Fanfiction Fridays: To Want Wrong Things

For whatever reason, despite adoring the books as a child (and now), I never got very into the Chronicles of Narnia fandom. Maybe it was because there was never very much romance in the books, and my go-to reason for reading fanfic is to satisfy my desire for otherwise unfulfilled romantic connections. Maybe it was because I was a fan of Narnia long before I was ever in a fandom or read a fanfic. However, after the Prince Caspian movie came out, Narnia-related fanworks edged onto my radar for the first time. I never really sought them out; they were just stories and recs for stories posted by friends on livejournal mostly. I read mostly out of curiosity, but in the end I discovered one of my favorite fics ever.

To Want Wrong Things is a fairly short Peter/Caspian piece with a bit of a corny, sappy ending, set at the end of The Silver Chair when the recently dead Caspian talks to Aslan, Jill, and Eustace. Instead of asking just to see the childrens’ world as he does in the book, he fights with voicing a hidden desire: the chance to be with Peter.

The thing that I love about this story is that, in the frame of one of the most explicitly religious fantasy story/allegories in existence, and via the words of Jesus-lion Aslan himself, it validates queer love and desire as something that is just as worthy and important and pure as straight love. Caspian has lived his whole life with the fear that his love for Peter was something Aslan would see as hateful or wrong, but instead Aslan reassures him of the value of his feelings, which have persisted beyond the grave:

“You cannot want wrong things any more, now that you have died, my son,” said Aslan.

This is a cute story with a heartwarming moral, and I recommend it wholeheartedly.