A book-only chronology of the world behind the seven stories—its remembered quiet centuries as well as its great disruptions.
Narnia begins without a numbered year: first as darkness, then as a world sung into life. The earliest events can be placed closely because they unfold in a single journey.
Uncle Andrew makes yellow and green rings from dust belonging to another world. Digory and Polly use them to reach the Wood between the Worlds, the junction from which other worlds may be entered.
In Charn, Digory strikes the bell despite its warning. The spell breaks and Jadis, the last living inhabitant of the world, wakes.
Jadis recounts that she spoke the Deplorable Word rather than surrender to her sister, ending every life in Charn except her own.
The children inadvertently bring Jadis home. Her violent progress through London gathers Uncle Andrew, the Cabby, and his horse into the chain of travellers who will witness Narnia’s beginning.
The travellers arrive in utter darkness. Aslan’s song kindles the stars and sun and calls up land, water, and growing things from the new soil.
Aslan chooses pairs from among the new animals and gives them thought and speech, charging them not to return to the ways of dumb beasts.
Aslan appoints the Cabby Frank and his wife Helen to rule. Their descendants will supply the ancient royal lines of Narnia and Archenland.
Because evil has entered the world with Jadis, Aslan sends Digory to a western garden. Fledge carries Digory and Polly to the silver apple tree.
Digory returns the apple unstolen. Its seed grows into Narnia’s shield: while the tree flourishes, Jadis cannot come within a hundred miles of it.
Aslan permits Digory to take an apple home. His mother recovers, and Digory buries its core together with the magic rings.
The Witch and other enemies do not trouble Narnia for many hundreds of years. Frank and Helen’s second son becomes King of Archenland.
When the English tree grown from the apple core is blown down, Digory has some of its timber made into the wardrobe that will later admit the Pevensies to Narnia.
Jewel supplies the surviving outline of eras the novels do not directly narrate. He stresses that the famous adventures are separated by hundreds and thousands of peaceful years.
Jewel explains that human visitors arrive chiefly when Narnia is disturbed. Between those visits, peaceful reigns can be so uneventful that their kings are scarcely remembered in the history books.
Jewel remembers Swanwhite, a Queen whose beauty left a star-like reflection in forest pools for a year and a day.
Jewel names Moonwood, whose extraordinary hearing reached from Caldron Pool to whispered speech at Cair Paravel.
King Gale sails east and saves the Lone Islanders from a dragon. In gratitude they give the islands to the Crown of Narnia forever.
Jewel describes complete centuries so happy that dances, feasts, and at most tournaments are the only notable entries in their histories.
The Witch’s domination is dated retrospectively as one hundred years. Its end begins the joint reign of the four Pevensies, remembered thereafter as Narnia’s Golden Age.
In a later age, the White Witch rules Narnia under an unending winter without Christmas. Tirian’s history lesson names its duration as one hundred years.
Lucy passes through the wardrobe into Lantern Waste. Tumnus confesses that he serves the Witch as a kidnapper, but he lets Lucy return safely.
Edmund follows Lucy through the wardrobe, encounters Jadis, and is ensnared with enchanted Turkish Delight and promises of a crown.
Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy enter together. The Beavers tell them that Aslan is on the move, while Edmund slips away to betray them to the Witch.
Father Christmas reaches Narnia at last, bearing the children’s gifts. The Witch’s winter weakens into spring as Aslan’s return overturns her spell.
A rescue party takes Edmund from the Witch. He is reconciled with his siblings, but the Witch comes to Aslan’s camp to claim the traitor under the Deep Magic.
Jadis invokes the law written at the dawn of time: every traitor belongs to her as lawful prey. Aslan privately makes an exchange for Edmund.
Aslan submits in Edmund’s place. The Witch’s followers bind and shame him, and Jadis kills him on the Stone Table before departing for battle.
Because a willing innocent has died for a traitor, the Stone Table cracks and death works backward. Aslan returns to life.
Aslan restores the Witch’s stone prisoners and leads them to the battle at Beruna. Their arrival turns the field and Jadis is defeated.
Aslan crowns Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy upon the four thrones. Their long, happy joint reign becomes the Golden Age of Narnia.
The events of The Horse and His Boy occur while the Pevensies are grown rulers at Cair Paravel, before the White Stag leads them back to England.
Shasta learns that Arsheesh means to sell him and escapes with Bree, a captured Talking Horse who longs to return to Narnia.
Aravis flees an arranged marriage with her Talking Mare, Hwin. After two lions drive the pairs together, the four travellers agree to cross Tashbaan and the desert as one company.
After Susan rejects him and the Narnian party escapes by sea, Rabadash proposes a rapid desert attack on unprepared Anvard, then a thrust into Narnia and Cair Paravel. Aravis overhears the plan.
The travellers race across the desert. Separated from the others, Shasta finds King Lune and warns him that Rabadash and two hundred horse are approaching.
Aslan tells Shasta that the many lions of his life were one: Aslan had guided, protected, and driven each traveller toward this meeting.
Narnian reinforcements join Archenland. Edmund, Lucy, Corin, Shasta, and their allies defeat the Calormenes; Rabadash is captured at the castle wall.
King Lune recognizes Shasta as Cor, Corin’s elder twin, who had been abducted in infancy. Cor is therefore the heir who has fulfilled the prophecy that he would save Archenland.
Unrepentant before Aslan, Rabadash is transformed into a donkey. He may regain human shape at Tash’s autumn feast but thereafter cannot travel more than ten miles from the temple.
Cor and Aravis eventually marry and become a good King and Queen. Their son is Ram the Great, remembered as Archenland’s most famous king.
The four rulers hunt the wish-granting White Stag into Lantern Waste. Passing the lamp-post, they tumble through the wardrobe and become children again in the same English hour they left.
The novels give no calendar year for the Telmarine conquest. They do establish generations of Telmarine history and more than a thousand Narnian years between the Witch’s defeat and Caspian’s restoration.
Shipwrecked pirates and island women enter the Narnian world through a cave and settle the then-empty land of Telmar. Many generations later famine drives their descendants into Narnia.
The invaders suppress the Talking Beasts, trees, and fountains. Old Narnians survive in hiding while Telmarine rulers turn their history into forbidden folklore.
Miraz kills his brother Caspian IX and rules while presenting himself as his nephew’s guardian. He removes the lords loyal to the old king.
Caspian’s tutor secretly tells him that Narnia belongs to Aslan, Talking Beasts, waking trees, Fauns, Satyrs, Dwarfs, and giants—not to the Telmarines alone.
With a direct heir born to Miraz, Cornelius wakes Caspian and reveals the usurpation. Caspian rides into the woods carrying Queen Susan’s magic horn.
Caspian meets Trumpkin, Trufflehunter, Nikabrik, and other hidden Narnians. Glenstorm declares for war, and a council gathers on Dancing Lawn.
Driven back to Aslan’s How, Caspian’s council blows the horn for certain help. The call draws the Pevensies from their world.
The four children appear at the ruins of Cair Paravel. They gradually realize that centuries—perhaps around a thousand years—have passed in Narnia since their reign.
Aslan appears first to Lucy and commands her to follow. As the others obey, they too come to see him, and the awakened trees gather.
Peter duels Miraz before both armies. When Miraz falls, Glozelle kills his own king and cries treachery, triggering the final battle.
The awakened trees rout the Telmarine army and the Beruna bridge is broken back into a ford. Caspian is confirmed as King; Telmarines may remain under his peace or pass through Aslan’s door to another world.
Caspian’s eastern voyage supplies the series’ clearest short interval: he tells Edmund and Lucy that exactly three years have passed since their last meeting.
Caspian sails east in the ship he has built to find seven lords exiled by Miraz. Edmund, Lucy, and Eustace enter Narnia through a painting and join the voyage.
Caspian exposes Governor Gumpas’s corruption, makes Bern Duke of the Lone Islands, closes the slave market, and declares its captives free.
On Dragon Island, Eustace sleeps on a hoard with dragonish thoughts and wakes as a dragon. Aslan later tears away the dragon skin and restores him as a changed boy.
A pool turns everything it touches to gold, including the lost Lord Restimar. Reepicheep names the cursed place Deathwater.
On Coriakin’s island, Lucy reads the spell that makes hidden things visible. Aslan appears, Coriakin’s rule is explained, and the one-footed people settle on the name Dufflepuds.
The Dawn Treader enters the place where dreams come true as nightmares. Guided out by Aslan in the form of an albatross, the crew rescues Rhoop; the darkness vanishes forever.
The final three lost lords lie enchanted at Aslan’s Table. Ramandu explains that their seven-year sleep will end only when the voyagers sail as near as they can to the World’s End.
Where the Dawn Treader can go no farther, Reepicheep enters his coracle and rides the wave east. The narrator believes he reaches Aslan’s Country.
The three sleepers wake when the quest is fulfilled. Caspian marries Ramandu’s daughter; their only child will be Prince Rilian.
Caspian is old when his Queen is killed and Rilian vanishes. The Parliament of Owls dates the beginning of the tragedy to about ten years before Jill and Eustace arrive.
During a May ride, a great serpent stings Ramandu’s daughter. She dies before she can give Rilian her final message.
Seeking the serpent, Rilian repeatedly returns to the fatal glade. Drinian sees him with a beautiful woman in green; the next day Rilian rides out alone and does not return.
As the aged Caspian sails east seeking Aslan, Jill and Eustace enter Narnia. Aslan gives Jill four signs by which they are to find the lost prince.
Glimfeather convenes the owls, who recount the Queen’s death and the prince’s disappearance. They take the children to Puddleglum, who agrees to guide them north.
Distracted by the Green Lady’s invitation to Harfang, the travellers walk across the ruined city without reading its giant letters. From Harfang they finally see the words UNDER ME and escape before the giants’ feast.
In Underland, the enchanted knight invokes Aslan’s name—the fourth sign. Jill, Eustace, and Puddleglum cut his bonds and smash the chair; he recognizes himself as Rilian.
The Green Lady nearly enchants the rescuers into denying Narnia and Aslan. Puddleglum breaks the spell; she becomes the serpent that killed Rilian’s mother and is slain.
The Earthmen cast off the Witch’s control and hurry home toward Bism. Rilian and his rescuers return to the surface and are welcomed in Narnia.
Caspian’s ship returns just in time for the old King to see and bless Rilian before dying. Rilian buries his father and rules Narnia well.
By the last days, Rilian has been dead for more than two hundred years. Tirian identifies himself as the seventh in descent from him.
The last crisis unfolds over only a few days. Its conclusion is not dated by a calendar but by Father Time, the falling stars, and Aslan’s command to make an end.
Shift finds a lion skin and sews it into a disguise for Puzzle. He persuades the donkey to impersonate Aslan while he speaks as the supposed Lion’s mouthpiece.
Under Shift’s invented commands, holy trees are felled for Calormene profit and Talking Beasts are sent into servitude. Shift claims that Aslan and Tash are merely two names for one being.
Tirian and Jewel kill two Calormenes in rage, repent, and surrender. Bound to a tree, Tirian remembers Narnian history and sends a call across worlds for the children who aided Narnia before.
Jill and Eustace arrive, free Tirian, and help rescue Jewel. Jill enters the stable and brings out Puzzle, exposing the false Aslan.
After being freed from a Calormene work gang and shown the deception, most Dwarfs refuse Tirian’s cause. They declare themselves for the Dwarfs alone.
Walking with Jill, Jewel corrects the impression that Narnian history consists only of invasions and rescues. He remembers peaceful dynasties, Swanwhite, Moonwood, King Gale, and thousands of happy years.
Farsight reports that a fleet of twenty Calormene ships has taken Cair Paravel from the sea. With Roonwit dead and no army coming, Tirian resolves to return to Stable Hill.
Tirian’s company sees the dreadful form of Tash moving north. Shift and Rishda have invoked a power in which they did not believe, and it comes to the stable.
Ginger enters expecting a trick, meets the real Tash, and returns as a speechless cat. Emeth enters sincerely seeking Tash, kills the guard waiting inside, and passes into the country beyond.
Tirian reveals Puzzle and denounces the fraud, but fear and division prevent a general rising. After the Dwarfs shoot the loyal horses and Calormene reinforcements arrive, Tirian’s small company makes its last stand.
Eustace, Jill, and the others are forced through the door. Tirian seizes Rishda and jumps in with him, discovering light and open country rather than a dark stable. Tash takes Rishda, and Aslan drives Tash away.
The Dwarfs believe they remain in a dark, dirty stable. Even Aslan’s feast tastes to them like hay, turnip, and trough-water, and they cannot be taken in.
Aslan calls Father Time. The stars fall, all creatures come to the Door for judgment, the land is covered by the sea, and the red sun and moon are extinguished.
Emeth tells how he met Aslan and learned that sincere service done to what is good is received by Aslan, while cruel deeds done in Aslan’s name belong to Tash.
The country beyond the Door is revealed as the more-real Narnia, containing all the good of the old world without its ending. The company journeys “further up and further in” and meets the heroes and rulers of every age.
Aslan explains that life in the shadowlands has ended. For the Friends of Narnia this is not an ending but the opening chapter of a story that goes on forever.
This is the original book-level comparison, kept distinct from the historical timeline above. It follows the novels’ internal story order while also showing when each was first published.
Digory Kirke and Polly Plummer stumble into other worlds, awaken a dangerous queen, and witness the creation of Narnia.
Read from chapter one →Four siblings pass through a wardrobe into an enchanted country held in winter by the White Witch, where Aslan is returning.
Read from chapter one →Shasta, Aravis, and two Talking Horses flee Calormen and race to warn Archenland of a sudden invasion.
Read from chapter one →The Pevensies return to a Narnia transformed by centuries and help the young Caspian restore the Old Narnians.
Read from chapter one →Caspian, Edmund, Lucy, Eustace, and Reepicheep sail east in search of seven lost lords and the edge of the world.
Read from chapter one →Jill Pole, Eustace Scrubb, and Puddleglum cross the northern wilds to find Narnia’s vanished prince.
Read from chapter one →A false Aslan, an occupation, and a final stand at a stable door bring the old Narnia to its last battle.
Read from chapter one →