It was, with the somewhat unexpected return of Jadis, White Witch and Queen of Narnia and Empress of the Lone Islands, the hopes of this Editorial Board that Queen Jadis’s second reign would be marked by more understanding and compassion than her first reign was. In some ways, we feel that in the instability of these times, there have been moments of alarm combined with moments of a return to normalcy.
For many Narnians, the reign of High King Peter, Queen Susan, King Edmund, and Queen Lucy was an era of fraught political tensions. Having begun their reign with a war against the forces of the White Witch, many felt that these four rulers failed to unite all of Narnia behind their cause. While a significant number of Narnians pointed to the Pevensie monarchs’ association with Aslan as a net positive, a vocal plurality stated that, as he is the son of the Emperor-over-the-Sea, he should have focused his efforts on improving Aslan’s Land, instead of inserting undue foreign influence over Narnian monarch selection.