Arthur – Aragorn – Ransom:

Concepts of Kingship in the Works of Three Inklings

Thomas Honegger
(Forthcoming in Vincent Ferré, Proceedings of the Inklings-Conference at Cerisy 2012.)

The figure of the ‘redeemer king’ is a central element in the works of Charles
Williams, J.R.R. Tolkien, and C.S. Lewis – three core members of the Inklings.
Charles Williams, in his Arthurian Poems but also in his posthumously
published essay in ‘Arthurian Torso’, comes closest to modelling his
embodiment of kingship on a (semi-)historical person within a historical setting
– and this in spite of the fact that he imbues Arthur with a mystic dimension.
J.R.R. Tolkien’s Aragorn (aka Elessar) is also rooted in the historicity of the
Third Age of Middle-earth and reflects elements of the ‘epic’ Arthurian
tradition, yet he likewise participates in the richly evocative archetypal image of
the ‘restorer of the empire’. Lastly, C.S. Lewis’s Ransom (aka Fisher-King) in
That Hideous Strength (THS) unites elements of the sacrificial king (Anfortas)
with those of the ‘pontifex maximus’ and represents the coming of a new age.
A comparative analysis of these three ‘figures of kingship’ shows how the
common cultural and religious background of the Inklings influenced all three
writers even though each author gives us an individual interpretation of the
concept of kingship.

Charles Williams’ ‘Mytic’ Arthur

The idea of Logres as a realm partially and temporarily identical with Britain, or
as a ‘Britain as it could or should be’, is a central concept in the cycle of the
Arthurian poems by Charles Williams (1886-1945). The cycle consists of two
parts: Taliessin through Logres (TTL), first published 1938, and The Region of
the Summer Stars (RSS), first published 1944. These two poetic cycles were then
supplemented by the posthumous publication of Williams’ scholarly essay ‘The
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Figure of Arthur’, together with C.S. Lewis’ commentary on Williams’
Arthurian poems, ‘Williams and the Arthuriad’, in 1948. ‘The Figure of Arthur’
is a concise (though not quite comleted) summary of the facts known about the
historical figure of Arthur and is written in clear academic prose. The two poetic
cycles, however, excel not only by means of the generally acknowledged poetic
beauty of their language, but also – and maybe even more – by their esoteric and
often obscure symbolism and imagery. Reading Taliessin through Logres and
The Region of the Summer Stars is both a rewarding and a frustrating
experience. Rewarding because the poetic-allusive quality of the poems is of the
highest quality, which can be felt even by the (baffled) non-expert reader.
Frustrating because Williams uses idiosyncratic and esoteric imagery and
symbols, which even his closest friends were sometimes unable to decipher.
Lewis, as friend, (posthumous) editor and critic, was one of the best qualified
scholars to comment on the poems, yet even he had to admit defeat in some
instances: “There are things in this piece […] which I do not understand”
(‘Arthuriad’ 294), or “So far I think I understand. But all round this illuminated
area there rolls and pulsates a mass of meanings that escape me” (‘Arthuriad’
324). Modern critics are often less honest in acknowledging their bewilderment
and try to gloss it over by passing by Williams’ Arthurian poems with a few
general remarks. Charles A. Coulombe, for example, makes short shrift and
comments on the figure of Arthur: “Charles Williams dealt directly with Sacral
Monarchy in both Taliessin Through Logres and The Region Of The Summer
Stars. Here too, as one would expect, we see all the details of mediaeval
kingship reproduced: Arthur as priest, judge, and warlord, and overmuch
commentary on the obvious would not be useful.” Coulombe is the only critic I
know who uses ‘obvious’ in connection with Williams’ Arthurian poems – and
needless to say that I beg to disagree with his hasty and summary judgment
since Williams’ presentation of kingship in the figure of Arthur is multi-layered

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and differs in several points from the ideas on kingship presented in the works
of his contemporaries and fellow-Inklings Lewis and Tolkien.
First, and maybe most prominently, Williams’ Arthur is a less-than-
perfect human being whose sins thwart and, in the end, make impossible the
longed-for union between Broceliande and the Empire. Merlin, upon first
meeting Taliessin, formulates the aim of their endeavours as follows: “[…]; it is
ordered that soon / the Empire and Broceliande shall meet in Logres, / and the
Hallows be borne from Carbonek into the sun.” (RSS, The Calling of Taliessin
130). Gisbert Kranz (1991:159), one of the most knowledgeable experts on
Williams’ Arthurian poetry, explains that the union of the Empire and
Broceliande in Logres will be effected by the coming of the Grail and the Holy
Lance (the Hallows) from Carbonek and thus mark the beginning of the
Endreich or millenium. Yet before this can take place, it is necessary that Arthur
defeats the cruel and decadent tyrant king Cradlemas (cf. TTL, The Calling of
Arthur 32f), subjects the other petty kings (cf. TTL, Mount Badon 34-36) and
ensures that Logres is once more at peace and united under a strong and just
king (cf. TTL, The Crowning of Arthur 37-39). Such a well-governed and
prosperous Logres would also take up again its rightful place within the
oikumene of the Roman Empire. Yet the Arthur who has achieved this is
primarily a war-leader, later on maybe also a judge, but certainly no priest – as
Coloumbe wants to have it. The focus on the account of Arthur’s crowning is on
his brother-in-arms, his allies and companions of many battles. The sacrificial
aspect of kingship receives no attention whatsoever, unless we interpret the
mention of “the dome of Stephen” (TTL, The Crowning of Arthur 37) as a
reference in this direction. Yet this does not mean that Williams has omitted all
religious elements – on the contrary. His discussion of the overall historical
situation during Arthur’s reign in his scholarly essay ‘The Figure of Arthur’
shows that he is very much aware of the political and cultural framework in
which Arthur must have operated. Williams’ interpretation of the historical data

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in his Arthurian poems may show some poetic licence, yet he basically sticks to
the accepted facts. This includes his conceptualisation of the oikumene as an
organic entity, visualised in a rather idiosyncratic manner as a reclining naked
woman. The various parts of the empire are identified with the different parts of
the female body. Logres, for example, constitutes the head, whereas Gaul as the
seat of learning and doctrine (the alma mater avant la lettre) is equated with the
nourishing breasts, and Byzantium, the seat of the emperor, is seen as the navel
of the entire figure, etc. Williams not only describes these correspondences in
detail, but he also commissioned the artist Lynton Lamb to draw an illustration
according to his specifications. Lamb’s drawing (see below) was first printed on
the endpapers of the 1938 original edition of Taliessin through Logres.

This map, by Lynton Lamb, appeared on the endpapers to Charles Williams’ first edition of Taliessin Through
Logres (1938).

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 It is not possible to provide an in-depth discussion of Williams’
sometimes rather idiosyncratic symbolism, but the most salient points are the
following: Arthur, as the king of Logres, finds himself placed within the larger
hierarchical structure of the Empire, with, on the one hand, the Emperor as the
central figure, and, on the other, the Holy Catholic Church with the Pope at its
head. King Arthur is thus part of a larger early medieval world – a world we are
going to encounter also in Lewis’ novel That Hideous Strength when Merlinus
asks Ransom whether they can expect any help from allies or friends:

[Merlinus asks:] ‘But what of the true clerks? Is there no help in them?
[…].’
[Ransom answers:] ‘The Faith itself is torn in pieces since your day and
speaks with a divided voice. […]’
[Merlinus:] ‘Then let us seek help from over the sea. Is there no
Christian prince in Neustria or Ireland or Benwick who would come in and
cleanse Britain if he were called?’
[Ransom:] ‘There is no Christian prince left. […]’
[Merlinus:] ‘Then we must go higher. We must go to him whose office
it is to put down tyrants and give life to dying kingdoms. We must call on
the Emperor.’
[Ransom:] ‘There is no Emperor.’ (THS 655f.)
We can emphatically say that in Williams’ Arthurian age there still exist
Christian princes, there is also still a pope officiating at the Lateran, and there is
still a Roman Emperor ruling from Byzantium. Of course, Williams’ idea of an
‘organic’ Christian European empire has more in common with concepts
prominent in Romanticism, such as those found in Novalis’ Die Christenheit
oder Europa. Ein Fragment (1799, excerpts published 1802, full text 1826),
than with historical reality. Moreover, Williams’ poetry constitutes an intricate
pattern that depicts events from highly subjective and often idiosyncratic
viewpoints – most prominently that of Taliessin, yet never that of Arthur. Thus
the king, though a key figure within the unfolding drama, is not given a ‘poetic
voice’ and Williams seems to rely on his audience’s familiarity with the figure
of Arthur as known from Malory and other medieval sources to fill in the gaps
of his ‘narrative’.

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 This ‘subjective-mystical re-interpretation’ of the Arthurian story assigns
to the king a clearly defined position within a larger structural framework that is
dominated by the Pope as the ‘pontifex maximus’ on the one hand, and the
Emperor, representing the highest secular authority, on the other. Arthur’s
hierarchically lower position vis-à-vis the emperor does not detract from the
importance of his task. As the king of Logres he occupies a pivotal place in the
greater scheme that is to bring about the arrival of the Grail in his realm and, as
a consequence, the parusia or ‘Second Coming of Christ’. Sadly, he fails in his
appointed task – mainly because he neglects his duties as a secular king in
favour of the pursuit of his personal obsessions. The crucial question raised at
his crowning, namely whether “the king [is] made for the kingdom, or the
kingdom made for the king?” (TTL, The Crowning of Arthur 39) receives a clear
answer when Arthur tears up the papal letter and puts his private affairs above
the reason of state. Or, in Williams’ own words: “The temptation of the king –
were it stressed, but it is not – would be to be too much himself the State; to
appropriate Logres to himself” (‘The Figure of Arthur’ 273).
In the end it is the pope who has to stop the invisible attack from P’o-l’u,
(RSS, The Prayers of the Pope 177), and Arthur’s failure of preparing the ground
for the coming of the Grail and thus the establishment of a unified Logres is
(in-)directly responsible for the dissolution of the empire: “Against the rule of
the Emperor the indivisible / Empire was divided” (RSS, The Prayers of the
Pope 173). Williams’ imagery of a ‘divided empire’ could be seen as his
interpretation of what Lewis’ will present, in That Hideous Strength, in more
explicit ‘Barfeldian terminology’ as a process of ‘differentiation’. As a
consequence, we find a continuation (and maybe deepening) of the rift between
the secular rulers (who do not seem to play much of a role in Williams’ other
writings) and the keeper of the Grail in the person of Prester John (cf. Williams’
War in Heaven).

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J.R.R. Tolkien’s ‘Epic’ Aragorn
“Now come the days of the King, and may they be blessed while the thrones of
the Valar endure!” (LotR 968). These words spoken by Gandalf on the occasion
of the crowning of King Elessar mark the high point of The Lord of the Rings,
though most readers would probably argue that other events were more
important, such as the destruction of the One Ring or the resurrection of
Gandalf. This stance is understandable and not without merit, yet it relies too
much on the ‘hobbit perspective’ of the narrative and ignores the larger context
with its epic and even ‘messianic’ overtones.1 It is no accident that Tolkien,
when asked to provide a title for the third volume, comprising books five and
six, chose neither ‘The Destruction of the Ring’ nor ‘The Downfall of Sauron’
nor ‘The Passing of the Elves’, but ‘The Return of the King’. It is in this last
volume that the full impact of the events becomes at long last visible and the
loftier tone of the epic narrative asserts itself more frequently against the ‘hobbit
perspective’. Taking, for example, the chapter ‘The Field of Cormallen’ as our
starting point, the story of the War of the Ring could be re-told in hindsight as
the gradual revelation of Aragorn as the rightful heir to Isildur’s throne. I have
chosen the term ‘gradual revelation’ in order to stress the basically unchanging
epic-heroic nature of his character. Tolkien’s Aragorn, unlike Peter Jackson’s
equivalent, is no ‘round character’ in E.M. Forster’s sense of the term, nor does
he show a significant ‘development’ of character.2 He is, from the very first time
we meet him in ‘The Prancing Pony’ in Bree, the heroic-epic ‘flat character’
found in Middle English romances and their successors twice removed, the
Victorian novels of adventure such as Allan Quatermain. The changes
noticeable in the ‘evolution’ from Strider to Aragorn and finally Elessar
Telcontar time are not due to any inner processes of maturation, but must be

                                                                                                               
1
See also eagle’s announcement of the King’s victory and imminent return to the inhabitants of
Minas Tirith (LotR 963) – a passage that is strongly reminiscent in tone of the biblical psalms.
2
See Veugen (2005) on the (non-)development of Aragorn.
  7  
seen rather as stages in Aragorn’s gradual ‘coming into his own’, i.e. the
revelation and public assertion of his kingship. There has been, of course, a
‘growing up’ with a formative phase, but within the main narrative, the reader is
only given a few brief glimpses of this, most prominently in the short episode in
Cerin Amroth (added by Tolkien in hindsight). Otherwise it is as if Aragorn had
been dropped into the narrative as a fait accompli. All this makes him one of the
most ‘archetypal’ characters in The Lord of the Rings, which in turn has
important implications for our interpretation of the king-figure. Aragorn-Elessar
becomes the ‘ideal prototype’ for all later rulers and the numerous parallels to
kings historical, semi-historical, mythical or fictional are intended and the result
of Tolkien’s (successful) attempt to create an archetypal figure. The shared
biographical elements between, for example, Arthur and Aragorn3 do not prove
so much Tolkien’s indebtedness to the Arthurian legend4 as rather the common
archetypal pattern(s) governing their respective careers. Both Arthur and
Aragorn participate in what has been dubbed ‘The Hero Pattern’.5 Thus both
were reared by foster-parents in a far-away country/place and we know almost
nothing of their childhood. On reaching manhood they return to their future
kingdoms and after a victory over their enemy/enemies, they marry and ascend
the throne. This ‘heroic’ element in Aragorn plays an important role since it
distinguishes him, on the one hand, from the ‘static’ fairy-tale king whose main
function is to pass on the realm to a representative of the younger generation,
and, on the other, from the emperor in his Charles Williams’ Arthurian poems,
who is too exalted a personage to actively participate in the armed conflicts. The
figure of Aragorn provides Tolkien with the opportunity to present an older,
                                                                                                               
3
Tolkien’s hint at Aragorn’s ‘Arthurian’ connection in his father’s name has first been noted by
Vincent Ferré, who pointed out that we find an Arthur in ARaTHORn. The argument is more
straightforward but similar in structure to Geoffey Ashe’s famous reading of Riothamus as an
anagram for Artho[r]ius M[iles].
4
We will know a considerable amount more about Tolkien’s interpretation of and attitude towards
Arthur after the publication of his alliterative poem The Fall of Arthur – which by the time of the
writing of this paper (Spring 2012) has not yet been published.
5
Lord Raglan (i.e. FitzRoy Richard Somerset, 4h Baron Raglan). 1936. The Hero: A Study in
Tradition, Myth and Drama. For a succinct summary of the ‘Hero Pattern’, see also
http://department.monm.edu/classics/courses/clas230/mythdocuments/heropattern/default.htm.
  8  
‘undifferentiated’ idea of kingship that unites, in Lewis’ words, “associations of
battle, marriage, priesthood, mercy, and power” (THS 495). For Aragorn, as for
Arthur, kingship means much more than mere military power – which is why
Williams was eager to point out that in the case of the latter “we cannot go back
behind the royalty which Geoffrey invented. No one can ever uncrown Arthur.
The king may have – and indeed must have – the qualities of the Captain-
General, but he must be the king” (‘The Figure of Arthur’ 263). Earlier on,
Williams had provided yet another characterisation of Arthur that is relevant for
our purpose: “He was to be a king and all but an emperor, but not a lover; a
commander, not a knight-errant; central, not eccentric” (‘The Figure of Arthur’
216). This description, with a few modifications, would fit Aragorn, too. The
destiny of Tolkien’s hero is to be king and, if we interpret his re-establishment
of the old unity of the double-kingdom of Arnor and Gondor as modelled upon
the achievement of Charlemagne as the renovator/restitutor imperii, he is indeed
‘all but an emperor’. Tolkien thus inscribes Aragorn into the medieval tradition
of the translatio imperii, the passing on of imperial power, which was
transferred in our world from Babylon to Persia to Greece and finally to Rome.6
As Verlyn Flieger has expertly shown in her study Splintered Light, a very
similar idea can be identified in Tolkien’s concept of ‘world history’, and the
kings of Númenor and their descendants in Middle-earth provide the ‘secondary
world’ counterparts to our real-world kings and emperors. We are not told
explicitly about the telos of Middle-earth, but Tolkien was quite clear that
Middle-earth is our own world7 in pre-historical times,8 and thus (logically)
partaking in the overall scheme of salvation.9 As a consequence, Aragorn and
other rulers play (unwittingly?) an important role in the as yet unrevealed
scheme of salvation. They can be interpreted as pre-incarnation-types that
prefigure or foreshadow the ruler of the kingdom to come – as much as the later
                                                                                                               
6
See Honegger (2011:90-96) on ‘Imperial Time’ in LotR.
7
See, for example, Letters no. 183, p. 239 or no. 294, pp. 375-76.
8
See Letter no. 211, p. 283, and footnote p. 283.
9
On this point see his metaphysical speculations in the ‘Athrabeth Finrod Ah Andreth’.
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kings base part of their authority on the claim of being post-reincarnation
representatives of Christ.
Maybe the best summary of what ‘makes a king’ in Middle-earth is given
by Faramir who, in his function as Steward of Gondor, presents Aragorn to the
people assembled in and before Minas Tirith:

‘Here is Aragorn son of Arathorn, chieftain of the Dúnedain of Arnor,

Captain of the Host of the West, bearer of the Star of the North, wielder of
the Sword Reforged, victorious in battle, whose hands bring healing, the
Elfstone, Elessar of the line of Valandil, Isildur’s son, Elendil’s son of
Númenor.’ (LotR 967)
Faramir has to restrict himself to those points that are salient on this specific
occasion, which is why he does not explicitly mention some of the other
qualities that are of importance as well. He merely hints at Aragorn’s ‘Strider
persona’ by introducing him as chieftain of the Dúnedain of Arnor. The
Dúnedain had taken on the task of watching the borders of the Shire and
protecting the hobbit-community from harm. It is as one of the Rangers that
Aragorn makes his first appearance, and subsequently becomes the hobbits’
guide in the wilderness. Strider/Aragorn’s introduction as a typical helper figure
is important since he can thus prove his worth and his quality before we know
anything about his ‘true’ identity, i.e. we (like the hobbits) have to take him to
some extent ‘on trust’. Tolkien provides him with a symbolic (yet hardly useful)
broken sword that may ring some mythological bells, and some enigmatic verses
that go with his name, but these elements are almost immediately relegated to
the background and Aragorn’s ‘Strider-persona’ dominates the chapters till
Rivendell. During the journey through the wilderness, the hobbits survive
largely thanks to his woodcraft and other skills. It is also he who is to be
credited for their (narrow) escape from the pursing Black Riders. Aragorn-
Strider thus establishes his credentials in the most fundamental and basic
manner – as a man able and willing to labour for the good of those less strong or
skilled.

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 These qualities are later proven again on a larger scale when Aragorn
becomes the chief-in-command of the army of Gondor (‘Captain of the Host of
the West’). Tolkien exemplifies in the figure of Strider what medieval theorists
of the three estates saw as the duty of the bellatores, i.e. the weapon-wielding
noblemen: to act as helpers and protectors of the other (weaker) members of the
community. In the case of Aragorn it is indeed his selfless service for the
hobbits that lays the foundation for his later ‘ennoblement’10 and I think that the
prominent placing of this aspect is not so much due to the exigencies of the plot
as rather reflecting Tolkien’s view on the ‘meritorious’ foundation of kingship.
The Star of the North (also known as The Star of Elendil) and the Sword
Reforged (Narsil, now renamed Anduril) are what we could call ‘heirlooms’.
They render visible the otherwise non-visible claims of descendancy and though
they are not constitutive of the kingship of Gondor, they are powerful visual
symbols. More to the point, though not mentioned in this context, is Aragorn’s
mastery over the palantir of Orthanc. Even Gandalf is astonished that he had
been able to wrestle the control of the Seeing Stones from Sauron – a feat
providing more proof of his claim to the throne of Isildur than any number of
broken swords of flashy jewelry.
Traditionally, kings are expected to possess what is called ‘luck’.11 The
modern use and understanding of the word is often not very clear, but almost
always associated with an element of randomness and chance. ‘Luck’, in most
contexts, is no longer causally connected to one’s actions or personal qualities –
it is something (good or bad) that simply happens to a person and illustrates the
capriciousness of the universe. Earlier ages, however, saw (good) ‘luck’ as the
visible expression of divine favour – and ‘bad luck’ as a sign of divine
                                                                                                               
10
In this context, see also Vincent Ferré’s discussion of Farmer Giles of Ham as a critique of
‘undeserved’ kingship and how the career of Giles illustrates the ennoblement of the humble and
the advancement of virtue.
11
Tolkien, in another context (The Hobbit), uses ‘luck’ in order to express the fact that it is not
always possible to achieve one’s aims without some ‘outside’ help. Aragorn, deeply troubled about
his apparent failure as leader of the Fellowship, is aware of this dimension. See also Dickerson on
the interaction between self-determined actions (Free Will) and their place within the larger divine
plan of salvation.  
  11  
disapproval. I think it is relevant that Faramir does not praise Aragorn’s military
strategic thinking nor his (undoubted) bravery in battle, but the simple fact that
he has been ‘victorious in battle’. You can be a brave and courageous military
genius, but unless you possess the necessary portion of (good) luck, you may not
achieve victory. Thus Faramir’s seemingly redundant stating of the obvious
implies that Aragorn is the bearer of luck and favoured by the gods.
The elevation of the ranger to the throne of Gondor is further confirmed
and complemented by the fact that Aragorn’s ‘hands bring healing’, i.e. his
ability to heal the victims of the Black Breath. This ‘royal prerogative’ inscribes
him into the tradition of the ‘healer king’, of which Christ is the most prominent
example, and which finds its continuation in the English (and French) kings
ability to heal scrofula (‘King’s Evil’) with their touch. It proves in a very
obvious and practical way that the king is the carrier of Heil – a term related to
the concept of ‘luck’ yet not identical and notoriously difficult to translate.12 It
could be argued that in the case of Aragorn his success on the battlefield is at
least to some extent ‘causally’ related to his own efforts. Not so with his (and
other royal figures) ability to heal by touch. This ability has its roots in a
seemingly random act of divine grace and can be seen as a sign of the divine
sanction of the rule. Yet Tolkien bases the divine right of his kings not only on
(in theory) ad personam gifts by God.13 He also anchors them in the semi-divine
ancestry of the royal house of Númenor (and the successor-realms of Gondor
and Arnor), to which Faramir’s next string of epithets refers: “the Elfstone,
Elessar of the line of Valandil, Isildur’s son, Elendil’s son of Númenor.” As
Aragorn pointed out on another occasion, Beren was his ‘sire’, i.e. his ancestor,
and he is thus a descendant in direct (male)14 line of Elros, Elrond’s brother, and

                                                                                                               
12
Dictionaries usually refrain from giving a direct translation of the term itself and offer equivalents
to the idiomatic expressions containing the word, such as ‘sein Heil in etw. suchen’, ‘Petri Heil’
etc.
13
One wonders whether Farmer Giles, once elevated to kingship, would also have the power to heal
by touch – I doubt it.
14
It was in the Council of Elrond that we have the first explicit public identification of Aragorn as
Isildur’s direct descendant in the unbroken male line and thus as the legitimate heir to the deserted
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son of Eärendil and Elwing. Aragorn thus participates in the elvish as well as the
Maian strain,15 which goes back to the union of Thingol and Melian. As a result,
the structure of Aragorn’s family tree resembles the Anglo-Saxon royal
genealogies found in the manuscripts of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which were
well known to Tolkien. These genealogies typically include Woden, the pagan
god, in his euhemerised form as the father of Wecta, Beldeg, Wihtgils and
Wihtlaeg, who become the direct ancestors of the kings of Wessex,
Northumbria, Mercia, and East Anglia, respectively.
There remain three more important elements that characterise Aragorn’s
kingship, yet which are not mentioned by Faramir since they are yet in the
(immediate) future: the crowning by Gandalf and the public acclaim to his
ascension to the throne, his successful restoration of the former double-empire
of Gondor and Arnor, and his marriage to Arwen Undomiel and the securing of
the royal line through the birth of their son Anarion.
After having listed Aragorn’s credentials, Faramir asks the assembled
crowd: “‘Shall he be king and enter into the City and dwell there?’ And all the
host and all the people cried yea with one voice.” (LotR 967) This gives, of
course, no democratic legitimisation of Aragorn’s rule in the modern sense of
the word, and yet it is important that Aragorn’s claim to the royal succession is
made explicitly and publicly – and accepted by acclamation. The crowning itself
constitutes the high point of the entire process, and Gandalf, as the emissary of
the Valar, bestows the divine authorization of Aragorn’s rule. Parallels to
Charlemagne’s crowning by Pope Leo III on Christmas Day in the year 800 AD
are obvious and strengthened further by Aragorn’s restoration of the former
double-empire of Gondor and Arnor, which can be seen as the Middle-earth
equivalent to Charlemagne’s restitutio/renovatio imperii in our world.

                                                                                                               
throne of Gondor. Comment on the importance of the male line in matters dynastic. The one-
hundred-years-war started because the French noblemen invoked the Salic law – which forbade
inheritance through a female line – in order to counter Edward III claims to the French throne.
15
Elwing, being the daughter of Beren and Luthien, is the carrier of ‘Maia blood’ via her
grandmother Melian.
  13  
 Aragorn’s future marriage to Arwen Undomiel is alluded to by Faramir’s
reference to the Elfstone, a jewel given to Aragorn by Galadriel when the
Fellowship departed from Lothlórien. This act can be interpreted as the giving of
a wedding gift from the family of the bride to the groom, foretelling his
marriage to Arwen.16 We know from Tolkien’s notes that the idea of marrying
Aragorn to Arwen came relatively late in the course his writing The Lord of the
Rings. Aragorn, like William’s Arthur, “was to be a king and all but an emperor,
but not a lover” (Williams, ‘The Figure of Arthur’ 216). Within the main text,
the romance between the two is alluded to by Aragorn’s recital of a shortened
version of the Lay of Leithian, which tells the story of Beren and Lúthien, but
the full tale is only found in Appendix A (LotR 1057-1063). Tolkien thus
stresses that it was the king who married, and not so much Aragorn the man17 –
or, to take O’Neill’s Jungian interpretation, we see in this union the
reconciliation of opposites (masculine and feminine) in a sacred marriage
(O’Neill 150) which further elevates the status of the king.
The archetypal quality and ‘unity’ of Aragorn’s kingship is further re-
inforced by his longevity. Although he is not immortal, his long reign (120
years) and self-willed death at the age of 210 while still in full possession of his
physical and intellectual powers is reminiscent of a time when the ‘king’s two
bodies’18 (Kantorowicz), i.e. the office and the person of the king, were still one.
To sum up, Tolkien presents an orthodox and very conservative view of
kingship – whatever he may have thought about the royal family and the rules of
royal succession in our world. Aragorn is not only qualified by an impressive
pedigree and his ‘virtues’ as a ranger and warrior, but also by his success in
battle and ‘good luck’. This gives him a fully legitimate claim, which is publicly
                                                                                                               
16
Galadriel is Arwen’s grandmother. On the giving of wedding gifts see ‘Laws and Customs among
the Eldar’ in Morgoth’s Ring.
17
See Flieger’s fine essay ‘Frodo and Aragorn: The Concept of the Hero’ (1981/2004) where she
analyses the ‘division of labour’ between the epic and romance hero Aragorn and the fairy-tale
hero Frodo – who remains unmarried and who in the end leaves Middle-earth.
18
Kantorowicz, in his The King’s Two Bodies: A Study of Mediaeval Political Theology (first
published 1957), outlines the development of the concept that differentiates between the ‘office’
(immortal) and the ‘person’ (mortal) of the king througout the centuries.
  14  
recognised before the gates of Minas Tirith by his future subjects. If we add to
this the recognition of Aragorn as the legitimate heir of Isildur by the
Oathbreakers on the Paths of the Dead and take into account his ability to
control the palantir, then we have a manifold (and almost ‘over-’) legitimised
king. Tolkien may have gone easy on the spiritual quality of kingship as part of
his overall strategy of avoiding ‘things religious’, but otherwise Aragorn
harmoniously unites all the different aspects of kingship in his person. As a
consequence, he differs from the other ‘kingly’ figures – Ransom, Peter, but also
Arthur – found in the works of his fellow-Inklings C.S. Lewis and Charles
Williams; they represent more specialised and limited concepts of kingship,
whereas Aragorn still retains much of the original ‘unity’.

C.S. Lewis’ Figures of Kingship

Tolkien’s close friend and colleague C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) is the one member
of the Inklings whose depiction of king-figures (and queens) shows the greatest
diversity. This is largely due to the fact that the texts in which royal persons play
a role belong to completely different genres. Thus the books that comprise the
Chronicles of Narnia feature ‘traditional fairy-tale kings’ and their evil
counterparts, whereas That Hideous Strength (THS), in the tradition of Charles
Williams’ ‘spiritual thrillers’, presents a protagonist that has more in common
with the prototypical sacrificial grail-king19 than with a secular ruler, be he
legendary or historical. The discussion of Lewis’ conception of kingship must
thus necessarily distinguish between these two types.
Kings (and queens) are part and parcel of the pseudo-mediaeval ‘fairy-
tale’ setting found in the seven books constituting the Chronicles of Narnia
(1950-56). This is true for both the largely non-human Narnian society and the
human societies outside Narnia where kings, or their equivalents such as the

                                                                                                               
19
I am aware that the proper terms used to refer to Anfortas in the Arthurian cycle are ‘Fisher King’
or ‘Keeper of the Grail’. The ‘grail king’ actually makes an appearance in Williams’ novel War in
Heaven (1930) in form of Prester John, the ‘priest-king’ and keeper of the Graal.
  15  
Tisroc, stand at the top of their respective people, too. Lewis does not even raise
the question of the social or political justification of kingship – it is an
undisputed given within the roughly sketched cultural framework of his tales.
Narnia, however, is an original Lewisian creation and though it borders on and
is in contact with the human ‘fairy-tale’ kingdoms, its population consists
originally exclusively, and later mainly, of non-human beings – dwarfs,
centaurs, nymphs, talking animals etc. Thus Peter Pevensie and his siblings
become kings and queens of Narnia basically because they are the highest-
ranking beings present and thus take on their God-given responsibility towards
those lower down in the ‘Great Chain of Being’. This clear hierarchical
distinction and division by species is most prominent and explicit in the
(according to the internal chronology) early books of the Chronicles (especially
in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe [LWW, 1950] and The Magician’s
Nephew [MN, 1955]). It is somewhat weakened in the later books where the
kings and queens are surrounded by courts made up of fellow humans, which
are closer in spirit to the traditional ‘fairy-tale’ kingdoms than their counterparts
in early Narnia.
The origin of Narnian kingship is presented as a deliberate echo of the
original ordering of the earth after the creation of the world and its inhabitants.
In the biblical tradition it is Adam who is given the power over and the
responsibility for all creatures. Medieval artists typically chose the scene where
Adam ‘names’ the beasts in order to represent this act of empowerment.20
Aslan the Lion, the allegorical God-figure in Lewis’ Narnia, does not
‘create’ the world anew, but he desires to set things right and to counteract the
destructive forces of evil by re-establishing the original order of divine creation.
He does so by removing the drabness of modern existence from Frank the
Cockney Cabby and ‘Nellie’ (or better: Helen), his wife, and by re-enchanting
them and their world. This becomes most clearly noticeable in the change of

                                                                                                               
20
See the 12th century Aberdeen Bestiary, folio 5r at http://www.abdn.ac.uk/bestiary/comment/5r.hti
  16  
Frank’s voice: “All through this conversation his voice was growing slower and
richer. More like the country voice he must have had as a boy and less like the
sharp, quick voice of a cockney.” (MN 82). Lewis, like Tolkien, does not see
kings as ‘progressive’ elements, but ideally as faithful stewards defending and,
in the best sense of the word, ‘conserving’ the God-given structure of society.
Aslan’s short exchange with Frank by means of which he instructs the future
ruler in his rights and duties as king comprises all the essential elements found
in similar texts throughout the ages. The king, as the head of the Wehrstand
(bellatores, i.e. warrior-class), has primarily the task to defend the internal and
external peace of his subjects. Or, in the words of Aslan:
“You shall rule and name all these creatures, and do justice among them,
and protect them from their enemies when enemies arise. […] [And] rule
these creatures kindly and fairly, remembering that they are not slaves like
the dumb beasts of the world where you were born in, but Talking Beasts
and free subjects[.] […] And you wouldn’t have favourites either among
your own children or among the other creatures, or let any hold another
under or use it hardly? […] And if enemies came against the land (for
enemies will arise) and there was war, would you be the first in the charge
and the last in the retreat?” (MN 81f).
The martial duties of a king come first to the fore in Peter’s fight against the
White Witch’s wolf that has been attacking the inhabitants of Narnia and his
own siblings (LWW 170f.). Afterwards, it is he as the eldest and as High King
who takes up the sword to defend Narnia, to rout the evil forces and to secure
the peace in their kingdom, and the narrator concludes his account with “[a]nd
Peter became a tall and deep-chested man and a great warrior, and he was called
Peter the Magnificent” (LWW 194).
The clear stratification of Narnian society by means of the different
species and by age and gender (Peter is eldest and male) is part of Lewis’
strategy to avoid a critical discussion of the origin and legitimisation of
kingship. He is (unlike Shakespeare) not interested in querying the traditional
role of kingship. Misuse of power is a reality, but it is not to be fought by means
of abolishing the royal prerogative to rule. The solution Lewis proposes is a

  17  
return to the original balance and harmony – a restitutio or renovatio of just rule
by divine intervention.
The theme of categorical difference continues in the figure of Aslan, the
God-turned-lion of the Chronicles of Narnia. God became incarnated in ‘our’
world of men as a man – in Narnia, the realm of Talking Animals, He has taken
on the form of a (talking) lion in order to redeem their world. Lewis, as in most
of his works, uses traditional motifs and concepts. The identification of the lion
as the king of beasts is a wide spread and time-honoured idea, which Lewis
fuses with the biblical tradition that links the references to the lion of Judah with
Christ. The Chronicles of Narnia thus present a clear ‘division of labour’
between, on the one hand, a secular king ‘by the grace of God’ who derives his
legitimisation from his direct appointment by God (aka Aslan) and, on the other
hand, God Himself. The world of Narnia is still a place where God interferes
directly (in the form of Aslan) – which means that there is no necessity for a
priestly class. What is more, Lewis seems to warn against the misuse of
(divinely legitimised) power by ‘false prophets’, i.e. people who presume to
speak in the name of God yet have no proper authority to do so – such as the ape
in The Last Battle, who pretends to be ‘the mouth of Aslan’. Thus we can
discern a clear division of labour between a ‘secular’ king and a present
incarnate deity, which renders obsolete both the priestly class and the sacerdotal
quality of the king as pontifex maximus.
The situation in That Hideous Strength (THS 1945), our second text to be
discussed, is quite different. Whereas the realm of Narnia constitutes a parallel
universe that is connected to our world by means of passages and ‘doors’, we
have the (often competing) co-existence of the two realms of Britain and Logres
in That Hideous Strength. As Dr. Dimble explains towards the end of the book:
“There has been a secret Logres in the very heart of Britain all these years;
[ruled by] an unbroken succession of Pendragons” (THS,739), with Ransom as
the 79th Pendragon from Arthur. Ransom, too, stressed the necessity to

  18  
differentiate between the two realms and their rulers when he tried to explain the
current political situation to Merlinus, who had just woken up from his century-
long sleep.

[Merlinus asks:] ‘[…] This Saxon king of yours who sits at Windsor,
now. Is there no help in him?’
[Ransom answers:] ‘He has no power in this matter. […] He is the
King. He was crowned and anointed by the Archbishop. In the order of
Logres I may be Pendragon, but in the order of Britain I am the King’s
man.’ (THS 655)
This development of the original realm of Britain into two more and more
divergent entities dubbed ‘Britain’ and ‘Logres’ respectively illustrates the
Barfieldian idea of the ongoing specification of our world away from ‘ancient
unities’.21 As Dr. Dimble explains:

‘[…] Everything is getting more itself and more different from everything
else all the time. Evolution means species getting less and less like one
another. Minds get more and more spiritual, matter more and more
material. […]’ (THS 645)
The description of Jane Studdock’s feelings and emotions during her first
meeting with Ransom illustrates the impact of such an ‘ancient unity’, though
even Ransom represents only part of the lost original force of kingship. Jane,
upon seeing Ransom seated on a couch in his room, has a ‘philological
enlightenment’: “For the first time in all those years she tasted the word King
itself with all linked associations of battle, marriage, priesthood, mercy, and
power” (THS 495). What Lewis tries to communicate to his readers is the idea
that the modern world has seen a progressive loss of original unity, a
differentiation and subdivision22 which also affected the nature of kingship so
                                                                                                               
21
Ransom explicitly mentions “Barfield’s ‘ancient unities’” (THS 621) in his discussion with
MacPhee.
22
There is another figure that constitutes a link to the vanished older world – a world where the
‘splintering of light’ had not yet progressed that far and in which the relationship between man and
nature was also more ‘magical’ – Merlin. The magician “represent[s] the last trace of something
the later tradition has quite forgotten about – something that became impossible when the only
people in touch with the supernatural were either white or black, either priests or sorcerers” (Dr.
Dimble in THS 375) and Ransom thinks “that Merlin’s art was the last survival of something older
and different – something brought to Western Europe after the fall of Numinor and going back to
an era in which the general relations of mind and matter on this planet had been other than those we
  19  
that we have now the need for two (or more) words to express the semantic
differentiation that took place in the centuries after the death (or rather
displacement) of Arthur. On the one hand we have the Anglo-Saxon word
‘king’, which is mainly associated with the ‘secular’ office held by the
descendants of Alfred the Great.23 On the other, Lewis introduces pendragon as
a new term for what could be called ‘the kingship of Logres’. It is first attested
in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia in connection with Uther Pendragon and is
usually interpreted as meaning ‘highest military leader’.24 Ransom, as
pendragon of Logres, retains many of the original qualities of what originally
characterised a king – and Jane Studdock, gifted with a heightened sensibility, is
able to perceive this.
The same process of differentiation seems to apply to countries and
nations. Ransom, when he differentiates between the realms of Britain and
Logres in the passage quote above, implies that the original unity of Logres and
Britain, which had been achieved at least temporarily under the ‘pendragon-
kings’ such as Uther and Arthur, was lost later on. The pendragons would
continue ruling a Logres in hiding – a Logres that may consist only of “four
men, some women, and a bear” (THS 655) and yet may effect a change in the
development of the entire world. It is no longer military power or physical
strength that constitutes the might of Logres, but the ability and willingness of
its leaders to re-direct and channel the forces unleashed by their opponents.
Ransom, with the help of Merlinus, thus succeeds in restoring some of the lost
balance and puts an end to the enemy’s attempts to destroy our world.
Ransom’s statement “‘I have become a bridge’” (THS 653) provides the
key to his (and presumably other post-Arthurian pendragons’s) main function.

                                                                                                               
know” (THS 557). Lewis gives a scholarly yet very readable account of the changes that took place
in the aftermath of the downfall of the Western Roman Empire and the rise of medieval Christian
Europe in his study The Discarded Image.
23
And never mind 1066. It has also been argued that William was, through Æthelred’s marriage to
the Norman noblewoman Ymme, related to the Anglo-Saxon royal house, however distantly.
24
The etymology of the word is not quite clear, but it seems to consist of two elements: the medieval
Welsh pen/ben for ‘head’ and draco/dragun referring to the military standard in form of a dragon.
  20  
As we have seen, the pendragon takes up a position that is complementary to
that of the secular (‘Saxon’) king at Windsor. Readers may take their cue from
Ransom’s mention of ‘bridge’ and interpret the ‘office’ of the pendragon as that
of the pontifex maximus of Britain/Logres. Lewis, as a classicist/medievalist and
philologist was aware of the implications that Ransom’s use of the term carries.
Pontifex maximus was indeed the title of the high priest in the ancient Roman
religion, and may be translated literally as ‘the highest builder of bridges’ (a
compound of Lat. pons and facere). Later it became one of the (unofficial) titles
of the Pope. Yet Lewis makes an important qualification in his adaptation of the
term – a qualification that he could count on being noticed by his fellow-
Inklings: the 79th Pendragon is ‘a bridge’, not ‘a builder of bridges’. Ransom is
therefore not to be seen as a ‘diminutive version’ of the Pope, but as the
representative of the tradition of the sacrificial king in its Christian guise of the
Fisher King25 – which happens to be the name by which Ransom is known to the
outside world, as Mr. Fisher-King (THS 465). Lewis made sure his readers
would get the message.

Conclusion
Arthur – Aragorn – Peter – Ransom: the investigation into the representation of
‘kingship’ in selected works of three Inklings has given us an – at first sight –
varied and divergent array of literary realisations of the concept. While some of
the differentiating traits can be ascribed to literary genre conventions, such as
the ‘fairy tale kingship’ in Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia, we find evidence
for an underlying shared assumption that the original concept has undergone a
Barfieldian the process of ‘differentiation’. The royal protagonists in the works

                                                                                                               
25
See also Ransom’s diet of red wine and bread, which points, on the one hand, towards Melchizedek
(Book of Genesis) and, on the other, towards Christ.
  21  
discussed are thus no longer representatives of the original ‘holistic’ concept, as
Jane Studdock described it,26 but figures of ‘splintered kingship’.

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