oh, god, history. *headdesk*

[bedlamsbard]

Post-LWW fic: Peter is sullen, Susan is still in that state of, "This can't possibly be happening," Edmund is playing his mother and creeping her the hell out, and Lucy is traumatized. Helen Pevensie is also kind of a wreck, because dude, talk about having many things do a number on your psyche all at once.

My state of mind: Wait, so, okay, the Pevensies were evacuated from London somewhere around September of 1940. (The Blitz started on September 7, movie canon shows us that, uh, the Blitz is going on.) And they probably would have returned in 1941? But canon (PC, this time) also tells us they were at school during the course of that year. Book canon (PC, again) tells us that this is supposed to be Lucy's first year at boarding school. So -- Peter, Susan, and Edmund left the professor's house to go to school, and Lucy was left at the professor's house? Or would they have already been back in Finchley at that point in time?

Meanwhile, if I have Peter going running, what would he be wearing and would it be regarded as normal or not? (This is in Finchley.)

...this is why I try and stick to writing about Narnia, not England. I can make stuff up.

ETA: And Helen Pevensie would probably be working, yes? Must check if Papa Pevensie would have returned from his deployment or not.

Comments

[almostinstinct.livejournal.com]

Eeee!

[(Anonymous)]

Hi
Sorry, anon, don't have lj. I've lurked around your fic 'cause I love it and love the new perspective you've given me for Narnia. Thanks!
Can I help you with some of those questions? If Peter went cross-country running in his school sports kit, no-one would look at him wonderingly. That's terribly English for jogging. To judge by the kit my school used to wear for just such occasions, shorts and a singlet, possibly embroidered with the school logo.
As for the deployment - my grandfather, despite having a young family, was in from 39-46. If Mr Pevensie was at Dunkirk, he would have been able to come back and then, if he had been stationed in Britain, been able to see the family at weekends, provided he wasn't in one of the top secret locations located under a clump of heather in the Orkneys. If he was deployed somewhere like Africa, well...
Hope this helps.
Mags

[burntcopper.livejournal.com]

running? not unless he was training for somethign specific or was a hill runner.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

No, seriously, Edmund is being really disturbing.

Something about Edmund's posture shifts imperceptibly and he gives Helen the sweetest smile she's ever seen -- only it's not the kind of smile a son gives his mother. It's the kind of smile a grown man gives a woman he wants something from.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

Or he's Peter Pevensie, post-Narnia, version completely crazy and trying to get back into the shape he was in before he got White Stag-ed. He'd be running in armor if he had it -- which is the way he was trained in Narnia, of course.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

Thank you muchly! I think we can guess that Papa Pevensie probably wasn't stationed in Britain, at least going off of what Peter and Edmund say in LWW. *frowns thoughtfull*

[snacky]

So, okay, this is all my own personal fill in the blanks canon, bear that in mind. But I think the kids didn't go back to Finchley, except for visits, until after the school year ended after PC.

They started evacuating people in the summer of 1939. Lewis has a timeline which has the kids being evacuated in 1940, although it seems like it should have been in the summer, rather than September, since wouldn't the older ones have just gone to school? Anyway, Summer 1940 - they go through the wardrobe and come back. September comes, Peter, Susan and Edmund go off to school, Lucy is either taught at home with the Professor, or goes to a local primary school (more likely, I think). Peter, Susan and Edmund come back to the Professors for holidays, and then they all go off to school together in September 1941, then are pulled from the railway station for PC.

So, I always figured they saw their mother during school holidays, and she might have visited them at the Professor's when she could get away. Although, a lot of the evacuees went home during 1941/42 when London was safer, so they could have gone home at any point there, although, with them being in school, I don't know that it would have been for very long.

I think, after the school year ended in 1942, they all definitely went home, then pretty much right away Susan went with the parents to the US (which I find really WEIRD, that kind of leisure travel during the war, but...I guess we have to go with it), Peter went back to the Professor's, and Lucy and Edmund to the Scrubbs.

Helen Pevensie would definitely have been working, but I don't know how long the average deployment would have been. For some reason I have in my head they served years, but that's just me making things up. In any case, definitely home and planning a trip some time in 1942.

[burntcopper.livejournal.com]

further!

Helen would *definitely* be working. War effort. She'd probably get snubbed in the street if she didn't. Clerical or factory. I can't remember if it was actually law, though.

Peter wouldn't be going running unless he was training for a race, and even then he'd be doing it on Hampstead Heath. (quick googlemaps of North London will get you the green areas - regent's park might be your best bet.)

They'd be going from the Professor's - the film is WRONG, or they're specifically fudging it as closer to the end of the war, when you'd still have soldiers around but the bombing had stopped. A lot of kids did come back early on, but they were sent back.

Deployment - you'd come back for maybe a weekend or something, but you got deployed for the entire war. it's not a case of 'a couple of years' - once you got called up, you got called up. The only way out was injury.

[cupiscent.livejournal.com]

Completely random addition of information because I have it: My father was telling me stories recently about his childhood during the war - he lived in Northampton, and his education was severely interrupted by the fact a London school had been evacuated to their school, so they only had the facilities during the afternoons, the other school having them in the morning. (This didn't bother my father, because he ran away to sea at age 16. *G*) My point here is that Lucy probably would've stayed in the country and attended school there for that year.

My instinct is that Peter running really wouldn't be regarded as normal, unless he were in training for something (which we all know he is, but may perplex his neighbours). "Jogging" only really became popular in the '60s. But the cross-country options already touted sound feasible.

[ineptshieldmaid.livejournal.com]

If it helps, here's the rough timescale I worked out when I first hit fandom. Logic tells me that Lucy would've been left with the Professor, and attending the local primary school with other evacuees.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

Right, which confuses the hell out of me. Except that, well, maybe the Pevensies didn't evacuate in '39 (as the Internet kindly tells me that not everyone did), but they did in '40 when they were actually being bombed -- movie dates do give us that (although, to be fair, it's the soundtrack that gives the dates, but hi, it's not '39, the Blitz wasn't going on then).

*stares at fic* Okay, so they...must be home on a visit, then? Or something of the sort.

Maybe Papa Pevensie was an army liaison or something of the sort, and that's why they went to the U.S.? It not being strictly leisure travel, I mean.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

I was almost positive she'd be working. *breathes out sigh of relief*

Okay, so, Peter running -- not on the streets, then. (I want him running specifically for the confusion factor. Also the fact that he's training like mad.)

...this is making me wish I was taking a class on Britain in the twentieth century instead of the nineteenth. If only the books were set during the Victorian era, my class might actually be relevant.

Deployment - you'd come back for maybe a weekend or something, but you got deployed for the entire war. it's not a case of 'a couple of years' - once you got called up, you got called up. The only way out was injury.

And this would still be going on a few years down the line, yes? Apropos of nothing, now I'm thinking of my RAF Peter, which is somewhere between '43-'45.

Thank you!

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I just thought about that, which was a reaction of, "WOW, Lucy is really going to be screwed up, isn't she?" Because she has to go through all this alone, while at least the others are...sort of...together.

I knew the bit about jogging, but I wasn't sure about running. This is good! I kind of want him to be a little bit of a freak.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

...man, Lewis really did a number on these kids, didn't he?

[burntcopper.livejournal.com]

he could've been working for the war office in London, but that would mean he'd be home every night.

:muses: it's very possible he was stationed in the UK. Anything from manning one of the bases on the coast (various castles/forts built as coastal lookouts and defences were re-manned during the war as first line of defence - see Pendennis or St.Mawes in Cornwall) to being a guard somewhere - have you considered Bletchley? (in which case he couldn't breathe word one of what he was doing or where he was)

I tend to stick my fingers in my ears during the point they mention the family going to the US and go LALALALALA. Because, well, improbable to the point of staring and going 'are you bloody kidding me?'. Work, yes (film stars and journalists and whatnot). War effort work, yes. soldiers being shipped over. sailors and merchant marine. The sea-vacuees at the beginning of the war, yes. FAMILIES? FOR A HOLIDAY? Cross-Atlantic trips, you had the danger of being torpedoed. Getting passage would be effort enough.

[animus-wyrmis.livejournal.com]

If I remember correctly, the father gets a job lecturing in the US for a couple months? ::checks::

Father had got a job lecturing in America for sixteen weeks that summer, and Mother was to go with him because she hadn't had a real holiday for ten years. And Susan goes because she is pretty.

I...don't know if that really helps. Oh, Lewis. (Also, the politics in the Pevensie family must have been fucked up as all hell.)

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

And Peter says "If Dad was here, that would mean the war was over and we wouldn't have to leave." *grits teeth* I think I want him in a combat zone just because -- I mean, we aren't going to see him in this fic, probably (as soon as I figure out when this is set, sometime before PC but after LWW), but then, I don't know, I want him seeing soldiers in his children and being freaked out. God. This is why most of my stuff is set in Narnia, I don't have to deal with this sort of thing.

LEWIS. YOU WERE THERE. YOU SHOULD KNOW THIS STUFF.

Maybe he...works at the embassy? (Now I'm just grasping at straws. Must. Get. Mama Pevensie and Susan. TO AMERICA.)

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

The politics in the Pevensie family must have been a mess. (And the least of it is probably the dinner table conversation post-America where Mama Pevensie says, "Have you thought about where you're going, Peter?" and Peter says, "I'm joining the RAF. I'm leaving next week.)

[katakokk.livejournal.com]

I believe Papa Pevensie didn't return until the war ended, which is 5 years after LWW (according to the Narnia timeline, I think, and it shows up in fanon a lot as well).

Most people have him returning around the time Peter would leave for uni. But I dunno.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

But...isn't VotDT only a year after PC? And he's back then. (Back and then gone again, apparently.)

[katakokk.livejournal.com]

Huhhhhh.

Well, VoDT is actaully <1 year after PC, I think. I need to go check the timeline. Actually, it's not stated on the timeline. I thought it was :\

Hmmm...I think it was actually people looking up when WWII ends, and so when most of the soldiers would have returned, and then comparing it to when the Pevensies were born, and such. *shrugs*

According to bookverse, then, Papa Pevensie is back. Maybe he was injured? Or just sent home? But they don't send soldiers home permenantly without reason, do they?

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

The only thing I can think of is that Papa Pevensie was lying like a rug when he said he was going to lecture in the U.S. and that instead he's going to the U.S. to work with the embassy or something. I don't know. *flings up hands* Lewis also says the war is over by then, and that doesn't work out by the books' timeline. OH LORD.

Maybe I'll just make stuff up and hope it sounds plausible while randomly combining bookverse and movieverse, as I am known to do.

[katakokk.livejournal.com]

Yeah. That's really weird.

But, hey, were the books published before the end of the war? Hold on. Yeah, it's written about 7 years AFTER the war ended, which is strange.

Huh. So Lewis claims that the war ended in summer of 1942, which is when VoDT takes place. The war ACTUALLY ended in 1945. So if we're going with the real world timeline, the war would be over when Peter was 18 (which is where fanon gets the idea that Papa Pevensie comes home around the time Peter leaves for uni).

I'm confused.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

It's not like Lewis was there or anything. WHAT.

I'm not touching the VotDT era was a ten foot pole. I will stick to Peter gallivanting around during the war and the stuff that I can verify if I fanwank a lot. (And my Peter joins up in 1943-ish, so there's...that. For the Warsverse.)

[katakokk.livejournal.com]

....Wait, if your Peter joins up in 1943-ish, doesn't that make him 16 at the time? He lied about his age, didn't he? And then Edmund joins a little after him...?