someone may have asked you this already but!! can you talk about susan's relationships with her siblings? specifically during the different stages of her life (pre-narnia, in narnia, post narnia) and how they change? (this is a broad question but i love the pevensies so much and i always love seeing you talk about them).
ASK ME QUESTIONS ABOUT SUSAN! : always accepting
i believe i have answered something similar in the past, but i certainly never mind discussing the pevensies at length to anyone who wants to read me prattling on about them! i think i learn something new about susan and the way she interacts with/feels toward her siblings each time i answer. :3
PETER : her relationship with peter is actually likely the most complex of her relationships with her siblings. her relationship with lucy is fairly multifaceted, but a lot of the time their tensions simply boil down to the fact that they’re just SO OPPOSITE in so many particulars, and just can’t quite understand one another. with peter, though, it’s interesting. they’re quite similar in a lot of ways, and where they’re different it tends to be a complementary type of difference. pre-narnia, they’re quite close. as the eldest two, they both take a fair amount of responsibility for their younger siblings, and they work as a team in order to make that happen, particularly as the war picks up and their father goes off to fight. they’re a united front, most of the time. they get along quite well, and it’s rare for them to outright argue or show bad temper to one another. when they are angry with one another…it’s usually susan, and she usually shows it through the use of silence, but that never lasts long. they’re the ones who tend to make decisions for the four of them, the ones who act sort of as The Adults in situations where no adults are present. while they’re close, they never quite have the relationship that peter and lucy have, which does cause a certain jealousy on susan’s side - - - not that she would ever admit to it, nor even actually know that’s what sh felt. in narnia, their pre-narnia relationship is, essentially, multiplied. strengthened tenfold. they’re thrown into being rulers of a country they barely know EXTREMELY young, and they STILL have the other two to look after. due to the extreme youth of edmund and lucy, they take on a lot of the real responsibilities of ruling monarchs until the other two get older and fall into their own roles. it’s rare for one of them to make an important decision without at least speaking with the other. they’re also, in a lot of ways, the main support of the other, particularly in their earliest years as rulers. post-narnia, everything falls apart. slowly, at first, and then all at once.they were all as close as they had ever been at first, trying to help one another, but the real world is so much different, the expectations are different, and so are the perception of the siblings’ closeness. i tend to headcanon peter sort of withdrawing into himself, and susan sees that as shutting her out (on purpose), and it hurts her. meanwhile, susan is sensing disapproval or dismay from her mother about the way the four of them have been acting (how strangely close they seem to be, how little they seem like their old selves) that she begins to put on a mask of pre-narnia susan…or what she believes that to be. they both try for quite a long time to maintain the same relationship they’d had, but it just doesn’t quite work, particularly after susan goes to america with their parents.their little disagreements seem now to come loaded with more pain and friction than before, susan begins to truly resent what she sees as peter’s dismissal of her, but as she begins to drift away it’s peter who tries to draw her back…and she bucks against that. it becomes a sort of tug-of-war between them, turning them almost into rivals. i think they break each other’s hearts without quite realizing they’re doing it. susan is really quite horrible to peter in post-narnia, worse than she is with either of the others. she can be sort of snappish and dismissive with lucy, but it’s not the sort of meanness she shows toward peter. it all culminates in a terrible argument that end with susan storming away, never to speak to him again.
EDMUND : her relationship with edmund is absolutely the least complex - the most straightforward. this one is likely to be the shortest of the three responses, though i don’t want anyone to think it means she loves him any less than the others - only that the difference in their relationship necessitates it. in a lot of ways, i think he understands her better than either of the others do, which smooths their relationship and shields it from a lot of the rough patches that characterize her relationships with the other two. pre narnia, though, i don’t think their relationship is really very remarkable? when he was born, susan wasn’t really old enough to take the more active sibling role she adopts with lucy. she’s only two at the time, after all, and i think her main sentiment about the whole thing was unhappiness that her mother’s attention was drawn away from her. they have a fairly typical older sister - younger brother relationship, susan attempting to boss edmund around, and edmund being grumpy about it/resisting. in narnia, though, their relationship changes. they both grow into accomplished diplomats, and travel together quite frequently (canonically we only see them go to calormen, but they seem to treat it as one trip among many), and they make a formidable team. susan learns to trust edmund implicitly, to trust his decisions even when they don’t involve her. it’s edmund she confides in, in the most honst way. she doesn’t feel as much that there’s anything she has to mask or hide from him, for any sort of reason. post narnia, theirs is probably the relationship that changes the least, at first. she knows that edmund understands her, relies on that, and it’s that knowledge that keeps them closer even as she drifts apart from peter. she knows that he doesn’t approve of the way she begins to live, but she also doesn’t sense the same sort of judgment she feels from the other two. she’s the least snappish and mean with him, and while they do grow more distant as time does on, their relationship is still on decently good (read: speaking) terms, even by the end.
LUCY : i could honestly tal for years about lucy, susan, and the relationship between the two. and dont even get me started on the arya/sansa and lucy/susan parallels! pre-narnia, susan definitely plays the mother hen to lucy. she was DELIGHTED to “finally!” have a baby sister (she had secretly very much Not Wanted ANOTHER BROTHER), and four-year-old susan rarely let the baby out of her sight. when she cried in the night, their parents would often find susan standing beside the crib, trying to comfort her. susan absolutely sees lucy as her responsibility in a certain way, and she takes that seriously. that being said, as lucy grows older, it becomes evident that the two girls are very much opposite in many points of personality. from the beginning, there is a certain lack of understanding that causes them to frustrate one another, though all in small ways during childhood. when the war begins to touch their lives, it’s lucy that susan worries most about, and the only one she attempts to shield from details coming in through the news. in narnia, they get to be friends, after a time. susan certainly is still quite protective of lucy, treats her as a child WHILE lucy is a child, but eventually, as time goes on, relinquihses some of that mother-hen-ness that so characterized their pre-narnia relationship. they’re still, of course, very much opposite, but in ways that make sense. they probably come closest to understanding one another in narnia, and are certainly most accepting of differences there. still, they don’t share many similar interests, so most of the time they spend together is spent sailing, swimming, or simply walkiing. opposite, but in a good way. a healthy way. a kind of sun-and-moon or fire-and-water opposite. they get along quite well in narnia, though susan does worry about lucy almost constantly, and can be frustrated by her impulsiveness, her wildness. post narnia, things get Bad. they really do. susan tries to hold on tightest to lucy, and it all backfires in a horrible way. it all starts out alright - - susan treats lucy as the adult she had JUST been, even when everyone else is treating her as a child. she supplies hints of memory when lucy can’t quite remember specifics, she’s there to comfort and talk to (and throw tantrums at, even when she’s not the reason for them). she’s very patient with lucy at first, a sort of steady point. over the course of time, however, susan takes on the idea that they all need to Grow Up and Forget Narnia, because remembering hurts too badly, and won’t do any of them any good. it really does start off from a good place, in a way - - she thinks she’s helping her siblings, thinks she’s doing what’s best. of course, she also ends up returning to treating lucy like a child (because she IS a child, to the rest of the world), and the combination of these things drives a wedge between them, that sort of slowly but steadily drives to a breaking point.
