Gerard Keay musings

Did he give anyone else massive Prince Rilian of Narnia vibes when Sam and Celia visited him? He was so cheerful and totally fine with not really being able to remember anything.

Look - They both wear black. They both live with older women who do the talking for them. They're both unnaturally cheerful. They both love to offer their guests food and drink relentlessly. And they both tell people that the clues they're following are a dead end.

Gerry: There’s some fresh sourdough rolls, if you want a bite? SAM; No thank you! GERRY: (calling) You sure? Homemade lemon curd to go with it

…Tea? Coffee? Orange juice?

Rilian: Honest Frog-foot, your cup is empty. Suffer me to refill it.

...Sir, be pleased to take another breast of pigeon, I entreat you.

...Little lady, eat one of these honey cakes, which are brought for me from some barbarous land in the far south of the world.

GERTRUDE: Well I’m sorry, but I don’t think Gerry can help you- GERRY: Yeah I barely remember any of it.

Rilian: You must understand, friends, that I know nothing of who I was and whence I came into this Dark World. I remember no time when I was not dwelling, as now, at the court of this all but heavenly Queen.

GERRY: I remember filling in a bunch of forms and questionnaires then some old men asking me questions about what books I liked to read, who did I look up to, that kind of thing. Then I left. SAM: (Disappointed) That’s all? GERRY: Yea, afraid so. Other than just sitting around with a bunch of other kids in a room that smelled like old books. Beat. SAM is clearly dejected.

"We had been told to look for a message on the stones of the City Ruinous," said Scrubb. "And we saw the words UNDER ME."

The Knight laughed even more heartily than before. "You were the more deceived," he said. "Those words meant nothing to your purpose. Had you but asked my Lady, she could have given you better counsel. For those words are all that is left of a longer script, which in ancient times, as she well remembers, expressed this verse:

Though under Earth and throneless now I be, Yet, while I lived, all Earth was under me.

...Is it not the merriest jest in the world that you should have thought they were written to you?"

This was like cold water down the back to Scrubb and Jill.; for it seemed to them very likely that the words had nothing to do with their quest at all.

Anyway, Prince Rilian tied up squirming and begging in the Silver Chair has always been formative for me, so here he is just because.

(Would love to see Gerry in this situation, just saying.)

[queenlucythevaliant]

Northern Lights

.

I heard a voice that cried, “Balder the Beautiful is dead, is dead!” 

.

Who knows what to call the lonely exhilaration of gazing out into a bright Northern sky? Who can name it? 

Jill could.

It was the same feeling that came to her at the teetering edge of a cliff at the end of the world. The same feeling as when she said her goodbyes to Puddleglum and Scrubb before they freed the prince. It was the same feeling that engulfed her now, sitting in the professor’s library with a volume of poetry before her. 

.

The wild northern wastes were well named: utterly wild, perfectly desolate, and terribly Northern. 

It was lonely there and often cold, but the sky was an endless whorl of gales and gray clouds. The stones were indigo under the pale winter sunlight, and at sunset they glowed a soft gold, as though lit from within. The gorges and moors lay before her, and Jill loved them for their vastness and their distance. Little grew in that country, but that which did was full of vigor. The grass was short and coarse. Every tree was victorious. 

On a still, deep breathing winter night, Jill lay on her back beneath a covering sky. It seemed beautiful to her, rich and strong and glorious. Her eyes drank in the breadth of it until her tears began to blind her. Yet even then, she still couldn’t look away.

She felt bigger here in the wastes, like the landscape. Stronger, wider. The further she walked, the more she felt herself stretch out. One of these days, maybe, she would catch hold of herself at the edge and tug, and Jill Pole would open up clear as the Northern sky. 

.

And through the misty air passed the mournful cry of sunward sailing cranes.

.

The thing that surprised Jill most about the battle with the serpent was this: there wasn’t any yelling. Always, it seemed, whenever she read stories about people fighting with swords, the combatants would let loose some guttural yell before their blows fell. They would scream and writhe in pain as they died. They would shout instructions to their fellows, “Look out!” or “Hit him there!” But the whole affair with the serpent passed with very little noise. 

The poison-green coil constricted around the prince; he raised his arms and got clear, struck the serpent hard, and then Scrubb and Puddleglum dispatched the creature with heavy, hacking blows. The monster died writhing, but not screaming. And then it was over. 

The thing that surprised Jill most about the moments before battle was, of course, the noise. She could hear her own heartbeat in her ears. She couldn’t stop listening to her own breathing. Every footstep rang out like a gong, and any words exchanged rang with a kind of finality that made them sound louder than anything. 

“You are of high courage,” Rilian told her when it was over. 

Yet the thing in Jill’s chest just then didn’t feel like courage. It was a deep breath, a plunge, and a release. It was loud and quiet all at once, till she was standing, blinking in the night air as snowballs whizzed round her, and maybe that was something like courage after all. 

.

And now, there was a stirring in her chest as she reread the words on the page. Sing no more / O ye bards of the North / Of Vikings and of Jarls! / Of the days of the Eld / preserve the freedom only / nor the deeds of blood! 

She thought of grief. Of freedom. 

The lonely ache in her belly grew stronger. She felt herself uplifted into the huge regions of sky that were just beyond those cliffs, weightless as the breath beneath her buoyed her up, further, further…

.

When she saw Caspian up close, Jill thought that he looked like the sort of person who was meant to live in a castle. A silly thought, perhaps, since she knew he was a king– only she wasn’t thinking of Cair Paravel. No, Jill was picturing the ruins of an old British castle she’d visited once on holiday. She still remembered how the stonework had loomed over her, all towering arches and crumbling walls. That was where Caspian seemed to belong. He had an air of ancient tragedy about him. 

When Rilian disappeared, all things had wept but one. The serpent coiled beneath the earth and flicked its forked tongue, spewing poison. 

Now, the king half rose to bless his son. He whispered a few words as he caressed Rilian’s cheek, words meant only for those beloved ears. Jill saw Caspian’s lips move and wondered what a man like that could possibly say, when time ran so short. 

.

They laid him in his ship, with horse and harness, as on a funeral pyre. Odin placed a ring upon his finger, and whispered in his ear.

.

Jill furtively took Myths of the Northmen and held it up to the professor with a question in her eyes. She was still shy around him and Miss Plummer, though she wished she wasn’t. 

“Would you like to take that with you?”

“...Please.”

.

It takes a certain kind of person to be exhilarated by the heights. You’ve got to love vastness more than you fear falling. 

.

They walked to the train station with an autumn wind blowing hard, and though Jill couldn’t fathom why, she turned and saw Lucy grinning, fierce and joyful– grinning and reaching a hand out towards her friend.

Jill reached back and grabbed it. “What will you do, once we’re back in Narnia?” she asked. 

The wind blew harder. The feeling of anticipation grew and grew, until it felt so big that she couldn’t dream of containing it. And there was Lucy, holding Jill’s hand and laughing like it was easy.

.

Preserve the freedom only, not the deeds of blood!

.

The second time Jill went to Narnia, she found herself not at its edge, but at its end. 

The thing about the Norse apocalypse is: it feels believable. It doesn’t reach beyond earth’s horizon to pull down hope beyond hope. It’s only the kind of courage that hopeless humans have: you are going to die, so you might as well die bravely. 

They found the last king of Narnia bound to a tree. His eyes were faintly red from crying, and his wrists and ankles red from the coarseness of his fetters. 

In the Norse myths, Loki broke free of his fetters at the end of the world. He escaped to the helm of a ship made from the fingernails of the dead.

The last king of Narnia fell forward onto the ground when Eustace cut his bonds. Jill crouched down beside him and watched as he rubbed feeling back into his legs. He wasn’t so much older than her, she thought. Jill was sixteen years old; the last king of Narnia could not be older than twenty-two. 

In the myths, the gods were ancient, hewn from the bodies of giants old as the earth. 

Jill put out a hand and helped the last king of Narnia to his feet. Not for the last time, she shivered. Something deep inside her (deeper than her chest, than her heart, than the marrow of her bones, deep as her soul, deeper) was singing an elegy and she didn’t know why, or how, or where it had come from. The king clutching her hand, who could have been her older brother, would have no heir.

Yet when he asked, “Will you come with me?” Jill could only smile. 

“Of course,” she said. “It’s you we’ve come to help.”

.

And the voice forever cried, "Balder the Beautiful is dead, is dead!"

.

“This really is Narnia at last,” murmured Jill. The springtime wood had little in common with the wintry lands she had traveled the last time she was here– but it awakened the same feelings of Northernness in her chest. 

Their party may as well have been the only people in the world, for how isolated their little wooden path seemed. Yet it wasn’t lonely, really, cocooned in all that green with the wind in the leaves and the primroses nodding and blue of the sky peeking through above. 

Jewel told stories about what ordinary life was like when there was peace here. As he spoke, Jill could almost hear the trees' voices speaking out of the living past, whispering, stay, stay. She was caught up to a great height, looking down across a rich, lovely plain full of woods and waters and cornfields, which spread away and away till it got thin and misty from distance. 

“Oh Jewel–” Jill said with a dreamy sigh, “wouldn’t it be lovely if Narnia just went on and on– like what you say it has been?”

She needn’t be a queen, as Susan and Lucy had been, but Jill would’ve liked to stay. She would've liked it all to stay, if it could. She might have been a woodmaid in a place like this: with the turn of the seasons, the swaying trees, swords into plowshares. Oh, if only she could stay!

Ahead, the last king of Narnia was softly singing a marching song. Jill tilted her head back and let warm shafts of sun caress her face. 

.

I saw the pallid corpse of the dead sun borne through the Northern sky.

.

“So,” said the last king of Narnia, “Narnia is no more.”

He tried to send them back. Jill shook her head. It was very loud and very quiet. “No, no, no, we won’t. I don’t care what you say. We’re going to stick by you whatever happens, aren’t we Eustace?”

They couldn’t go back anyway. Neither would they flee, not south across the mountains nor North into the great wide wastes. No, they would stay. They slept in a holly grove on the edge of ruin, waiting for the bonfires to light.

Jill slept fitfully, but in between she dreamed. She was high up in the air, buffeted by clouds and pierced by shafts of silver sunlight. 

.

They all died, in the myths. Jill knew that. It seemed beautiful and brave when she read it in her book, tucked away safe in the Professor’s library. It was terrifying now– and yet it was beautiful and brave still.

The dogs came bounding up, every one of them, running up to the king and his men with their tails wagging. One of them leapt at Jill and licked her face, tongue roughly lapping up the sweat and tears that had dried on her cheeks. 

“Show us how to help, show us how, how, how!” the dogs were barking, almost ebullient in their enthusiasm. Jill bit back a sob. How lovely, she thought. How terribly beautiful. How dreadfully brave. 

.

So perish the old Gods!

.

The white rock gleamed like a moon in the darkness when Jill finally reached it. She ran back to it alone, her hands shaking, while her friends stayed forward with their gleaming swords and Jewel’s indigo horn.

The while rock gleamed like the moon. Jill’s first shot flew wide and landed in the soft grass. But she had another arrow on her string the next instant. It was speed that mattered, not aim. Speed, and turning aside when she cried, so as not to drip tears on her bowstring.

The white rock gleamed. In the myths, a wolf devoured the moon. Peter’s wolf, slain many thousand years ago in this world, opened his jaw wide and darkness fell over everything.

Her next arrow found its mark. After that, she lost track. She pulled, and she prayed that her hands kept still another minute. 

The unique thing–maybe the appealing thing–about the Norse myths, was that they told men to serve gods who were admittedly fighting with their backs to the wall and would certainly be defeated in the end. Jill let loose another arrow, felt the white rock at her back, and she knew that the clawing fear–beauty–bravery deep in her gut was the same feeling that she felt on the heights. The same feeling, but a different face. You’ve got to love vastness more than you fear falling. 

.

“I feel in my bones,” said Poggin, “that we shall all, one by one, pass through that dark door before morning. I can think of a hundred deaths that I would rather have died.”

“It is indeed a grim door,” said Tirian. “It is more like a mouth.” 

“Oh, can’t we do anything to stop it,” said Jill. Better to be dashed to the ground than it was to be devoured. 

“Nay, fair friend,” said Jewel. “It may be for us the door to Aslan’s country and we sup at his table tonight.”

A hand tangled itself in her hair and started to pull. Jill braced herself hard, for a moment, until her strength gave out. She was standing on the edge of a high, Northern cliff. She took another step, and fell.

.

Perhaps when the moment comes, our bite will prove better than our howls. If not, we shall have to confess that two millennia of Christianity have not yet brought us to the level of the Stoics and Vikings. For the worst (according to the flesh) that a Christian need face is to die in Christ and rise in Christ; some were content to die, and not to rise, with Father Odin.

.

The world inside the stable was beautiful. It made Jill’s chest ache in all the loveliest ways. 

.

Build it again, O ye bards, fairer than before!

[who-canceled-roger-rabbit]

I'm too lazy to write this, but I realized you could easily get some surprisingly compelling hurt/comfort out of Rilian x Puddleglum