C.S. Lewis on Why All Girls Want to Be Princesses and Boys Knights

When we are confirmed, we are anointed 'a kingly priesthood' (I St Peter 2:9), never forget it!

From Eugene Terekhin

We were Kings and Queens once, which means we will always be Kings and Queens.

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As one Hasidic teacher says, the sole preoccupation of the Devil is to make us forget that we are sons and daughters of the King. Apparently, he is very effective in this line of business. When our identities are in question, we rarely think of our royal status.

However, all little children believe in it. All girls believe they are princesses, and all boys believe they are knights. Kids know something intuitively that we have long forgotten. If we ask a girl what kingdom she is a princess of, she will say, “the Kingdom” — there’s only one.

Somewhere in our growth journey, we lose that essential knowledge. The Devil is good at making us forget. What will change if we forget? Everything. We will start defining ourselves through something else — not through our relationship with the King. Who am I?

The thought “I am a knight” seems childish and ridiculous. That’s exactly what the Devil is after. He wants the thought of my identity to seem ridiculous. He wants girls to blush at the mention that they are princesses. He wants boys to blush at the mention that they are knights.

To own the feeling that you are a princess or a knight can turn your world upside down. All boys crave that feeling. They want to wake up every morning, knowing that without them, the world won’t stand.

All girls crave that feeling. They want to wake up every morning, knowing that without them, there will be no more beauty and inspiration in the world. And yet, we forget. We wake up in the morning not knowing what on earth we are doing here.

How do we not forget that feeling? We all had it at some point in our lives.

Professor Kirke in C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe says,

“Once a King in Narnia, always a King in Narnia. But don't go trying to use the same route twice. Indeed, don't try to get there at all. It'll happen when you're not looking for it.”

We were Kings and Queens once, which means we will always be Kings and Queens. The door we entered that Kingdom back in our childhood is closed. But it’s okay. We never enter through the same door twice. Portals open and close all the time. All we need is to become more sensitive to them. Sooner or later, we will start seeing them everywhere.

The Kingdom is in us. We need to become more sensitive to its call. The call to be a knight or princess will always be there. It will come to us through many doors and portals — books, movies, people, adventures, trials, disappointments, wounds. It will always come back as a flash of Platonic re-cognition — if we have ears to hear and eyes to see.

The more we pay attention to those “little calls,” the more we are prepared to hear The Call — the call of Queen Susan’s magical horn that summons us back to the Kingdom. C.S. Lewis knew about this magic. That’s why he wrote in his dedication to Lucy Barfield in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe,

I wrote this story for you, but when I began it, I had not realized that girls grow quicker than books. As a result, you are already too old for fairy tales, and by the time it is printed and bound you will be older still. But some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.

There comes a time when we heed a certain call. It makes us wake up. We are overwhelmed by the sudden joy of who we are. We own the feeling. We are old enough to start reading fairy tales again — without blushing at the mention that we are princesses and knights.

Check out my new illustrated book Forty-Four Mystical Insights into the Fantasy Books of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Owen Barfield