The Queen's Return
| Fanfiction | |
|---|---|
| Title: | The Queen's Return |
| Author(s): | honorh |
| Date(s): | December 25, 2005 |
| Length: | 4,487 words |
| Genre(s): | |
| Fandom(s): | Chronicles of Narnia |
| Relationship(s): | |
| External Links: | LJ, AO3, FFN |
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The Queen's Return is a Susan Pevensie-centered Narnia fanfic and a response to The Problem of Susan. It has been recced many times across platforms, including on TV Tropes.
Summary
Once a queen or king in Narnia, always a king or queen in Narnia. Can Susan find Narnia again, now that she's lost everything?
Reactions and Reviews
A lovely story, and it's wonderful to see Susan not being utterly sundered from Narnia and Aslan. I always rather forgot about Susan after learning she had stopped believing in Narnia, but this is a touching, well-done ending for her. Your Aslan is spot-on and so very wise, and I liked how her 'task' was to live -- just something about that rang very true to me. I'm not articulating well how I liked this story, but rest assured, I did. Thanks for writing.loonylupinlover[1]
You've created a very believable and effective structure of how Susan could dismiss Narnia. I particularly like the description of "Those Girls" (so accurate) and Susan's embarrassment leading ot her initial denial.Your picture of Susan as numb, stuck in the sitting room where she first heard of the railway accident, frozen in time while going through the motions to avoid too great a grief to face is particularly believable.
There are places with outstanding detail--I especially like your description of Mr. Huntingdon and the use of the contrast between his appearance and personality. Your use of dialogue (especially among "Those Girls") is well done. A significant chunk of the story tells more than shows the story; your plot and conceptualization are the strongest points of this story. There were sad moments for me, but I found myself wanting a more visceral, raw approach to this material where you showed us more than you told; I felt that you did a bit more "and then this happened, and then they did this" where revealing it more subtlety or indirectly might have been more powerful. I'd have liked, for example, a more "Susan's point of view" epilogue rather than the, "And then these things happened" summary at the end. Although it felt a bit rushed to me, I like very much the choices you made for the events of Susan's life worked well within the story.
Your writing is clean and grammatical and your words are well-chosen. You have an excellent grasp of character and create believable, well-formed, rounded and believable original characters who seem very real and fully-realized; excellent work with that...."Those Girls," Christopher, his uncle...all excellent work.
Thank you for sharing this piece. I really like your vision of Susan and you did a great job showing the paralyzing effects of overwhelming grief.amilyn[2]
I'm so glad I read this. I normally can't bear to read Narnia fic, for fear that the author will have done violence to the characters or the spirit of the stories (as fannish authors are unfortunately wont to do), but this came highly recommended and I'm so thankful to have made an exception for it. It's just lovely, and feels exactly right.No, better than right -- because as a child I never knew that Lewis had written in one of his letters that Susan still might get to Aslan's Country in the end, so I believed her to be irredeemably apostate and the thought broke my heart (even though I accepted it as being true to life and to Scripture, and did not feel that it was an unwarranted decision on Lewis's part). So from that point of view, this story is wonderfully healing.
It also gives the most plausible explanation and exposition of Susan's forgetting Narnia that I've ever heard. Of course it wouldn't happen all at once, but by degrees, with small denials leading to greater ones, and a lie told too often becoming truth to the teller.
I will definitely be reccing this fic in my journal, and I hope many people read it. Thank you.rj_anderson[3]
This is such a beautiful story, and every time I read it, I tear up. It's the perfect ending for Susan, yet it's also relatable to the average person as well. I cant count the numerous times I've turned my back on a person or a belief, only for me to yearn for them once the option of reuniting is no longer there. I can't help but to ask though, if you will ever consider writing more for this fandom. I'd love to see more Susan fics, as I've yet to find an author that captures her voice so well and realistically. Much love!xari[4]
I've been wanting to read a good post-Narnia fanfic about Susan, something that actually explores her choices and sets up a proper redemption arc for her. I knew I'd found what I was looking for when I saw that your fic started with C.S. Lewis' quote about childishness and the desire to appear grown up. The whole story is really well-done, from the way Susan forgets about Narnia to how she learns to embrace it again. I especially love how the tragic loss of her family does NOT suddenly bring about a full change. It's much more gradual and that feels more real to me. She recognizes that her priorities were wrong, but she still needs time to figure out where and how she got her priorities mixed up and how to go about living a better life. And I also appreciate how your story doesn't end when she meets Aslan again. She does go back to a life on Earth and she continues to grow as a person before finally dying at an old age and returning to Narnia. And everyone feels really in character. Aslan feels like Aslan. The choices that Susan makes feel like choices she would make. I could definitely picture Lucy making one last attempt to reconcile with her sister and bring her to the "friends of Narnia" reunion, and that it's Lucy who encourages her to come back to Narnia and is the first person she meets in Aslan's Country. Also, that line from the Professor about how “the thing about trying to make yourself stupider than you are is that you very often succeed," is SPOT ON. That sounds exactly like something he would say in the books.PoH[5]
Recs with Comments
- REC: "The Queen's Return" (Narnia, gen, post-series Susanfic) by rj_anderson (2006)
- Once a King or Queen of Narnia; Always a King or Queen of Narnia by carbonelle (2013)