34

I'm going to rule out incest here, I don't suppose that's what Lewis had in mind. If I had to guess, I'd say that at some point between The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Prince Caspian other humans somehow made it into Narnia.

Are there any hints in the books or elsewhere?

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  • 1
    P ∧ ¬P ⊨ Q is a very powerful logic rule.
    – Joshua
    Nov 19, 2015 at 18:29

3 Answers 3

60

At the very beginning of Narnia (in The Magician's Nephew), King Frank and Queen Helen (the cabby and his wife) were set to be the first King and Queen in Narnia. It also appears that some of their descendants were the first kings and queens in Archenland:

... you and your children and grandchildren shall be blessed, and some will be Kings of Narnia, and others will be Kings of Archenland which lies yonder over the Southern Mountains.

(The Magician's Nephew, chapter 11)

Further than this, and than hearing that the land of Telmar was populated by escapees from a shipwrecked group of pirates from Earth, we hear nothing specific about how humans came into Narnia and the other lands.

We are told incidentally, however, that there had been other ways of getting from Earth to the world of Narnia. The cave through which the pirates entered Telmar, according to Aslan, was

one of the magical places of that world, one of the chinks or chasms between that world and this. There were many chinks or chasms between worlds in old times ...

(Prince Caspian, chapter 15)

Thus, it's entirely possible that there were other humans who came into Narnia—especially considering that there need be no relationship between the (Earth) time when they existed and the time they came into the other world. But there is no canon discussing this that I'm aware of; and considering the audience for whom Lewis wrote the books, certainly it wasn't in his mind to discuss the difficulties and specifics of sexual reproduction in very small groups of people.

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    It's worth noting that The Horse and his Boy is set during the reign of Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy, and it has entire kingdoms of humans in Calormen and Archenland. So there were plenty of humans around at the time. It just so happened that Narnia was inhabited by other races such as dwarfs, talking animals, centaurs, fauns, etc. Jul 31, 2014 at 20:20
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    @RoyalCanadianBandit I didn't know that - I always found it rather a strange bolt on book.
    – Liath
    Aug 1, 2014 at 13:57
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They aren't the only humans. And they aren't even the first humans to visit Narnia. The book The Magician's Nephew chronicles the first visitors to the land after Aslan creates Narnia. Others came to the land by other means. The Telmarines, for example, came through a cave after being shipwrecked on an island in our world. And yet others came via other means from other lands that are only hinted at here and there throughout the books.

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  • Sure, but the Wardrobe was made from the wood that powered the rings in Magician's Nephew (if I remember correctly). As far as we are concerned, that wood was the only way to get into Narnia until the siblings' arrival. When the White Witch first saw Edmund, there were no other humans in Narnia. If there had been, she would have killed them. Is there a reference as to when the Telmarines arrived? Jul 31, 2014 at 15:16
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    Even when the White Witch ruled Narnia, there were other lands and other humans in that world. Archenland, for instance, never ceased to exist and was populated by humans. And if I remember my timelines correctly, by the time the queen had obtained rule over Narnia, Calormen at least had been founded (as an offshoot of Archenland). It was only Narnia itself that had ceased to have humans occupying it, leaving only the animals and other magical creatures.
    – BBlake
    Jul 31, 2014 at 15:27
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    @Himarm Not since its creation, Narnia was warded against Jadis for a good thousand years (I think) during The Magician's Nephew, and only some point after that could she become the White Witch and take over
    – Izkata
    Jul 31, 2014 at 23:25
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    Would be great to see some of the information from these comments integrated into this answer. Aug 1, 2014 at 15:57
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    @GuybrushThreepwood, the rings weren't powered by wood; the wardrobe was made from the wood of an apple tree, grown from the seeds of the apple that Digory brought back from Narnia to heal his mother.
    – x86tux
    Aug 1, 2014 at 21:28
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I believe you have to separate

  • "Narnia: the country ruled by the white witch and then by Peter/Susan/Edmund/Lucy", where there were no humans when the children initially entered
  • "Narnia: the world that the four children visited", where there were several other groups of humans

There were always humans in the World of Narnia, since the very beginning. (A small handful of humans watched the world as it was created) Just in the local area:

  • The Lone Islands humans were cut off from Narnia:The Country during the white witch's reign, plenty of humans (including a nicely corrupt governor)
  • The Archenland seemed to be much more "human-heavy" than Narnia:The Country
  • The Calormen

The books aren't terribly specific about where some of these people come from, but Matt Gutting's second quote indicates that the wardrobe, horn and crazy uncle's experiments weren't the only way of crossing worlds...

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