PaJoFo Ponderings

Lord of the Rings is Incompatible with Narnia

Created: Modified: 3 min read

The Chronicles of Narnia is the undisputed king of Christian children’s literature, and is also not in the public domain. While licensed for various movies (including one in which Meryl Streep is to play Aslan?), I don’t believe that there have been any additions to the universe after the publication of the Last Battle, for the logical reason that C. S. Lewis had completed his story and is also now dead.

Some have argued that the worlds of Narnia and Lord of the Rings should be or are connected, but sadly, that isn’t possible. Here’s why:

  1. Aslan creates rational animals in Narnia during the events of the Magicians Nephew: bears, lions, wolves, and mice.1
  2. Lord of the Rings is set in the same universe as the Ransom/Space Trilogy because Numenor is explicitly referenced in That Hideous Strength.
  3. The Space Trilogy establishes that while worlds are still being created and populated by rational animals, all rational animals created after the crucifixion are in the form of man.2
  4. Therefore the worlds of Narnia and LOTR operate on different metaphysical laws.

Now, you might be able to argue that distinct universes, traversable with the rings would have different temporal realities with in them, but that seems doubtful given the importance of humanity given to the first king and queen of Narnia being human.

Another problem: Narnia has its fallenness introduced by the invasion of the Witch, not by the bending of an Oyarsa and we aren’t given a reason to believe that there’s a bent Oyarsa in Charn either. Meanwhile, the reason for the fall of man in Out of the Silent Planet is the bending of the Earth’s Oyarsa.

All this said, the best argument against this is that the worlds of Lord of the Rings and the Space Trilogy are impossible to connect. To do that, the easiest way to do that is to establish that the cosmologies are mutually exclusive. The easiest way to do this is to point out that Morgoth is defeated in the First Age, but the Earth is still the silent planet.

That one has me stumped. It’s almost like the reference to Numenor was made in passing and the two worlds don’t perfectly align. In other words, write your Narnia-LOTR fanfic with a clean conscience and do it even if I do figure out a solution to the First Age problem.

Footnotes

  1. Interestingly, these creatures gain their rationality because of their pre-rational act of cutting Aslan’s bonds. There’s a theology paper in there somewhere about how we, while in a state of sin, are gifted a capacity to recognize that state and be reconciled.

    Or maybe not, but if you’re reading this and ever use this as a hook for a paper, let me know. ↩

  2. There’s probably also an argument here that Aslan appearing as a lion is problematic under similar argumentation, as Christ has a distinct physical human body, but we’ll lay that aside because I think that might get me in hot water. ↩

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