#lady of the green kirtle

[nochd]

This was on @whatareyoureallyafraidof's post where they put up this:

And I responded with this image:

and promised in the tags to elaborate if asked. And, @frodo-the-weeb, I will. But it's going to get long and I'm going to have to split it up into several reblogs.

First of all, since not everybody in the world is a Silmarillion enthusiast, let me explain what we're referring to.

One of the stories in the Silmarillion, and possibly the one Tolkien cared about the most, is the tale of Lúthien and Beren; a highly condensed version of a narrative poem called the Lay of Leithian, which Tolkien began writing in the 1930s and tried to get his publisher interested in after the success of The Hobbit.

(Their readers said no, and they tactfully asked him to focus on his Hobbit sequel instead. "The result," in Tolkien's own words, "was The Lord of the Rings.")

The skeleton of The Lay of Leithian is as follows; I'm intentionally leaving out a bunch of information that weaves it into the overarching story of the Silmarillion but isn't relevant to the thesis I'm advancing here.

Lúthien, an Elven princess and enchantress, falls in love with a mortal man, a ranger called Beren. Her father, the Elven King Thingol, disapproves and sends him Beren off to fetch one of the jewels from the crown of the Dark Lord Morgoth. Lúthien tries to join Beren but her father imprisons her in a tower to stop her, only it's actually a treehouse because they're forest elves. Lúthien magically grows her hair long and uses it to escape. By the time she catches up with Beren he is chained in the dungeons of Morgoth's second-in-command, Thû (whom Tolkien later renamed Sauron). She rescues him with the help only of a dog, who defeats Thû himself in single combat. They then live in the forest together for quite some time, but Beren feels bad about being the reason she can't go home to her family, and still intends to finish his mission and get the jewel. He leaves one morning while she's still asleep, so as not to put her in danger, and then when he's on the threshold of Morgoth's underground fortress in the far North of Middle-Earth she catches up with him again and he accepts that she's not going to be put off. Together they enter Morgoth's fortress and make their way to his throne room. They are in disguise but Morgoth is not fooled and uncovers Lúthien in front of everyone, declaring his intention to make her one of his many slaves. Lúthien offers to sing and dance for him, which is the way she works her magic. She puts everyone in the throne room to sleep, including both Beren and eventually Morgoth. She wakes Beren and he takes the jewel and they flee, but as they get to the outer door they are stopped by Morgoth's guard-wolf, who bites off Beren's hand holding the jewel.

That's as far as Tolkien ever got with the poem, but we have the synopsis in the prose Silmarillion to tell us the rest of the story; again cutting it down to the quick, Thingol accepts Beren as his son-in-law, Morgoth's guard-wolf attacks Doriath, Beren goes and hunts it but is mortally wounded, his spirit goes to the Halls of Waiting in the Undying Lands where the dead in Middle-Earth go, Lúthien also goes there and, again through her magical song, persuades Mandos the god of the dead to let him come back. Mandos offers her a choice: live on immortally as an Elf without Beren, or return to Middle-Earth with Beren but both of them will grow old and die. She chooses the latter.

Tolkien created Lúthien as a portrait of his wife Edith, which makes Beren a picture of himself. We know this for a fact because he had LUTHIEN written on her grave when she died, and when he joined her in it two years later the name BEREN was written for him:

Now on the lower right side of my response image you'll see Pauline Baynes' illustration of the Lady in the Green Kirtle from The Silver Chair, one of C. S. Lewis's Narnia stories. A quick synopsis of the Lady of the Green Kirtle's part in the story:

The Lady is a witch who rules a gloomy kingdom underneath Narnia, accessible through a fissure in the earth in an old ruined city far to the North. Before the story opens she has enspelled and kidnapped King Caspian's son Prince Rilian, whom she intends to send leading an army to conquer Narnia in her name. For twenty-three hours a day he is her willing slave and lap-dog; to maintain the spell, he must be bound to the titular silver chair for the remaining hour, during which he is sane and aware of his imprisonment. The protagonists, Eustace and Jill and their guide Puddleglum, meet her and Rilian unawares on their journey to the North; she sends them astray and almost succeeds in getting them eaten by giants. Eventually they rescue Rilian from the chair, but she sings a magical song which very nearly puts them all to sleep but for Puddleglum's intervention. Foiled, she transforms into a serpent, attacks them, and they kill her.

It is my contention that the Lady in the Green Kirtle is Lewis's caricature of Lúthien, with the enslaved and befuddled Prince Rilian representing Beren; and further, that Lewis knew or recognised that Lúthien and Beren were a literary portrait of the Tolkiens, so that The Silver Chair is ultimately a nasty commentary on their marriage.

In forthcoming reblogs I will lay out my evidence for this thesis.

[who-canceled-roger-rabbit]

A Narnia adaptation where the witches are both David Tennant in drag

Jadis in the style of the Time Lord Victorious, especially if they cover The Magician's Nephew

The Lady of the Green Kirtle as, like, Kilgrave but with the a green color scheme (the opposite side of the Joker/Incredible Hulk/Barney the Dinosaur/etc. color duality) and turning into a green version of noodle Crowley at the end

And yes, since my headcanon that the Lady of the Green Kirtle is Jadis's avenging widow, we would nees body doubles and possibly more advanced visual effects to convey the hot Tennant-on-Tennant action I would want here

[iliveinnarniaandstudyathogwarts]

People of Narnia

Lady of the green Kirtle Queen of Underland

[to-the-western-wood]

Narnia characters as: iconic tumblr quotes (part 2/4)

edmund, to eustace: pick a god and pray

.

lucy: there's no point being grown-up if you can't be childish sometimes

.

edmund, to peter: god may judge you but his sins outnumber your own

.

eustace, holding a sword: tell me the name of god you piece of shit

the lady of the green kirtle: can you feel your heart burning? can you feel the struggle within? the fear within me is beyond anything your soul can make. you cannot kill me in a way that matters

eustace, raising the sword, tears streaming down his face: I'M NOT FUCKING SCARED OF YOU

.

puddleglum, ten minutes after the previous quote: decay exists as an extant form of life

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jadis, to edmund: you kneel before my throne unaware it was born of lies

[liminal-zone]

The Lady laughed: the richest, most musical laugh you can imagine.

[missempanada]

Does anyone think Narnia's Lady of the Green Kirtle may be inspired by Persephone? Just a thought.

[witchesinstuff]

Images of The lady of the Green Kirtle from The Silver Chair.

[who-canceled-roger-rabbit]

Jabba the Hutt, Claude Frollo, the Child Catcher, and the Lady of the Green Kirtle are all in that category of villains who creeped you out as kids and creep you out in a whole other way when you revisit it as an adult

[iliveinnarniaandstudyathogwarts]

The White Witch and The Lady of the green kirtle according to AI

[noybusiness]

@headspace-hotel Yes, that's a really devastating concept for the children's return in Prince Caspian.

My mother and I both always found the image of all the unexplored pools in the Wood Between the Worlds exciting.

Are you thinking of the Telmarines? The Telmarines came through a portal on an island. The Archenlanders are descended from King Frank V's second son and his followers. The Calormenes are descended from Archenlander bandits.

Yes, there are Roman gods in Narnia, like Bacchus and Silenus, not to mention all the river gods, wood gods, nymphs and fauns. C.S. Lewis considered paganism the precursor to ecstatic Christian spirituality and didn't have an issue with nature gods subordinate to Capital G God.

Yes, stars in Narnia are sentient. The protagonists meet Ramandu, a resting star, and Coriakin, a somewhat fallen star, in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, as well as Ramandu's daughter, who appears to be half human since she's said to have the blood of the stars in her veins rather than to be one herself (unlike in the 2010 movie, where she's a star and named Liliandil). Ramandu's daughter marries Caspian and is the mother of Rilian; she's murdered by the Lady of the Green Kirtle's serpent form. In The Last Battle, the protagonists see all the star-people come down to earth at the end of the world.

@queen-of-carven-stone Lucy or Susan didn't almost marry a star. Are you thinking of when Lucy was forced by the Dufflepuds to go into that manor and reverse the invisibility spell cast on them (by themselves) after they were changed from regular dwarfs called Duffers into monopods by the magician Coriakin, who is a former star being punished for prideful ways by having to govern foolish subjects? There was no forced marriage aspect, though.

I'm not sure whether I read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in book form first or saw the 1989 TV serial first. The 1989-1990 TV serials of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Prince Caspian, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and The Silver Chair were very faithful to the books and I recommend seeing them if you're able to, actually. Most scenes are transferred straight from the page to the screen. Great imagery, intros and music, too, very mysterious and evocative, and I can still hear the music as we speak. The same composer did the Brideshead Revisited TV serial, Geoffrey Burgon. I especially loved the winged panther and cockatrice in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Tom Baker (the Fourth Doctor) played Puddleglum in The Silver Chair. Warwick Davis (Willow in Willow and Nikabrik in the 2008 Prince Caspian film) played Reepicheep in Prince Caspian and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, as well as Glimfeather in The Silver Chair.

narnia has actually way too many completely devastating concepts in it that are not explored At All

[to-the-western-wood]

eustace, to the lady of the green kirtle: if the good die young then you might live forever

[muse-write]

.

I’ve had a hard time working on my IC story this week, and I think most of it is bc I’m not certain how to fit the horror vibe with the Christian themes without being way more on the nose than I want to be. I don’t necessarily want overtly supernatural events to be the main cause or solution, and I’ve had it in my mind while writing that my main character is perhaps an atheist/agnostic who nevertheless finds herself resonating with certain Christian ideals, even as she does not explicitly convert. I’m just not sure how to do that in the story itself, or how to mix that with atmospheric horror.

[characterswithcolorsnamesfight]

Prelim Poll 12

Propaganda here

[who-canceled-roger-rabbit]

This is how I picture the Lady of the Green Kirtle in noodle form

[who-canceled-roger-rabbit]

I realized that I find Mariah Carey's "All I Want For Christmas Is You" more tolerable if I picture the Lady of the Green Kirtle passionately singing it to her wife Jadis, accompanied by the mandolin, after smoking too much of that "incense" and decorating the entire palace with mistletoe

(This was probably a regular occurrence that eventually inspired Jadis to ban Christmas altogether)

[dionysiaproductions]

Today at Pemberley, The 10th of December:

In addition to her daily love letter from her husband, Mrs. Elizabeth Darcy was delivered a book of poetry by Walter Scott. She examined it with great care, noticing that a page was marked with a sprig of mistletoe.

At her askance look, the housemaid explained, “Mr. Darcy said to deliver the book at the same time as the letter.”

Mrs. Elizabeth Darcy read the short letter on which was written:

I recall with some trepidation, your once voiced opinion on poetry’s unique ability to extinguish love. Although, I believe even at the time you conceded an exception for how every act of love nourishes what is already strong. As poetry is traditional, I eventually decided it was necessary. Having spent many hours tracking down a verse I thought even you would think tolerable, I hope you will find the underlined verse nourishing.

The sprig of mistletoe marked a page with the following verse underlined:

The damsel donn’d her kirtle sheen;

The hall was dress’d with holly green;

Forth to the wood did merry-men go,

To gather in the mistletoe.

“Perhaps, sending poetry is not so awful,” she said to her lady’s maid who only smiled at the remark.

Previous days at Pemberley here