TLC Forum

Ooh, cool!

I'm not sure how long the gap between the high kings and queens leaving Narnia through the wardrobe and their return to find Cair Paravel in ruins, but some chronologies put the gap at 1000+ years. I have, however, visited israel and Turkey and I can tell you in that amount of time the flora would have taken over the structure and I believe the real castle would be buried under a mound similar to the one over the stone table, and definitely would not normally be accessible from the surface ground level. The fact that Cair Paravel was so well preserved and so easily accessible --yet its treasure trove was untouched over the centuries-- points to a miracle that only Aslan can explain.

Mm, point, Benisse! I'd forgotten how overgrown and otherwise buried things can get over a relatively short amount of time.

"Some magic of the place" is thrown around as a possible reason, yes.
It's not the rebuilding that bothers me as much - the cathedral in the Prague Castle wasn't really finished until the 20th century, but it didn't stop people from using it; you could always temporarily roof some sections to use them and work on others, so it would be finished by the time of Caspian's last voyage. What bothers me is the fact that in PC, it's on an island, yet there's no mention of an island in SC.

I wonder how long it would have taken them to refill the channel... after all, with the dwarfs and Moles and other of that type of Creature, it doesn't seem like it would be too long...???

Or it could be that Lewis just didn't actually say anything about it being an island, or not, even though it was or wasn't. If that made sense...

@marmota: ah, yes, this is true.
Was Cair Paravel confirmed to be an island or was that just Peter's thought? At any rate, Jill and Eustace wouldn't have seen that fact, I don't think, as they had a rather exhilarating ride through the air and may not have noticed (or even seen, depending on how close to the ground they were by the time they would have been able to notice); and they rode Owls in the middle of the night to the marshes, so they would have only been able to see so much.

Doesn't someone say something like, "Oh, we can't get to the other land at all! We're on an island!"?

And then later... Edmund, I think, says, "But Cair Paravel wasn't on an island!"

Peter, I'm pretty sure, says, "Yes, but it was on a what-do-you-call-it. A peninsula. Jolly well near an island. Someone has dug a channel and made it an island since our time."

Oh, I forgot all about the peninsula part! Aaargh, those moments when you realise you've overlooked something in a fic!

@Jaygee: yeah, I just couldn't remember if it was confirmed that it was an island after all.