Prince Caspian (C. S. Lewis, 1951) is set long after the reign of the Pevensie children in Narnia. The country is now ruled by the Telmarines, a human people who invaded it generations earlier. Under their rule, the talking beasts, dwarfs, fauns and tree spirits of Old Narnia have been hunted, silenced or driven into hiding, and the old stories are treated as nursery tales that must not be told. The king is Miraz. His nephew, the young Prince Caspian, is the son of the previous king, Miraz’s brother. Caspian’s tutor, Doctor Cornelius, secretly half a dwarf, eventually tells him the truth: Miraz killed his father to seize power, got rid of the lords who might have opposed him, and has allowed Caspian to live only because he had no heir of his own. When Miraz’s wife gives birth to a son, the prince’s life is in danger. Caspian flees, finds the hidden Old Narnians and leads a rebellion. In the war that follows, the High King Peter challenges Miraz to single combat. Miraz stumbles, and two of his own lords, Glozelle and Sopespian, who want him dead, stab him in the back and accuse the Narnians of treachery.
// The theoryWhen one culture’s custom is another’s crime
In Culture Conflict and Crime (1938), Thorsten Sellin argued that criminal law expresses the conduct norms of the group that holds power in a society, and that other groups may live by different norms. He distinguished between primary conflict, which arises when two cultures meet—through migration, at a border, or when one people conquers or colonizes another and extends its laws over them—and secondary conflict, which develops within a single culture as it divides into subgroups. In primary conflict, people can become criminals simply by continuing to live as their culture taught them, because the new legal order defines those practices as offenses. Sellin was thinking above all of immigrants in American cities, but his framework applies directly to conquest: the conquerors write the law, and the culture of the conquered is redefined as disorder, superstition or crime.
Thorsten Sellin, Culture Conflict and Crime (1938)
Conflicts of conduct norms arise when the norms of one cultural system are extended over the territory of another, through colonization, conquest or migration.
Making memory illegal
The Telmarine regime is a textbook case of primary culture conflict. The conquerors brought their own norms, in which beasts do not speak, trees do not have spirits and the sea and the woods are to be feared. The Old Narnians’ way of life—talking with animals, honouring the trees, remembering Aslan and the ancient kings—became, under Telmarine law, something between superstition and sedition. Miraz enforces that order with particular zeal. He forbids Caspian to speak of the old stories and dismisses the nurse who told them. He has encouraged the belief that the woods are haunted, so that his people keep away. For the creatures who survive in hiding, simply existing as they are is outside the law. In Sellin’s terms, the criminal code of Narnia under Miraz is the conduct norm of the Telmarines, imposed on a people who never accepted it.
// The subjectA usurper who needs the lie
Miraz’s private crimes and his public policy are connected. He killed his brother and the loyal lords to take the throne; he rules as a usurper, with a nephew who has a better claim. Suppressing the memory of Old Narnia serves him personally as well as politically: a country without memory is a country that does not remember who the rightful rulers were. He is a capable, brutal and suspicious king, who keeps power by fear and by manipulating the stories people are allowed to know. His death is fitting. He is not killed by Peter or by the Narnians he persecuted, but by his own lords, who have learned from him that loyalty is a tool and murder a political method.
King Miraz
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// The crackCulture conflict does not explain fratricide
Sellin’s theory explains the regime Miraz enforces, and the criminalization of the Old Narnians, very well. It explains much less about Miraz himself. The murder of his brother and the elimination of rivals are crimes of political ambition within his own culture, the kind of offense Sellin’s framework barely addresses. A theory of state power, or simply of usurpation, fits him better. Culture conflict theory has also been criticized for treating cultures as uniform blocks, when there are always internal divisions; the Telmarines themselves are not all like Miraz, and Caspian, a Telmarine prince, becomes the protector of Old Narnia.
There is a further question about Lewis’s story. The rebellion restores Old Narnia with the help of an outside power, Aslan and the ancient kings, and the moral order of the book is clear about who belongs in the land. Postcolonial criminology would ask who writes the story of conquest and restoration, and from whose point of view. Miraz chose to murder his brother and to rule through terror. What Sellin adds is that the most lasting crime of his reign was not a single murder, but the transformation of a whole people’s way of life into an offense.
Criminalising a culture
History is full of cases where a conquering or dominant power made the culture of others illegal: bans on languages, religions, dress, gatherings or ceremonies, enforced by the police and the courts. Sellin’s theory helps explain why such policies produce “crime” in large numbers: people continue to do what their culture teaches, and the law defines it as an offense. Research on the over-policing of minorities and indigenous peoples has found that legacy in many countries. Miraz’s Narnia is a fairy-tale version, but its mechanism is real: those who control the law can turn memory itself into disobedience.
Three key ideas
- Sellin’s culture conflict theory (1938) holds that law expresses the conduct norms of the dominant group; when one culture is imposed on another through conquest, colonization or migration, the customs of the subjugated become crimes.
- Miraz, king of the Telmarines who conquered Narnia, killed his brother to take the throne, persecutes the talking beasts and tree spirits, forbids the old stories and plans to kill his nephew Caspian when his own son is born. His own lords stab him during his duel with Peter.
- The crack: the theory explains the regime, not his fratricide, and treats cultures as uniform. Even so, Miraz chose murder and terror.
Sources · further reading
- Sellin, T. (1938). Culture Conflict and Crime. Social Science Research Council.
- Cunneen, C. and Tauri, J. (2016). Indigenous Criminology. Policy Press.
- Turk, A. T. (1969). Criminality and Legal Order. Rand McNally.
- Lewis, C. S. (1951). Prince Caspian. Geoffrey Bles.
Case-file questionsFrequently asked questions
Who is Rey Miraz?
Rey Miraz (“El usurpador”) is a villain from The Chronicles of Narnia, analysed on KRIMINIS through the lens of criminology. He dismissed the prince’s nurse for telling him stories of fauns and talking trees.
Why does King Miraz (The usurper) become a villain?
King Miraz and culture conflict: in Prince Caspian, the Telmarine who killed his brother to take the throne rules a conquered country where telling the old stories of Narnia is punished. Thorsten Sellin explained crime as a clash between the conduct norms of different cultures. In Miraz’s Narnia, being Narnian was the crime.
Which criminological theory explains Rey Miraz?
Rey Miraz's case is analysed through Culture conflict. Thorsten Sellin’s culture conflict theory (1938) holds that each group has its own conduct norms, and that when one group imposes its norms on another—through migration, colonization or conquest—what is custom for some becomes crime for others. Miraz, the Telmarine king of Prince Caspian (1951), rules a Narnia conquered by his ancestors, where talking animals and tree spirits hide and the memory of the original country is forbidden. He is also a murderer and a usurper. His case shows how a conquering power defines the culture of the conquered as crime, and how it protects itself while doing so.
