50 Fun Facts About The Horse and His Boy

Into which animal does Aslan turn the defeated Prince Rabadash at the end of The Horse and His Boy?

A donkey is what Rabadash becomes after he refuses every offer of mercy. He is warned that if he ever strays far from the Calormene capital again, the change will be permanent.

In The Horse and His Boy, Aslan comforts Shasta among the tombs at night in the shape of which animal?

A cat keeps Shasta company and guards him while he sleeps, and only much later does he learn that it was the great lion all along.

In six of the seven Narnia books, but never in The Horse and His Boy, the child heroes arrive from where?

The real world supplies the child heroes of every other book, from the Pevensies to Digory and Polly. Shasta and Aravis are natives of Narnia's own world and never leave it.

Which of Narnia's four sibling monarchs is away fighting giants in the north throughout The Horse and His Boy?

Peter never appears in the book at all, and his absence on the northern frontier is the opening Rabadash counts on for his raid.

Which old friend of Queen Lucy devises the Narnians' escape from Tashbaan in The Horse and His Boy?

Mr. Tumnus, the first creature Lucy ever met in Narnia, has become a royal adviser. His quick thinking saves Queen Susan from a forced match with Rabadash.

In The Horse and His Boy, what is the trade of Arsheesh, the harsh man who raises Shasta in southern Calormen?

A fisherman is all Shasta expects to be, until he overhears Arsheesh haggling to sell him as a slave to a visiting nobleman.

What is Aravis running away from when she flees her noble Calormene home in The Horse and His Boy?

An arranged marriage to Ahoshta, a rich courtier of sixty, is more than Aravis can stand. Her own mare talks her into riding for Narnia instead.

Before escaping north with Shasta towards Narnia, the talking stallion Bree serves a Calormene lord as what?

A war horse and his master's prized mount, Bree hides his power of speech for years. With only dumb horses to compare himself to, he also grows thoroughly vain.

In The Horse and His Boy, the baby Shasta washes up on the Calormene coast inside what?

A rowing boat carried him ashore beside a knight who did not survive the voyage. Aslan later reveals that he guided it to land himself.

Under which birth name is Shasta restored as heir to the throne of Archenland in The Horse and His Boy?

Cor is the name he was given at birth. As the elder twin by twenty minutes, he inherits a crown that his brother is delighted to be spared.

What is the name of the gentle talking mare who carries Aravis north in The Horse and His Boy?

Hwin is nervous and humble where Bree is boastful, yet it is her plan of disguise that the four travellers follow into Tashbaan.

By which title is Rabadash's father, the supreme ruler of Calormen, known in The Horse and His Boy?

Tisroc is the title, and Calormenes follow every mention of him with a wish for his everlasting life. The rulers claim to descend in a direct line from the god Tash.

Which king of Archenland does Shasta reach on foot to warn of the Calormene raid in The Horse and His Boy?

King Lune hears the warning in time to get his knights safely inside his castle. He later recognises the ragged messenger as his own lost son.

What separates Shasta from the riders of Archenland just before Aslan walks beside him in The Horse and His Boy?

Thick fog swallows the road, and the unseen companion who then walks beside Shasta turns out to have guided him over a mountain pass into Narnia.

How do Queen Susan and her Narnian court slip away from Prince Rabadash in Tashbaan in The Horse and His Boy?

Aboard their ship, the Narnians are spirited out of Calormen before the prince can stop them. His rage at losing Susan sends him riding for Archenland.

In The Horse and His Boy, who tends the wounds of Aravis while Shasta runs on to warn Archenland?

A hermit known as the Hermit of the Southern March shelters Aravis and both horses. Shasta has to carry on alone, on foot.

In The Horse and His Boy, traitors kidnap the infant heir of Archenland to stop what from coming true?

A prophecy said the boy would one day save Archenland from its deadliest danger. By carrying word of the raid, the stolen prince fulfils it anyway.

Shasta's twin brother, a prince of Archenland in The Horse and His Boy, grows up to be famous at which sport?

Boxing earns the prince the nickname Thunder-Fist. He is so eager for a fight that a minder is told to keep him out of the battle with Rabadash, without success.

Shasta and his identical twin in The Horse and His Boy echo which twin brothers of Greek myth, one a famed horseman?

Castor and Pollux fit the pattern: Castor was the tamer of horses, and the brothers were honoured as patrons of athletes and of travellers in danger.

At which stage of life are the Pevensie monarchs shown ruling Narnia in The Horse and His Boy?

Adults by now, the four have grown up on their thrones in Narnia. They turn back into children only when the wardrobe finally sends them home.

In The Horse and His Boy, Rabadash is called the Peacemaker to his face, but which name behind his back?

The Ridiculous is the name that outlived him, because his people never forgot how his invasion ended. Calling someone a second Rabadash became a Calormene insult.

Tash, the god Rabadash calls on in The Horse and His Boy, is pictured in The Last Battle with which bird's head?

A vulture gives Tash his head, on a four-armed figure far larger than a man. He is never described in the earlier book, where his name is mostly heard in oaths.

Which weapon do the turbaned soldiers of Calormen favour in C. S. Lewis's The Horse and His Boy?

The scimitar completes a Calormene look of flowing robes and wooden shoes with upturned toes, in a culture that loves to quote its ancient poets.

Which art, taught to every Calormene noble, does Aravis show off to Bree's delight in The Horse and His Boy?

Storytelling is part of a Calormene noble's education, and even Bree, who dislikes most things Calormene, thoroughly enjoys the tale Aravis tells.

Calormen, the southern empire in The Horse and His Boy, probably takes its name from the Latin word for what?

Heat is calor in Latin, and it suits a sun-baked empire that lies across a great desert from Narnia and Archenland.

In The Horse and His Boy, what do the proud Calormenes call the human inhabitants of Narnia to their north?

Barbarians is the word, and Calormen's rulers long to conquer those small free lands. They are held back mainly by the reputation of the north and by fear of Aslan.

Which gossipy friend smuggles Aravis out of Tashbaan through the palace gardens in The Horse and His Boy?

Lasaraleen is vain and featherbrained, and never understands why her friend wants to leave, yet she still sees her safely out of the city.

Which castle, seat of Archenland's kings, does Rabadash besiege in The Horse and His Boy?

Anvard holds out because Shasta's warning arrives first, so Rabadash and his horsemen are still stuck outside the walls when the Narnian army falls on them.

In The Horse and His Boy, Aslan's claws repay Aravis for the punishment of which person she drugged to escape?

Her maid was punished for the escape she had slept through, and the wounds Aslan gives Aravis are his answer to that suffering.

With what does Aravis's host follow the distant battle for Archenland in The Horse and His Boy?

A magic pool shows him the whole fight as it happens. Aravis and the horses see only cloudy shapes in it, so he calls out each turn of the battle to them.

In The Horse and His Boy, the brothers Duffle, Rogin and Bricklethumb, who assist Shasta, are which kind of creature?

Dwarfs they are, Red Dwarfs to be exact. A fourth, called Thornbut, has the thankless job of keeping Shasta's twin out of the fighting.

Tashbaan, the Calormene capital reached by long bridges in The Horse and His Boy, stands on which kind of site?

A river island carries the whole walled city: the river splits into two streams around it, and the travellers have to cross by its crowded bridges.

In The Horse and His Boy, where must the transformed Rabadash stand before a festival crowd to become human again?

In the great temple, at the autumn feast, thousands of his own subjects watch the prince change back, which is why Calormen never lets him forget it.

Why does Aslan, seeming an ordinary lion, chase the travellers as they near Archenland in The Horse and His Boy?

To make them hurry is the reason: the tired horses find a last burst of speed, and the warning reaches Archenland just ahead of the invaders.

Aslan reveals he was every lion on Shasta's road in The Horse and His Boy, illustrating which Christian idea?

Divine providence is the theme: each apparent stroke of bad luck, from the chases to the long night at the tombs, was steering Shasta towards home.

C. S. Lewis dedicated The Horse and His Boy to the two sons of which American poet, later his wife?

Joy Davidman's two boys became his stepsons two years after the book came out. The couple's romance was later dramatised as Shadowlands.

Which artist illustrated The Horse and His Boy and the other six Narnia books at C. S. Lewis's request?

Pauline Baynes won the job after Lewis enjoyed her drawings for Tolkien's Farmer Giles of Ham, though he grumbled in private that she could not draw lions.

In 1954, as The Horse and His Boy appeared, C. S. Lewis left Oxford for a new post at which university?

Cambridge had just founded its professorship of Mediaeval and Renaissance Literature. Lewis still kept his home in Oxford and went back at weekends for the rest of his life.

In which Irish city was Narnia author C. S. Lewis born?

Belfast was his home until he was sent to school in England, and the ruined towers of Dunluce Castle on the Antrim coast are often suggested as a model for Cair Paravel.

C. S. Lewis, author of The Horse and His Boy, met friends at Oxford's Eagle and Child pub in which literary group?

The Inklings also counted J. R. R. Tolkien among their members, and the friends read their work in progress aloud and encouraged the writing of fantasy.

The Horse and His Boy was written first, but which Narnia book reached shops a year ahead of it?

The Silver Chair came out in 1953, although Lewis had finished the tale of Shasta and Bree in July 1950, months before he completed it.

Which company produced three Narnia films from 2005 and also took an option on The Horse and His Boy?

Walden Media made The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Prince Caspian and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, but its series stopped before Shasta reached the screen.

Which British actor voiced Aslan in the Focus on the Family audio dramas of The Horse and His Boy?

David Suchet, television's Hercule Poirot, gave the lion his voice. Paul Scofield narrated, and Lewis's stepson Douglas Gresham introduced the recordings.

Michael Ward's Planet Narnia links each Narnia book to a medieval planet; which one governs The Horse and His Boy?

Mercury is the eloquent planet in Ward's scheme, and a later count of the book's imagery found Mercury's themes far more often than chance would predict.

What is the unit of currency in Calormen, the empire Shasta flees in The Horse and His Boy?

The crescent is Calormen's coin, and its use spread so far that Narnia's own offshore territories had adopted it by the time of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

Which Calormene nobleman owns Bree and haggles to buy Shasta as The Horse and His Boy opens?

Anradin never learns that his prized stallion can talk. He turns up once more near the end, riding with Rabadash in the attack on the castle.

Sallowpad, who joins Queen Susan's embassy to Tashbaan in The Horse and His Boy, is which kind of bird?

A raven he is, and his name comes from an Old English poetic word meaning dark-coated, a fitting touch from a professor of medieval literature.

Which treacherous former chancellor of Archenland kidnaps the infant Shasta in The Horse and His Boy's backstory?

Lord Bar had once held high office under the king, and the chase that followed his crime ended in a battle at sea.

Which son of Shasta and Aravis is remembered in The Horse and His Boy as Archenland's most famous king?

Ram the Great gets only a closing mention, a last flourish telling readers that the runaways' kingdom thrived long after their adventure.

The fate of Rabadash in The Horse and His Boy has been likened to a Latin novel by which Roman author?

Apuleius wrote a novel whose hero suffers the same change of shape through his own foolish curiosity, and is restored to human form by a goddess.