The problem with PC, that I've always felt, is that it's actually a relatively ugly, normal-world story about how a set of conquerors move into Narnia and then get bogged down in vicious dynastic squabbling, and then it is a story of that ordinary-world crashing headfirst into the wild-world of the living woods and Bacchus and Aslan and everything else, and then Lewis went off and wrote mostly about the Pevensies and tried to make them the center of the book.
They aren't. Caspian is the centre of this story. It's a story that should be about the mediation of that wild-world and the Telmarines-ordinary-world that doesn't end up in mass slaughter for both, personified by this thirteen year old child who was very nearly locked up in a tower his whole life (Caspian may not have REALIZED that he was a prisoner in his own life, but he clearly was), who goes from that to being dumped head-first into, well, EVERYTHING ELSE.
But it's not, because instead (and it's very much "instead", not "and") Lewis decided to mostly tell the story about how growing up is bad, and faith is good, and add a mild bunch of boys-own-adventure stuff in having the Pevensies treck across Narnia.
Re: Edmund - for all the problems I have with, well, EVERYTHING about the metaphysics of this 'verse, the moment where Aslan looks at Edmund and says "well done" in PC will make me tear up every. damn. time. Because whatever I think about Aslan as a god-thing, it is very clear that he is Edmund's god-thing, chosen and devoted, and so the level of vindication for Edmund Pevensie in that moment has to be unbelievable.
And I would agree that if Narnia had any influence on Watership Down, it was only in a sniff of disgust at how thin and ridiculous it was as an idea, and going on to paint over it in large strokes. (WD is . . . an interesting book. I would not class it as a children's book, unless you feel that all thinking-animal books must be children's books. It has rather too much sex and bloody violence for that.)
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They aren't. Caspian is the centre of this story. It's a story that should be about the mediation of that wild-world and the Telmarines-ordinary-world that doesn't end up in mass slaughter for both, personified by this thirteen year old child who was very nearly locked up in a tower his whole life (Caspian may not have REALIZED that he was a prisoner in his own life, but he clearly was), who goes from that to being dumped head-first into, well, EVERYTHING ELSE.
But it's not, because instead (and it's very much "instead", not "and") Lewis decided to mostly tell the story about how growing up is bad, and faith is good, and add a mild bunch of boys-own-adventure stuff in having the Pevensies treck across Narnia.
Re: Edmund - for all the problems I have with, well, EVERYTHING about the metaphysics of this 'verse, the moment where Aslan looks at Edmund and says "well done" in PC will make me tear up every. damn. time. Because whatever I think about Aslan as a god-thing, it is very clear that he is Edmund's god-thing, chosen and devoted, and so the level of vindication for Edmund Pevensie in that moment has to be unbelievable.
And I would agree that if Narnia had any influence on Watership Down, it was only in a sniff of disgust at how thin and ridiculous it was as an idea, and going on to paint over it in large strokes. (WD is . . . an interesting book. I would not class it as a children's book, unless you feel that all thinking-animal books must be children's books. It has rather too much sex and bloody violence for that.)