Peter Johnson

For Lucy had lived in Narnia for longer than she lived in England. All her siblings did. But Lucy was the only one who had only ever belonged to Narnia. 

The others remembered, vaguely, that they had come from some place else. They had gone to School and been given Responsibilities. They had understood the news reports on the radio and why Mother had sent them to the Country. England had left its mark upon their minds, and a mere fifteen years in Narnia could not erase it, even as it faded it. They could call themselves Peter Pevensie or Susan Pevensie or Edmund Pevensie and remember what it meant to be a Pevensie from Finchley. Vaguely they could recall who their parents were and what they did, their friends and relations and the family down the road who they couldn’t stand. 

A few years more, perhaps, and the lingering traces of Pevensie in their minds might have faded beyond recognition. A few more years and Peter and Susan and Edmund might have belonged to Narnia without a trace of England left in them, as Lucy did. For she had grown up in Narnia and could only ever think of herself as Lucy of Narnia.

Her mother had not raised her; her father had not raised her; she had not gone to School, had not begun to learn the History of England and its Empire. She had not yet learned that “English” was an adjective which applied to her, nor understood all that came along with it, so she eagerly attached “Narnian” to herself with none of the struggle her siblings endured. 

Even Peter and Susan had not raised her. For they were busy with the affair of Ruling Narnia, of protecting and nurturing their nascent country. 

It had been the Trees who raised her, the Rivers and Wells, the Talking Animals. They had all raised her. She grew up running wild through the halls of Cair Paravel, along the shore of her Eastern Sea, among the trees in the surrounding woods.

She had sat at the feet of ancient Trees and learned the History of her new home; she had learned dancing from the Dryads, with all its looping circles and windswept grace, and music from the Fauns, their mesmerising fluting that commanded crowds, and storytelling from the Birds, with its captivating sharpness and melody. And she had learned bladework from the Dwarves, who had taken one look at the small child with too many enemies to count and known that the fauns and the centaurs wouldn’t be able to teach her anything of use for years, and so had taken her and taught her how to turn her short stature into an advantage, to fell towering adults of every race as easy as she plucked flowers for her hair. 

She learned rhetoric and strategy and spellwork from the Centaurs alongside her siblings, and suspicions and deception, politics and lawmaking, from the councilors and tutors flooring into Narnia, desperate to gain influence in the nascent court of the child monarchs of a country marked for great influence. They instilled within her a fierce protectiveness of her own mind and opinions. 

And somewhere during those early years she learned math and geography and needlework, Calmoren and Galmen, Teribinthian and the languages of the Seven Isles, along with their history and culture and laws.

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