A Little About AWW
Hey everyone! Lately I've been getting a few questions about A Web Woven, so I figured it was time to finally crack down and write about it. It is the most important of my Narnia stories, since everything else I write is totally based off it, so. . . here goes.
A Web Woven is the backstory. It's my explanation, my take on the Narnian universe. The idea is that every single king (or queen) of Narnia was blood related to King Frank and Queen Helen. Emphasis on ties of blood and family connection are always big themes in folk stories, ancient legends, and fairy tales – that is, they've been important values since the beginning of time. Part of the reason I love the Chronicles is their old-world feel, and I've always thought that it would be pretty cool to include those values in Narnian fiction.
When the story struck me, I was immersed in first-time reads of two of my very favorite Narnian fics, The High King, the Duchess, and the Secret by TastyAsItGets, and Caspian's Queen by Francienyc.
Have you ever found a story so great and so incredibly well-written that it totally became canon in your mind? That's how it was for me. I mean, I always though that Lucy and Caspian had something going on – come on, there are like, 20 textual hints in Voyage of the Dawn Treader. (“I know what you mean.” Right?! But I digress.) After I read Caspian's Queen, their relationship and compatibility became so real to me that I started to believe that the whole thing was canon. Or like, a part of the story that C.S. Lewis had just forgotten to mention. I still kind of feel that way. And when the I read the end, and Lucy and Caspian were separated, I was heartbroken. So I had to indulge myself and write fan fiction for fan fiction: a story that played around with Francie's canon (as I saw it). I wanted to write a story where Caspian and Lucy could be together. AU-fan fiction about fan fiction, and there was The Call of the Horn.
At the same time, I was caught up in the love triangle that is The High King, the Duchess, and the Secret – the fabulous tale of Peter, Edmund, and the woman who came between them. Now, Edmund being my favorite character, I was an Ed/Sae shipper from the first. But I joined the hordes of HKDS fans when Tasty was at Chapter 26, the end of an Edmund arc. (You see, Tasty likes to tease us, and her whole story constantly shifts between Sae/Peter and Ed/Sae storylines.) And as the updates came – agonizingly slow, but I really can't talk – and the plot began to lean toward Peter again, I was understandably unhappy. And while her story rose up on a wave of Peter and Saedra, I am began to plot. I played around with Tasty's canon the way I had with Francie's. The story idea I devised, centering around Edmund and Saedra, is what eventually became my story, Lily's Eyes.
So, I found myself juggling three different stories in my head. In searching for a way to make things work, I started to think about how these great kings and queens were people with emotions and vulnerabilities, and how they might betray their oaths to Narnia to be with the one they loved. And how in the bloodline of Narnia, it might kind of run in the family. I remembered star-crossed lovers, one-night stands, and people born for each other but cursed for it. And I thought that with magic, anything is possible, including altering time and space. After all, as it says in Artemis Fowl, "Once you add magic to the energy equation, nearly all the current laws of physics are shown to be seriously flawed." Somehow, all these ideas merged into one universal story: A Web Woven.
People who know me like to tease me about the way I brainstorm for story writing and songwriting. I make lists and charts, and sort out my ideas into an outline. My outline for AWW is seriously so rough it makes me cringe, so no way am I posting it. (I think I was going for a format similar to Timeline of Narnia chart on Wikipedia.) Anyway, as you will see, at this time I was still calling the OC “Saedra” for want of a name and character of my own. (That was before I first heard the song that inspired everything.) So, for your viewing pleasure, here is the original outline for AWW from before it even had a title.
I started AWW off in the style of Lily's Eyes, with a quote said by a famous person – famous meaning notable enough for their own Wikipedia page. That quote is "A hidden connection is stronger than an obvious one," said by Heraclitus of Ephesus, but the title's source is the quote "O what a tangled web we weave, When first we practise to deceive!" from Marmion by Sir Walter Scott. Both quotes carry a huge significance to the plot. The bloodline is a sticky web of lies and illegitimate children that continue, the connection of blood ruler to blood ruler is what holds them together. By having the whole line related, but nobody really knowing it (except for Aslan) adds believability, since secrets are powerful and since this story seriously messes with cannon.
The way the Chronicles gives it to us, the Narnian royal family is originated by Frank and Helen, and (presumably) continues until the Tree of Protection is killed/weakened/overpowered and the White Witch seizes control of Narnia (100 Year Winter). The text implies an all-Narnia human genocide, so we assume the Narnian royal bloodline is severed. The Pevensies arrived in Narnia in fulfillment of prophecy, ruling the Golden Age period, but – according to canon – produce no children. When they return to England they leave no heir, thus a gap in the bloodline continues after them. X amount of years later, Telmarines invade Narnia and seize the throne (whether anyone had actually been in power or using the title of royalty is unknown), and their bloodline continues in Narnia until the end of the world.
In other words, the history looks like this (totally not to scale):
With A Web Woven, I bridged the gaps a bit and rewrote a little history here or there, did a little time travel, a little reworking, and tied everything together. Basically, AWW can be summed up thus:
[A note about names: for Mrs. Pevensie's first name I use the one they provided in the film, Helen (which they probably stole from the original Helen). Rani is the name I chose for Caspian I's wife; that's a story I'll write if I ever finish TCotH, Lily's Eyes, and LE's sequel.]
This "family tree" is exactly the plot of A Web Woven, made linear for clarity and comprehension. Where the lines get all crisscrossed and there's an "x", that just means a break and that an unknown amount of unions produced the next member of the line. (Shout out to The Sims 2 for inspiring this method!).
That's pretty much all there is too is to it. Archenland carries the bloodline for the 100 Year Winter, hands it off to the Pevensies (and back to Narnia) when Lily and Peter get married (although it's Edmund that has the child), and their descendants live in Calormen until Caspian I takes his bride back to Narnia. Ten generations later, Caspian X calls Lucy with Susan's horn, and so the royal line continues.
Now, I've had a few questions about the Lucy/Caspian pairing in my continuity – basically, Caspian is Lucy's great-grand-nephew x-amount of times, so isn't that weird? Well, yeah. That's true. But if we do the math I've so lovingly prepared, Caspian and Lucy are separated by about 45 generations. And I'm only guessing here, but I'd say that gives them about 0.0001% genetic similarity. If Edmund's genes were very dominant.
I mean, statistically speaking, regular aunts and nephews only share 25% consanguinity. (That's bloodline, genetic similarity.) So if Morgan, Lucy's niece, shared 25% with her, and she's Caspian's great-grandmother about 45 times. . . well, that's math I don't have the patience to do. Just think of it this way: Starting from Morgan, the line is half-English and half-Archenlandish. (And yes, I know technically all humans in Narnia are descended from Frank and Helen, who were English, but come on. It's like a thousand years for the DNA to grow and adapt naturally and maybe even change by magic.) So, Morgan starts the line half-English and half-Archenlandish. And for every new generation, that percentage of similarity to Lucy is halved once more. Also, for the 35 generations after her – and it's all female, because in my universe, by the gift of Aslan, all of Lily's descendants are girls, until we hit Caspian I and from then it's all sons – all of the new blood, the lovers, husbands, and mistakes, were Calormene. (That means that after a generation or two, all the girls were pretty much Calormene also.) Then Caspian I enters the game, bringing the Telmarine genetic traits with him, and from then the line is exclusively male. So, really. There's some hardcore genetic variation: Archenland, Calormene, and Telmar all get into the mix, and Lucy herself is totally English. To get heat for Caspian and Lucy's ancestry is kind of unfair, especially coming from a fandom that touts the infamous and incestuous Peter/Susan ship. (Note: Ewwww.) And in case anyone's wondering, brother/sister consanguinity is 50%.
Ironically, the article about consanguinity I found off of Google was written by a woman named Lucy.
To close it off, I've got to bring up a short passage from near the end of The Silver Chair, which pretty much says it all (or at least as close to canon-support that my story is ever going to get):
=]
A Web Woven is the backstory. It's my explanation, my take on the Narnian universe. The idea is that every single king (or queen) of Narnia was blood related to King Frank and Queen Helen. Emphasis on ties of blood and family connection are always big themes in folk stories, ancient legends, and fairy tales – that is, they've been important values since the beginning of time. Part of the reason I love the Chronicles is their old-world feel, and I've always thought that it would be pretty cool to include those values in Narnian fiction.
When the story struck me, I was immersed in first-time reads of two of my very favorite Narnian fics, The High King, the Duchess, and the Secret by TastyAsItGets, and Caspian's Queen by Francienyc.
Have you ever found a story so great and so incredibly well-written that it totally became canon in your mind? That's how it was for me. I mean, I always though that Lucy and Caspian had something going on – come on, there are like, 20 textual hints in Voyage of the Dawn Treader. (“I know what you mean.” Right?! But I digress.) After I read Caspian's Queen, their relationship and compatibility became so real to me that I started to believe that the whole thing was canon. Or like, a part of the story that C.S. Lewis had just forgotten to mention. I still kind of feel that way. And when the I read the end, and Lucy and Caspian were separated, I was heartbroken. So I had to indulge myself and write fan fiction for fan fiction: a story that played around with Francie's canon (as I saw it). I wanted to write a story where Caspian and Lucy could be together. AU-fan fiction about fan fiction, and there was The Call of the Horn.
At the same time, I was caught up in the love triangle that is The High King, the Duchess, and the Secret – the fabulous tale of Peter, Edmund, and the woman who came between them. Now, Edmund being my favorite character, I was an Ed/Sae shipper from the first. But I joined the hordes of HKDS fans when Tasty was at Chapter 26, the end of an Edmund arc. (You see, Tasty likes to tease us, and her whole story constantly shifts between Sae/Peter and Ed/Sae storylines.) And as the updates came – agonizingly slow, but I really can't talk – and the plot began to lean toward Peter again, I was understandably unhappy. And while her story rose up on a wave of Peter and Saedra, I am began to plot. I played around with Tasty's canon the way I had with Francie's. The story idea I devised, centering around Edmund and Saedra, is what eventually became my story, Lily's Eyes.
So, I found myself juggling three different stories in my head. In searching for a way to make things work, I started to think about how these great kings and queens were people with emotions and vulnerabilities, and how they might betray their oaths to Narnia to be with the one they loved. And how in the bloodline of Narnia, it might kind of run in the family. I remembered star-crossed lovers, one-night stands, and people born for each other but cursed for it. And I thought that with magic, anything is possible, including altering time and space. After all, as it says in Artemis Fowl, "Once you add magic to the energy equation, nearly all the current laws of physics are shown to be seriously flawed." Somehow, all these ideas merged into one universal story: A Web Woven.
People who know me like to tease me about the way I brainstorm for story writing and songwriting. I make lists and charts, and sort out my ideas into an outline. My outline for AWW is seriously so rough it makes me cringe, so no way am I posting it. (I think I was going for a format similar to Timeline of Narnia chart on Wikipedia.) Anyway, as you will see, at this time I was still calling the OC “Saedra” for want of a name and character of my own. (That was before I first heard the song that inspired everything.) So, for your viewing pleasure, here is the original outline for AWW from before it even had a title.
I started AWW off in the style of Lily's Eyes, with a quote said by a famous person – famous meaning notable enough for their own Wikipedia page. That quote is "A hidden connection is stronger than an obvious one," said by Heraclitus of Ephesus, but the title's source is the quote "O what a tangled web we weave, When first we practise to deceive!" from Marmion by Sir Walter Scott. Both quotes carry a huge significance to the plot. The bloodline is a sticky web of lies and illegitimate children that continue, the connection of blood ruler to blood ruler is what holds them together. By having the whole line related, but nobody really knowing it (except for Aslan) adds believability, since secrets are powerful and since this story seriously messes with cannon.
The way the Chronicles gives it to us, the Narnian royal family is originated by Frank and Helen, and (presumably) continues until the Tree of Protection is killed/weakened/overpowered and the White Witch seizes control of Narnia (100 Year Winter). The text implies an all-Narnia human genocide, so we assume the Narnian royal bloodline is severed. The Pevensies arrived in Narnia in fulfillment of prophecy, ruling the Golden Age period, but – according to canon – produce no children. When they return to England they leave no heir, thus a gap in the bloodline continues after them. X amount of years later, Telmarines invade Narnia and seize the throne (whether anyone had actually been in power or using the title of royalty is unknown), and their bloodline continues in Narnia until the end of the world.
In other words, the history looks like this (totally not to scale):
With A Web Woven, I bridged the gaps a bit and rewrote a little history here or there, did a little time travel, a little reworking, and tied everything together. Basically, AWW can be summed up thus:
[A note about names: for Mrs. Pevensie's first name I use the one they provided in the film, Helen (which they probably stole from the original Helen). Rani is the name I chose for Caspian I's wife; that's a story I'll write if I ever finish TCotH, Lily's Eyes, and LE's sequel.]
This "family tree" is exactly the plot of A Web Woven, made linear for clarity and comprehension. Where the lines get all crisscrossed and there's an "x", that just means a break and that an unknown amount of unions produced the next member of the line. (Shout out to The Sims 2 for inspiring this method!).
That's pretty much all there is too is to it. Archenland carries the bloodline for the 100 Year Winter, hands it off to the Pevensies (and back to Narnia) when Lily and Peter get married (although it's Edmund that has the child), and their descendants live in Calormen until Caspian I takes his bride back to Narnia. Ten generations later, Caspian X calls Lucy with Susan's horn, and so the royal line continues.
Now, I've had a few questions about the Lucy/Caspian pairing in my continuity – basically, Caspian is Lucy's great-grand-nephew x-amount of times, so isn't that weird? Well, yeah. That's true. But if we do the math I've so lovingly prepared, Caspian and Lucy are separated by about 45 generations. And I'm only guessing here, but I'd say that gives them about 0.0001% genetic similarity. If Edmund's genes were very dominant.
I mean, statistically speaking, regular aunts and nephews only share 25% consanguinity. (That's bloodline, genetic similarity.) So if Morgan, Lucy's niece, shared 25% with her, and she's Caspian's great-grandmother about 45 times. . . well, that's math I don't have the patience to do. Just think of it this way: Starting from Morgan, the line is half-English and half-Archenlandish. (And yes, I know technically all humans in Narnia are descended from Frank and Helen, who were English, but come on. It's like a thousand years for the DNA to grow and adapt naturally and maybe even change by magic.) So, Morgan starts the line half-English and half-Archenlandish. And for every new generation, that percentage of similarity to Lucy is halved once more. Also, for the 35 generations after her – and it's all female, because in my universe, by the gift of Aslan, all of Lily's descendants are girls, until we hit Caspian I and from then it's all sons – all of the new blood, the lovers, husbands, and mistakes, were Calormene. (That means that after a generation or two, all the girls were pretty much Calormene also.) Then Caspian I enters the game, bringing the Telmarine genetic traits with him, and from then the line is exclusively male. So, really. There's some hardcore genetic variation: Archenland, Calormene, and Telmar all get into the mix, and Lucy herself is totally English. To get heat for Caspian and Lucy's ancestry is kind of unfair, especially coming from a fandom that touts the infamous and incestuous Peter/Susan ship. (Note: Ewwww.) And in case anyone's wondering, brother/sister consanguinity is 50%.
Ironically, the article about consanguinity I found off of Google was written by a woman named Lucy.
To close it off, I've got to bring up a short passage from near the end of The Silver Chair, which pretty much says it all (or at least as close to canon-support that my story is ever going to get):
"No one doubted for a moment who he was…Pale though he was from his long imprisonment in the Deep Lands, dressed in black, dusty, dishevelled, and weary, there was something in his face and air which no one could mistake. That look is in the face of all true kings of Narnia, who rule by the will of Aslan and sit at Cair Paravel on the throne of Peter the High King."
=]