AN: There is a dearth of good mothers in Narnia. Too many of them are dead or invisible. This makes me unhappy, because mothers are so important. I know dear old Jack had mother problems, but that doesn't mean all of his characters need to have motherlessness inflicted upon them, too. Hence this fic. It's another of my rants, in a way, and I know there was probably a Nurse, too, but I couldn't think of anything to do with her except for her token appearance in one line. Even with boarding school and a Nurse, there had to be some time for the children to spend with their parents—just like Christopher Milne, who grew up with a nanny and boarding schools, had fond memories of time spent with his parents in early childhood. The Shakespeare was inspired by Ralph Moody's Little Britches and owes a great deal to the help of WillowDryad. Thank you, dear friend! And thank you also to Laura Andrews, who is a faithful friend and beta and encouragement. You two are the best!

One more thing before I let you get to the story proper—some of you may have already heard about King Frank the Lost from me, but most of you probably haven't. The short version is that he has every right to the title, and there are reasons for his name. His story shall be written and posted eventually, as part of my Notable Descendants of Frank and Helen. I'll not overburden this AN with an explanation, but I'd be happy to talk about it in a PM.

I own Margaret. And I suppose I have claim to Eleanor and Frank. And Henry is entirely mine. Lewis-the-character belongs to Lewis-the-author.

Dedicated to my mother, who read to me and taught me the meaning of honor and love.

It was a cold winter, with only a little snow, and we didn't have much work to do, except to take care of the stock and saw ties for the fire. But the evenings were the best of all. Grace and Muriel and I would do our lessons as soon as we got home from school, so as to have all evening to play. We learned two plays that winter, but Grace and I usually had an argument over which one we'd do. She liked The Merchant of Venice best, because she was Portia; but I liked Julius Caesar best, because I was Julius and got killed at the Capitol. Mother had to take most of the long parts like Cassius, but Father was Mark Antony, and even Hal learned the lines for Metellus Cimber.
~ Ralph Moody, Little Britches

"Another story of Narnia, children? You know them all so well-all seven of the books written by the good Professor Lewis. There's the one of the Wardrobe, the Telmarines, the Quest for the Missing Lords, the Enchanted Prince, the Stolen Prince, the First Song and the Last Battle."

The children named each with her and cried, "We want a new story!"

She hmmd to herself. "One about Aunt Susan when she was a grown lady and I knew her? Or the one of the Telmarine Prince and the South Seas Island?"

No. They wanted a new story. One they had not heard before. And the eldest granddaughter-shy, almost sixteen, not-quite-slender and the sort who inspires comments about ugly ducklings from a nastier sort of grown-up—asked if there were any stories of mothers. All the children stared at her and she ducked her head, cheeks suddenly flaming, and murmured something about there being lots of wicked stepmothers in fairy tales, and didn't Narnia have any good mothers?

The grandmother smiled. "Emma makes an important point," said she. "I have a story to tell today which may not sound much like a story at all, but gather 'round anyway, and I shall begin."

You all remember how sternly dear old Professer Kirke warned the four children to take care with the telling of their adventures, and seriously did they take his words, so that when the train crash came, only a few were left who knew anything of those curious and now famous events. Aunt Susan did, of course, but even she had not heard all of them. Aunt Polly recorded them all in a book, and after her death Aunt Susan sent the book to Professor Lewis. Now this Professor Lewis was a friend, you might say, of Professor Kirke. Lewis was a philologist—a man who loved words—and it had been through the discovery of a strange word, in fact, that Lewis had heard the curious story of a man who was called Ransom. Dr. Ransom, I believe. He was a Cambridge don, and a friend also of Professor Kirke. His story was told by Professor Lewis in some other books and I shall not tell it here, but suffice it to say that there were some ways in which the tales of Dr. Ransom's adventures were rather like the tales of the Narnian adventures, and after the war was over Professor Kirke hosted a dinner for the heroes and heroines of the both adventures, and stories were shared on both sides. I do not believe Aunt Susan was present at that dinner, but she heard of it, and later she sent Professor Lewis the records of Narnia, and he wrote books from them and they were published. But Professor Lewis did not himself know the Pevensie family very well at all, and though he told their stories very well he told them in rather his own way. Once in awhile he—not having taken lessons himself in Narnian History—made a mistake. And of course Aunt Polly's book contained the records only of the unusual happenings, the times in Narnia, not of those days and weeks and years when life went on as it always did. And since Mr. and Mrs. Pevensie did not take part in the Narnian adventures, they did not, I am afraid, appear in the Narnian stories.

Which all is well and good in the ordinary way, but it means that those fine people have been entirely and quite sadly forgotten, even among those who know quite well the history of Narnia. But Aunt Susan herself spoke often of her parents, nearly as often as of her brothers and sister. You think only of two brothers, one sister, one cousin, a distasteful aunt and uncle, two friends of the family, and of a Susan who was alone in the world save for the aunt and uncle when the others died. Wise men, however, say that no man is an island-I say that few indeed are isolated peninsulas—and Aunt Susan was no different. I have told you tales mainly of the people you already knew, for of course you want to know what happens to a person in a book after the book is over. But who remembers the Pevensies' grandparents? Who knows of Mr. Pevensie's father, the stern old vicar who loved his family, and that he and his wife were unable to have children of their own, and that when God sent them little Frank one night, in need of a home, they vowed to love him as their very own and to bring him up in the way he should go? Has anyone bothered to discover that Eleanor Scrubb was the golden-haired youngest child, with two older brothers? That Harold, who was only two years older, used to rig up explosions with his chemistry set, just to scare her, but that Henry, who was eight years older, would ride her on his shoulders and buy her sweets at the sweetshop, and that her eleven-year-old heart was devastated when the Purple Death claimed her beloved Henry? That she always remembered him fondly, and that it was in the memory of her oldest brother that she gave her first daughter the second name of Henrietta?

It was Frank Pevensie, known as Father to his family, who gave Peter his toy soldiers, who first showed Susan how to fit an arrow onto a string, who taught Edmund to look up a word in the dictionary, and who tossed Lucy high and called her his sunshine. And it was Eleanor, or Mother, who taught Peter to open doors for ladies, who wrapped the grey yarn around Susan's small fingers and showed her to pull it through with the knitting needle, who scolded Edmund when he was mean to the little girl next door and prayed for him when he was stubbornly rebellious, and who praised the riotous swirls of color Lucy painted.

And in those peaceful evenings before the war, Father would work on his lectures and Mother would read aloud in her soft, gentle voice. The little girls in their nightgowns could have their dolls and the boys in their pyjamas a few soldiers, to play, and they would quietly listen as Mother's voice spoke of heroes and mighty deeds, of St. George and the Dragon, of Treasure Island, of Sigurd and Fafnir, the Swan Knight Loehengrin, of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, of Ivanhoe and Robin Hood and Good King Richard of the Lion's Heart. But their favorites were the stories of children like them, children who visited distant lands and had magical adventures—of fairies who granted wishes, of flying carpets, and of a strange and wonderful candy called Turkish Delight. And Edmund would look up from the toy soldiers and say, "I wonder what Turkish Delight is like."

Sometimes, when there was no lecture to prepare, most often on the holidays, Father would read. When Mother read from the Bible, she liked to read stories from the Old Testament, but Father liked to read from the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles and St. Paul. Father also liked Shakespeare, and those nights were best of all, though there was usually an argument over which play they would do.

Peter and Edmund liked the Scottish play because Peter was Macbeth and Edmund was Macduff and they had to duel to the death. (Mother and Father and sometimes even Nurse took the other parts, and helped the children with their lines, but even Lucy could say "Double, double," without any help.) But Susan complained if they made her be Lady Macbeth too often, and so then they'd do As You Like It, and Peter would be Orlando, the mighty wrestler; and Susan would be Celia, the gentle friend; and Lucy could dress up in Edmund's bathrobe for a shepherd costume and be Rosalind; and Edmund was Oliver, Orlando's brother who was bad but turned good in the end.

Those evenings seemed endless, and when at last bedtime came, they would kiss Father and Mother goodnight and scurry upstairs to bed, their minds full of noble warriors and valiant deeds. In those long summer evenings, when they could forget for a time the shadow of war darkening over England, there was time for a child to be a child, to think big thoughts and to dream big dreams of the hero he would one day become. And if the Pevensie children did indeed become heroes and heroines we surely owe no small thanks to the mother and father who first taught them the meaning of the word. King Peter the Magnificent. Queen Susan the Gentle. King Edmund the Just. Queen Lucy the Valiant. Let us also honor King Frank the Lost, who though neither crowned nor recognized during his lifetime, was the father of Kings and taught them the meaning of honor; and Queen Eleanor the Queen Mother, who taught them the meaning of love. The forgotten.