King Lune and King Edmund

King Lune and King Edmund are allied kings whose relationship is defined by mutual aid and a shared respect for the rules governing peace and war. When Rabadash attacks Anvard without warning, Edmund joins Lune in defending the castle; after their victory, the two kings meet across the battering ram, and Lune refuses to let Rabadash turn his unlawful assault into an honorable duel.

Alliance and the threat to Anvard

Before the attack, Rabadash proposes a secret raid with two hundred horsemen, intending to seize Anvard and then continue through Narnia. His plan depends on surprise and on Edmund’s absence from Cair Paravel. In the same account of the danger, Edmund considers whether the desert can protect Archenland and hears that the route through the great oasis cannot sustain a large army. The Raven describes another passage from the Tombs of the Ancient Kings, by way of Mount Pire and a narrow stony valley, that leads along a river into Archenland. This strategic knowledge establishes the setting for the invasion that will require the allied kingdoms to respond.

Rabadash’s attack makes the alliance concrete: the danger is not confined to Narnia, but falls first on Lune’s kingdom and its castle at Anvard. In Narnia, a Red Dwarf calls for a message to be sent and for the army to aid King Lune. Edmund and Queen Lucy arrive with the Narnian force, including Lord Peridan carrying Narnia’s banner. Their arrival turns the two kings’ political connection into a joint military defence.

The relief force and the battle

The Narnian army reaches Anvard as Rabadash’s men are assaulting its closed gate with a tree trunk. Seeing the relief force descend from a ridge, the attackers abandon the immediate work at the gate and turn to meet them. The battle thus unfolds between the besiegers and the combined defenders of Archenland and Narnia, with Lune inside the castle and Edmund fighting with the arriving army.

The fighting ends with the castle gates opened from within and Lune leading a sortie. Edmund fights in the battle as well; the Hermit’s report describes him confronting Rabadash near the gate after the Calormene force has been pressed from several directions. The attackers are defeated, and those still alive are prisoners or have surrendered. Shasta sees the result directly: the gates stand open, and Lune and Edmund shake hands across the battering ram. That gesture makes visible what the battle has achieved—not only the defence of Anvard, but the renewed meeting of the allied kings after a shared victory.

Law, judgment, and mutual respect

The alliance is not simply a willingness to use force. When Rabadash, suspended against the castle wall, demands to be released so he can fight Edmund, Lune intervenes. He argues that a challenge offered after an attack on a castle in peacetime cannot restore Rabadash’s honor or oblige Edmund to fight him. By attacking without first issuing a challenge, Rabadash has acted as a traitor rather than a knight, Lune says, and must be bound and taken inside instead of granted the duel he demands.

Edmund begins to answer Rabadash, but accepts Lune’s interruption and does not insist on settling the matter by combat. The exchange shows the kings acting as allies while leaving judgment to the rules Lune invokes: military victory does not erase the distinction between a lawful challenge and a surprise attack. Later, Lune says that the law of nations and prudent policy would justify severe punishment, but that he is prepared to release Rabadash unharmed on conditions. Edmund is present in this deliberation, which continues the alliance from the battlefield into the political handling of the defeated prince.

The kingship they defend

Lune’s defence of Anvard and Edmund’s aid to him give their alliance a political significance beyond the immediate battle. Rabadash’s proposed expedition treats neighboring kingdoms and their rulers as objects to seize; the allied kings, by contrast, defend a realm under attack and hold the victor’s power within legal limits. Their cooperation joins military action to restraint: Edmund helps defeat the invaders, while Lune insists that the prisoner be judged for the way he began the war rather than rewarded with a duel on his own terms.