Queen Susan the Gentle

🦋 OOC Information

Name: Drea
Contact: PMs or Plurk guardyanangel 
Age: 32
Other Characters: N/A
Invitation: Here
Permissions: Here

🦋 IC Information

Character Name: Susan Pevensie
Age: 27
Canon: Chronicles of Narnia (more Disney/Walden film version than book version, though that matters very little for this particular point in canon)
Canon Point: The end of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. Instead of returning to England during the hunt for the White Stag, Susan ends up in Faerie.
Character History: Wikipedia Page!
Canon Abilities: Her two more superhuman "abilities" are due largely to magical items:

• Ivory Horn that summons "help of some kind" to her when blown
• Magical bow and a quiverful of arrows gifted to her by Father Christmas that "does not easily miss."

Susan is also an excellent archer even without the bow, and a gifted swimmer. She is also considered one of the most beautiful people in Narnia's world, and as a Queen for 15 years likely has a better than the average human's skills of charisma, diplomacy, and stewardship.

Inventory: Canonically, her magical Horn. I'm also adding her crown (likely more a circlet than something big and ceremonial,) and a small dagger, because both seem like things she would concievably have on her person as a Queen, especially one going out in the Woods but with her retainers and family.

🦋 Personality

Option 1: Answer the following questions. Elaborate on the answer, especially your characters thoughts and feelings surrounding the answer. For Canon Characters, you can choose four questions. For Original Characters, you will need to choose six questions. Keep the word count to 150-400 per question.

Has your character always believed in magic? Do they have something influencing their perspective on the supernatural/metaphysical/spiritual from their past? How do they feel about magic?

Susan has not always believed in magic! She is logical to the point of stubborness and spent the first twelve years or so of her life in an England in the midst of World War Two and so (in the way of many eldest daughers,) she operates from a place of practicality and cautiousness. When her sister Lucy first talked of Narnia's existence, she assumed she was just imagining things or (later) going mad. It wasn't until the siblings were physically in Narnia the she believed in it.

Now, after fifteen years of living in Narnia, she's very much accepted the inherent magical/supernatural nature of the universe into her worldview. She'll be familiar with some of the creatures on the bestiary and will treat them all (as well as her fellow Adopted that are less human in appearance) with respect and kindness. She may still be surprised by magics that are more out of her realm of day-to-day experience, but it won't be earth-shattering for her. That said, due to her experience with the White Witch, she is wary of magic users that use their abilities to charm or harm. The Fae will very much remind her of the Witch, and I think she's going to be eyeing them and the whole situation she'll find herself in with worry and wariness. 

What song would a siren sing to your character to lure them closer? Why?

At this point in her life, a song that tells of a secure future for Narnia and her siblings would be one that would be incredibly enticing. Although Narnia has enjoyed a Golden Age under her family's fifteen year rule, things are far from certain. Neither her siblings nor Susan are married, nor have they produced any children to be possible heirs to the throne. Additionally, just a year previously, Narnia was briefly involved in an attempted invasion by Calormen, a larger and more powerful kingdom that has long wished to add Narnia to its empire. Although the Pevensies are secure on the throne within their kingdom, these larger geopolitical threats and the lack of heirs is very much on her mind. Susan has a gentle heart, and wishes for a softness in the world that her day-to-day doesn't often grant. Any song that spoke of an alleviation of those concerns would absolutely drawn in Susan, who very much holds her duty to her family and kingdom in the top of her mind.

Though she probably wouldn't admit it to herself, I think that song would also include a promise of a romantic partner for her that values her for her mind and heart, rather than her beauty and her throne. Susan has been wooed by many a man whose attraction to her is based largely on the latter rather than the former. The most recent one, Prince Rabadash of the aforementioned Calormen, not only deceived her with his charm to make her think he was a better man than he was, but also chose to attempt to conquer Narnia after she rejected him when she realized his true nature. She had genuinely thought herself in love (or at the very least in like) with Prince Rabadash, and having had to deal not only with the personal grief of having had her romantic hopes so drastically dashed AND the broader grief of having brought danger to Narnia and its allies has been difficult. A promise of Narnia's safety (and by extension her siblings' safety) AND a genuine love match and more personal happiness for her is everything she dreams of everything she fears she'll never have. Any siren singing such a song would lure her in, without question.

If there's one person your character would follow to another realm, who would it be and why? If there's no one, state that and explain why.

Susan would, and has, followed her siblings to another realm. In the case of traveling to Narnia it was, admittedly, by accident, but from her canon point she is about to follow her siblings out of Narnia (again, admittedly, not actually knowing that's what she's choosing) because her siblings convinced her to continue down the path they were on. Susan had actively counseled her siblings against continuing to follow the Stag because they sensed the possibility of strange adventures and changed fortunes. Generally speaking, in Narnia she is the one to remain in their castle while her siblings travel so that she could keep the hearth fires burning and continue to tend to the kingdom they have dedicated their lives to. She is not one to choose to do the leaving. She is not the adventurous sort. But as with the many things she does that are contrary to her nature or desires, she would follow her siblings to another realm because of love and duty. She loves her siblings, and so she would follow them because she wants to be with them. She feels duty-bound to protect her siblings, and so she would follow them because that is the best way she can continue to do that duty.

Your character gets to return home, but when they do they learn that they've been gone for hundreds of years. How do they react?

Another thing that happens in her canon! Just not from the time frame I pick her from. The films do this a bit more overtly than in the books, but the overall picture is similar: Susan is adaptable, and so she settles into both being shunted back to England and then back again to Narnia (a millennia after they left) with her usual grace, at least on the surface. Susan is also cautious and practical. When they return to Narnia after so long, she is slow to accept the more miraculous aspects of the world (namely, the power of Aslan, the God of Narnia.) The lack of acceptance is very much rooted in her grief at the loss of the lives they lived and the people they loved, as well as fear of what's to come and fear of having to be sent back to England again. Both the fear and grief show themselves as anger, though Susan likes to dress up her anger as being logical and a voice of reason. To go back to the first question, a Susan that returns to her home after hundreds of years is a Susan that knows and accepts magic is real and operates in the world with that truth, but she is slow to trust that that magic is hers to keep. Such a gift is for others, to her mind, and the fear that is true creates an ocean of grief and rage in her heart that eventually, in canon, shuts her off from the idea of magic all together.

🦋 Fae Court

List your top three choices for your characters adoptive court. The mods will choose the one out of those three options that seems the most fitting based on your app.

• Winter
• Dark
• Day

Ability: Do you want your character to gain the ability of their court?
Yes, they have an ability of their own to trade for it.

Susan will be trading the Horn for a Court Ability! (Though it will definitely be a moment of her being manipulated into believing she has to, rather than something entirely willing on her end.) 

🦋 RP Samples

Behold! And another, because the one from this canon point is a little short on that first one.

The cure for illness that had taken hold of her early in her Golden Age had left her with the faintest ability to tell what might come. She would that it were more useful-- it had helped at times, yes, but she was still unable to interpret things nearly as well as she should and so much of what came to her came in fitful starts.

At the moment, startled from sleep, she isn't certain if the glint of steel and battlefield shouts are of past, present, or future. When the headache follows in its wake, she knows it is a foretelling.

Slipping out of her bed is a careful thing, for she truly doesn't want to wake Caspian. It's harder to focus on such things when she's not alone.

Soon enough, though, her presence would be missed, and when he sought her the king would find her standing on the balcony, frowning at the stars.

She feels fine for the first few hours after reuniting with the Narnians. They ask her about what happened in the desert, but she doesn't know how to explain-- doesn't feel it's something they need to know, really. This is something between her and Aslan and the Deep Magic. So she tells them that she had lost her way in the storm, had made her way back to them through Aslan's grace. It's not entirely a lie.

She's doing so well, she doesn't think there are going to be any averse effects. But then they cross more properly into Narnia, and suddenly there is heat everywhere. She doesn't hear the Narnians' outcry as she comes close to falling from her horse-- but Nazareen is one of hers, being of the desert, and she doesn't let the Queen fall even as Susan slips into unconsciousness.

Doesn't  hear her brother coming upon the party of Narnians, demanding to know what happened and not getting a very satisfactory answer.

All the High King will get is the knowledge that the magic no longer seems to be emanating from the Calormen desert, that they had lost one of their guides in the mysterious dust storm, and that the Queen had briefly gone missing only rejoin with the convoy later, perhaps a touch sun-dazed but largely hale.

At least, so they had thought before she'd fainted.

They'd not even left the island on which Cair Paravel sat, and yet this homecoming feels as though she is returning from a journey a thousand miles away.

The boys, at least, are taking their brief meeting with their aunt and its abrupt ending well. Rilian's telling some tale to make Errian giggle-- it lifts Susan's spirits just slightly. 

Both children running to cling to their father's legs upon return to the castle even manages to bring a smile to her face.