Are the Emerald Witch and the White Witch the same person.

Er, on the canon-implied thing and the technically canon thing. I have a really strict view on canon, but for me some theories are possible within the canon framework and...well, possible and workable and stuff, and some are technically possible but come on. So, I would take a theory that Lucy and Caspian became really, really good friends on the Dawn Treader and were nearly convinced they were in love, and Lucy told him fairy tales every night and he was terribly annoyed by "The Little Mermaid" because suicide is not an uplifting ending to be totally plausible within canon. It fits a lot of evidence, and a lot of what it doesn't fit (I find the idea of them falling in love on the boat to be odd and sort of unworkable) can work within someone else's interpretation. This, for me, is where both the dead and not-dead Jadis fall.

On the other hand, a theory that Eustace died his hair blue before the book starts and has blue hair is, technically, canon-compliant. There's no evidence for it and you would think it might come up if it were and Eustace? Blue hair?, but, okay, technically Lewis doesn't say "And Eustace's hair was [this color that is not blue]." I'm sure someone more creative than I can come up with reasons why this theory would work. But it takes some stretching, I personally wouldn't buy it unless you really really sold it, and seriously now. That's where I would put a not-dead-yet Jadis (with the "They saw she was dead" line--if it's "The Witch was dead" and we don't get that MN backstory, all bets are off) if LWW were a stand-alone novel, I think.

Does this even make sense?
 
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It does make sense. I think I just approach canon differently. Unless what the narrator says is CLEARLY from a character's point of view (such as 99.9% of Harry Potter), I take the narrator's word as complete truth. When the narrator in LWW says that the army saw that the Witch was dead, I don't take that as a character POV statement where a soldier says, "And I saw Aslan tear out her throat." I take that as the omniscient narrator saying, "This thing happened, and these people saw it."

Animus Wyrmis said:
Lava: I've always been *really* sketched out by the timeline's loooooong gap between SC and TLB. It doesn't make any sense to me at all. Especially because Eustace and Jill don't *seem* that much older in TLB.
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I don't put 100% faith in the timelines either -- I mostly use them as a guideline. However, even in canon there's a gap of quite a few years between SC and LB.

SC takes place less than a year after VDT, which is less than a year after PC in which Lucy went to boarding school for the first time. British boarding school starts at about 10 (average guess here--it can move a little bit either way). So, SC is less than two years after PC, which would make Lucy about 12 when Jill and Eustace rescue Rilian. Jill and Eustace are a little younger than Lucy.

Now, in LB, Eustace says that he and Jill are the only ones still left in school. At the time the books were set/written, school was mandatory for girls only until about sixteen, but they could continue if they wanted to. If Lucy is done with school in LB, the youngest she can be is sixteen, which puts LB at least four years after SC.

This fluctuates a little depending on exactly how old Lucy is when she starts secondary school, but she is certainly between the ages of 9 and 11 (so 11-13 during SC), which give us a time gap of 3-5 years between SC and LB.
 
~Lava~ said:
I was not assuming that you did not know, I was clarifying in case I used the wrong omni- word. And since I said "theory" I have no doubt that none will take it to mean Canonical.

The Can of Worms is that the witch survived Aslan killing her.
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Just bear in mind to keep this thread on topic! By all means start a thread on canon but try keep to the witch debate in this! :D

Having said that, I will briefly go a little off topic to respond to the above. I shouldn't really bring Christianity into it, but I think it is very helpful in this situation. When Jesus defeated Satan at Calvary... was Satan destroyed?? If so *could* he have destroyed Satan there and then rather than waiting til the end of time?

This is why I believe Jadis was not destroyed. I wouldn't even try to argue she died. I think all you have points when referring to Jadis' and the Green Lady's deaths, but I don't think it matters. Aslan isn't being weak by allowing the spirit of the White Witch/Green Lady to live on... it's simply how his plan was ultimately going to work.

Another thing is that Jadis only manages to completely dominate Narnia *before* Aslan's sacrifice. After that it's only attempts. The Telmarines are most succesful but still not entire. Green Lady doesn't even break the surface and Tash's reign is ended before he gets what he wants.

Now I do take this theory to extreme in that I believe all 'evil' in the books can be attributed to Jadis. So this is who I think it goes:

-Jadis is brought to Narnia by Digory and Polly in MN, eats the apple and becomes immortal. She then runs off to the North.
-Here she grows in magic and befriends all manner of creatures, esp. giants with whom she has kin.
-By LWW she has returned and achieved domination over all of Narnia - that is until Aslan returns and defeats her.
-Her body is destroyed, but her immortal spirit (from the apple) lives on. She flees Voldemort style to the North again.
-Jadis causes famine in Telmar prompting the Telmarines to invade Narnia (I equate Telmarines wih a sort of 'worldly attitude'. This means there must be no 'paranormal' explanation for their appearance else it fails to be wordly and normal.
-Meanwhile, Jadis has a new body, probably stolen. I imagine she chose to reside in a snake (due to her jinnish connections) and her human appearance is just a false image so she appears normal to others.
-Throughout the Telamrine consolidation of Narnia, Jadis concentrates on a new plan of attack, knowing she *needs* a human to sit on the throne but feels corrupting a Telmarine would be pretty easy.
-Disaster strikes for Jadis when Caspian arises. As soon as she hears she sends a trusty hag and werewolf to convince Caspian to trust in her. In this way she can use Caspian as a puppet king.
-Peter and Edmund put a stop to that!
-Her plan changes again so this time she attracts Rillian through enchantment and captures him. Unfortunaely, she has to use the Silver Chair until Narnia is conquered but Jill, Eustace and Puddleglum soon sort that out.
-Her second body, the snake is destroyed and her vengeful spirit attempts to kill her defeaters by destroying the underground world and she escapes.
-Having been unable to control Narnia by force (LWW) since Aslan's death, by 'proxy' (PC/SC) she then tries yet another but even more devious strategy. Using Shift she attempts to convince the Narnians that Aslan and the false god Tash are one. She takes the form of the false god though and has a time of triumph until Aslan defeats her once and for all as the world dies at the end of LB.

That's what I think anyway. It makes sense to me from the books and I don't think it's actually falsifiable.
 
Ah, Jonny. Yer all wet. The White Witch is dead.

How do you get to be a Miraznite? I want to be one.
:)
 
Does Jadis have a spirit (soul)? Typically in faiths like mine and High Church Anglicans (I am not sure about low Church), Humans are the only beings with immortal souls and, as we know, Jadis was not at all human.

I am not adverse to the thought that Jadis's spirit was made immortal by eating the apple, How else would the Hag be calling up said spirit?


In response to a former point by Animus Wyrmus (I cannot find the exact quote): You say that you trust the opinions of the skilled magician (hag) over the opinions of the Prince and Dr. Cornelius. I was just rereading Prince Caspian (this is going on 500 times since my 5th Grade year) and I realized the that I would not for this reason; Nikibrik says that the White Witch got rid of the Beavers. Albeit, Nikibrik is not the Hag but they are allies and he knows no more about the White Witch than what he has heard in stories, I guaranty that that is all that the Hag and Werewolf have too.


They are all at least a thousand years removed from the Pevensie's reign. The Hag may know her spells just like the centuars know their stars, but she is not one of the Witch's crew.
 
WHB, I see where your persistence comes from: you're envisioning Jadis as the Satan equivalent of the Narnian universe, the wellspring of all evil, so to speak. From that point of view, I can see the desire to be able to trace all rebellion ultimately back to her.

I can even see a bit of justification for this. In Nephew, Aslan identifies Jadis as The Evil that enters His pristine world at its founding (the infamous "Neevil"). In that regard, she is the primordial "infection" of rebellious will in the Narnian universe.

However, I don't think the rest of the texts support your presupposition. To equate Jadis in Narnia with Satan in our world is to make an unjustified leap. I see at least two fatal flaws in the equation:
  1. The difference in degree: to the best of our understanding, the being we call Satan is a created being of great power and intelligence. By contrast, Jadis is a (relatively) petty queen of one world - albeit one who learned a magic trick of immense devastation.
  2. The difference in authority: by seducing the Father and Mother of the human race into rebellion, Satan gained a measure of authority over them and thus, indirectly, over that with which they had been entrusted: i.e. this world. There was no equivalent Fall in Narnian history. The Narnian creatures had the potential to rebel or to grow slack in their obedience (hence Aslan's warnings to them at the dawn of their history - their Torah), but they weren't damaged from conception with concupiscence as we humans are.
It's understandable how you would project circumstances appropriate to the spiritual climate of our universe onto Narnia, but I don't think it fits. It seems to me that you're trying to take a carpet cut for the human world and trying to stretch it across the Narnian floor.
 
I'm a badger.
I say the Emerald Witch and the White Witch are not the same person.
Therefore it logically follows that they are not.

Any questions? :cool:

Seriously, however, these days we know darkness is not a physical force, neither are cold nor silence. They cannot be imposed, they are states of absence. The same thing is true about imperfection...it is the lack of perfection. We do a great disservice to GOOD when we counterpoint it with EVIL. It gives credence to some sort of un-good that can be seen and touched. I could claim, for instance, that I INVENTED a watch without hands by breaking the hands off my wristwatch and insist that my name be put up next to the person that invented a watch with hands. One does not invent a new thing by breaking an old thing. And God's absolute perfection pre-existed all of creation. One does not create a new order by breaking the old one.

Given this, any hateful creature with a source of energy could do evil. Except a badger, of course, but you knew that.

My two cents.
 
PrinceOfTheWest said:
To equate Jadis in Narnia with Satan in our world is to make an unjustified leap.
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In addition to the points Prince made, Lewis specifically stated that Narnia is not an allegory in the traditional sense of the word. Characters and symbolism in Narnia do not necessarily have a 1:1 correlation with symbols and characters in Christian mythology. Some of the underlying principles an ideologies are the same, and Aslan is Narnia's version of Jesus, but that's as far as it can be accurately taken.

The end of LB, where England is connected to Narnia, makes very clear that in Lewis's world, both are meant to be real places. Narnia is not merely a fantasy mirror for our world, and thus its religious histories (assuming for now that Christianity is true) are not going to be the same.

If Jadis were meant to equal the Satan of Christian tradition, her backstory in MN would have had to be different. She would have had to originally be a citizen of Aslan's Country for starters, rather than just an invader from another world like Digory and Polly. She would have to overtly be the overarching villain, like Voldemort was in HP, and she would have had to be present at the Last Battle.


Now I do take this theory to extreme in that I believe all 'evil' in the books can be attributed to Jadis. So this is who I think it goes:

-Jadis is brought to Narnia by Digory and Polly in MN, eats the apple and becomes immortal. She then runs off to the North.
-Here she grows in magic and befriends all manner of creatures, esp. giants with whom she has kin.
-By LWW she has returned and achieved domination over all of Narnia - that is until Aslan returns and defeats her.
-Her body is destroyed, but her immortal spirit (from the apple) lives on. She flees Voldemort style to the North again.
-Jadis causes famine in Telmar prompting the Telmarines to invade Narnia (I equate Telmarines wih a sort of 'worldly attitude'. This means there must be no 'paranormal' explanation for their appearance else it fails to be wordly and normal.
-Meanwhile, Jadis has a new body, probably stolen. I imagine she chose to reside in a snake (due to her jinnish connections) and her human appearance is just a false image so she appears normal to others.
-Throughout the Telamrine consolidation of Narnia, Jadis concentrates on a new plan of attack, knowing she *needs* a human to sit on the throne but feels corrupting a Telmarine would be pretty easy.
-Disaster strikes for Jadis when Caspian arises. As soon as she hears she sends a trusty hag and werewolf to convince Caspian to trust in her. In this way she can use Caspian as a puppet king.
-Peter and Edmund put a stop to that!
-Her plan changes again so this time she attracts Rillian through enchantment and captures him. Unfortunaely, she has to use the Silver Chair until Narnia is conquered but Jill, Eustace and Puddleglum soon sort that out.
-Her second body, the snake is destroyed and her vengeful spirit attempts to kill her defeaters by destroying the underground world and she escapes.
-Having been unable to control Narnia by force (LWW) since Aslan's death, by 'proxy' (PC/SC) she then tries yet another but even more devious strategy. Using Shift she attempts to convince the Narnians that Aslan and the false god Tash are one. She takes the form of the false god though and has a time of triumph until Aslan defeats her once and for all as the world dies at the end of LB.
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Interesting theory, and as far as plotting goes, I think it would make a good fanfic. However, I don't find anything in the text to support it -- particularly the idea that Jadis is Tash or that she had anything to do with Shift's treason. In order to make this work, you have to speculate A LOT and generate events/ideas for which there is no textual evidence.
 
MRW said:
Interesting theory, and as far as plotting goes, I think it would make a good fanfic. However, I don't find anything in the text to support it -- particularly the idea that Jadis is Tash or that she had anything to do with Shift's treason. In order to make this work, you have to speculate A LOT and generate events/ideas for which there is no textual evidence.
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Meg is so nice! You should just say, "Jonny yer all wet."
Welcome, Meg, I didn't see you post before. I've been gone awhile....

But PoTW and ES have made the good point, as you did earlier: there's no Satan in Narnia, so making Jadis' soul some kind of immortal counterpart to Aslan goes against the grain of the stories and of what we know about God's nature vs. Satan. Jonny's all wet ... :)
 
Meg is so nice! You should just say, "Jonny yer all wet."
Welcome, Meg, I didn't see you post before. I've been gone awhile....
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Thanks for the welcome. :) And as for the post, I was being sincere. I think it would make an interesting AU fanfic. I just really like Jadis as a character, so if something like that was written from her point of view... *fangirl dance*
 
whb, you have an intersting theory. Instead of going over every point, I want to focus on the last points you made regarding Tash.

"Tash's reign is ended before he gets what he wants."
and
"Using Shift she attempts to convince the Narnians that Aslan and the false god Tash are one. She takes the form of the false god though and has a time of triumph until Aslan defeats her once and for all as the world dies at the end of LB."

How was Tash ever in control? Yes, he was seen by Jill, Eustace, and Tirian once in Narnia, but was he actually "in control?" For me, it seemed he was just there, called by Rishda Tarkaan who did not know what he really was doing.

Also, if she was Tash, how did Aslan stop her? Tash was given his "lawful prey" in Rishda and was returned back to his realm. If the destruction of Narnia was Aslan winning, I would hate to see what would happen if he had lost.

MrBob
 
let's just face the sad truth/fact that we will never know if LOTGK = WW. come on you guys, we are asking questions with no one to answer them. the only one who can answer these questions is C.S Lewis himself (not even Douglas Gresham can solve the LOTGK=WW mystery) and he's dead. there is not enough evidence (canonically or not) that the green lady is jadis and vice versa, and some factors in the text don't match our theories.

the green lady is jadis, but it can't be cause she died in LWW. she may have been brought back to life by what the hag says, but the pevensies stopped her and there is no canon and text supportive evidence to prove this. jadis is immortal cause she ate the apple, giving her endless days like a goddess, but it cannot be because she was killed by Aslan and Aslan is more powerful than her (assuming narnia is a christian allegory, so it means that good is always more powerful than evil), then after that, jadis doesn't appear in her real form without changing appearance. we could say that the LOTGK is a disguised jadis,the reason for that is it COULD be connected with the hag's quote and the immortal issue, but the only thing that contradicts this is jadis' death in LWW and the pevensie's intervention with the hag. if jadis were immortal: the book would say something about her gaining revenge, Aslan saying she's still alive, etc. but it didn't say so. she would have survived Aslan's attack, but the books keep on mentioning her being dead and such. the LOTGK'S appearance and manner would be similar to her's (and she would have a clearer backstory to explain some things), but again, the books didn't say so. you see, some factors (i can't think of any other word) cancels theories out; one theory could make sense, but it would be 'un-canon' with the books and the texts (because in order for a theory to be supported by the texts, it should very, very closely follow what the books say.) so that theory will never be accepted as fact.

so if we make theories and conclusions, it would prove futile because we are following the basis of canon here, and some things in our theories are not fully supported by the texts (not mentioned and such) even if one thing seems conected with another, how can we prove this in the books while following the rules of canon? if i say that jadis is alive in SC, it wouldn't be canon to the books because there is no evidence, and it was not even mentioned in the books. some questions don't have answers, and the question of LOTGK=WW is one of them. you know, we could debate about this for years and years without having as much as a simple phrase for an answer. this question has been debated for years, and until now, we don't have that simple phrase yet.

the only thing to do is speculate; use your imaginations and your interpretations about it and the story. so sit back and imagine, maybe write a fanfic about your speculations and you will have one, (imagined), explained missing part of one of narnia's greatest mysteries. ty :D

btw: do you understand my post, cause its nightime i wrote this and i was getting drowsy.
 
Josh said:
For many years fans have argued on weather or not Jadis(from Magican's Nephew and Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe) and the Emerald Witch(the lady of the green kirtle in the Silver Chair) are the same person. Lets settle this once and for all. Are they the same or not. And why?
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Of course they're not, if you take a look at the drawings, they're totally different, and CS Lewis describes them totally differently !! He says the white witch is tall, pretty, beautiful, and the LOTGK is so beautiful she inspires you good, until you truly know her, it's kind of different:eek:
 
LWW was written first, without thought of sequels, and it has always seemed to me that there are a few things in it which simply do not fit with the way Lewis wrote the rest of the Chronicles. For instance: Mr. Beaver says something about the White Witch being the descendant of Adam and his first wife, Lilith. That doesn't fit at all with Jadis's origins in MN. Perhaps one can get a little closer to what Lewis was trying for when he wrote the later books if one doesn't draw proofs from LWW? The specifics from the other books are more consistent with each other, although I don't think there's anything in the general plotline of LWW that is inconsistent.

I am inclined to think the WW and the Lady of the Green Kirtle are the same. The owl's comment ("one of the same crew . . .") doesn't mean much because he didn't know much about the situation; he was just guessing. And where did Tash come from, anyway? I'm not entirely sure I agree with WHB's hypothesis, but I can't think of a better explanation . . . .
 
No, she is the descendant of Adam's first wife, Lilith, not Adam and his first wife. Remember part of what negates her claim to the throne of Narnia is, as the Beavers also say, that she doesn't have a drop of real human blood in her (if she was the descendant of Adam and Lilith she would). As was said before in this thread, Lilith was a Jinn who could pop in and out of worlds as she pleased; that is why Jadis's backstory completely gels with the fact that she came from Lilith and some random Charnese giant who ended up taking over the world of Charn.

I would beg to differ in that Tash is more likely to be behind Jadis and the LotGK than Jadis is behind Tash. I say this because Tash just was immortal (he is a spirit and thus it makes him more likely to be demonic) and Jadis had to eat an apple to become so; Jadis and to a lesser extent Digory (because he brought Jadis there) may be responsible for the fact that Tash [and other demons] was able to invade the Narnian world, but Tash is supposed to be the Apex evil of the Narnian world as evidenced by Aslan's saying that Tash is his opposite.
 
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Ah, thanks. You're quite right. I need to reread if I'm forgetting things like that! :eek:

Still, the impressions one gets of Jadis from MN and from LWW are different, though perhaps not explicitly contradictory.
 
MRW said:
Thanks for the welcome. :) And as for the post, I was being sincere. I think it would make an interesting AU fanfic. I just really like Jadis as a character, so if something like that was written from her point of view... *fangirl dance*
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Ah, lovely. There was a terrific beginning of a fan fic by TDL'er LifeMaiden, but I don't think it's available anymore -- she had a beautiful history of Jadis on Charn ... You ought to give it a try yourself, Meg.
~Lava~ said:
No, she is the descendant of Adam's first wife, Lilith, not Adam and his first wife. Remember part of what negates her claim to the throne of Narnia is, as the Beavers also say, that she doesn't have a drop of real human blood in her (if she was the descendant of Adam and Lilith she would). As was said before in this thread, Lilith was a Jinn who could pop in and out of worlds as she pleased; that is why Jadis's backstory completely gels with the fact that she came from Lilith and some random Charnese giant who ended up taking over the world of Charn.
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Yah, I agree with Lava here, this is the correct history of Jadis/WW.
 
inkspot said:
Ah, lovely. There was a terrific beginning of a fan fic by TDL'er LifeMaiden, but I don't think it's available anymore -- she had a beautiful history of Jadis on Charn ... You ought to give it a try yourself, Meg.
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If I were to write about Jadis, it would be about the death of the guardian apple tree and how Jadis conquered Narnia. I've just got way too many writing projects to devote any time to a fanfic at the moment.

*goes to search for LifeMaiden's fic*
 
PrinceOfTheWest said:
WHB, I see where your persistence comes from: you're envisioning Jadis as the Satan equivalent of the Narnian universe, the wellspring of all evil, so to speak. From that point of view, I can see the desire to be able to trace all rebellion ultimately back to her.

I can even see a bit of justification for this. In Nephew, Aslan identifies Jadis as The Evil that enters His pristine world at its founding (the infamous "Neevil"). In that regard, she is the primordial "infection" of rebellious will in the Narnian universe.

However, I don't think the rest of the texts support your presupposition. To equate Jadis in Narnia with Satan in our world is to make an unjustified leap. I see at least two fatal flaws in the equation:
  1. The difference in degree: to the best of our understanding, the being we call Satan is a created being of great power and intelligence. By contrast, Jadis is a (relatively) petty queen of one world - albeit one who learned a magic trick of immense devastation.
  2. The difference in authority: by seducing the Father and Mother of the human race into rebellion, Satan gained a measure of authority over them and thus, indirectly, over that with which they had been entrusted: i.e. this world. There was no equivalent Fall in Narnian history. The Narnian creatures had the potential to rebel or to grow slack in their obedience (hence Aslan's warnings to them at the dawn of their history - their Torah), but they weren't damaged from conception with concupiscence as we humans are.
It's understandable how you would project circumstances appropriate to the spiritual climate of our universe onto Narnia, but I don't think it fits. It seems to me that you're trying to take a carpet cut for the human world and trying to stretch it across the Narnian floor.
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You make a fair point but I believe she is equated with Satan. In LWW, Jadis proclaims:

"You know at least the Magic which the Emperor put into Narnia at the very beginning. You know that every traitor belongs to me as my lawful prey and that for every treachery I have a right to kill."

Although not identical to the role of Satan in our world, it seems to me enough evidence to assume that Jadis plays a similar role in Narnia.
 
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