Prince Rilian's Disappearance is the unexplained loss of Caspian’s son after he encounters a green-clad woman at the northern fountain. It turns a private warning Drinian fails to give into a kingdom-wide mystery, and reveals that the missing prince has survived under the witch’s power for more than ten years.

Background and Warning

After Rilian’s mother was killed by a serpent at a fountain in the northern woods, the prince continued to ride in that region. He told Drinian that he had nearly forgotten the serpent and instead had seen the most beautiful thing ever made. Drinian, his father’s former captain on the voyage to the eastern parts of the earth, asked to accompany him so that he could see it too.

The following day they rode together to the same fountain where the queen had died. They rested there until noon. Drinian then saw a tall, shining woman standing on the north side of the water, wrapped in a thin garment as green as poison. She said nothing, but beckoned Rilian toward her. The prince stared at her as if out of his wits; then she disappeared, and Drinian and Rilian returned to Cair Paravel. Drinian found the woman’s appearance evil, a judgment that made his later silence consequential.

The Disappearance

Drinian considered whether to report what he had seen to Caspian, but did not want to seem a tale-bearer and held his tongue. The next day Rilian rode out alone. He did not return that night, and thereafter no trace of him was ever found in Narnia or any neighbouring land. His horse, hat, cloak, and other belongings were missing as well. The account gives no witnessed explanation of what happened during that solitary ride; the encounter at the fountain stands immediately before the disappearance, but Drinian cannot say where the prince went.

When Rilian failed to return, Drinian went to Caspian and asked the king to kill him, blaming his own silence for the loss of the king’s son. He then told Caspian about the woman at the fountain. Caspian seized a battle-axe and rushed at him, but threw the weapon away before striking. He had lost his queen and his son, he said, and would not lose his friend as well. He embraced Drinian, and both men wept. The confession confirms Drinian’s regret, but the friendship between the two men survives the crisis.

The Search and Its Stakes

The disappearance becomes the reason Jill Pole and Eustace Scrubb undertake the search for Rilian. When the owls discuss the prince’s fate, Glimfeather notes that there are no bones to suggest that he was killed. Eustace confirms that Aslan has told Jill the prince is still alive somewhere. The absence of remains, which had left the disappearance without an answer, thus becomes consistent with captivity rather than death.

The oldest owl treats Rilian’s survival as more alarming, not less: if the woman kept him alive, she must have had a use for him and a scheme against Narnia. The owl compares the danger to the earlier arrival of the White Witch from the North, who bound the land in snow and ice for a hundred years, and suspects the present threat belongs to the same company. The disappearance therefore puts more than the prince’s fate at stake: it raises the possibility that his captor intends harm to the kingdom.

Revelation and Meaning

More than ten years later, after Rilian has been freed from the witch’s enchantment, he asks how long he was in her power. Puddleglum tells him that it has been more than ten years since he was lost in the woods north of Narnia. Rilian reacts with shock, drawing a hand across his face as if to rub away the past. He says that, now himself again, he can remember the enchanted life, although while enchanted he could not remember his true self. The disappearance is thereby redefined: it was not a brief absence or a confirmed death, but a long captivity that severed Rilian from his identity and from the passage of time as others knew it.

The scene at the fountain also gains meaning in retrospect. Jill suspects that the serpent that killed the queen and the woman who beckoned Rilian were the same person; the evidence supplied here presents that identification as her inference, while the green woman’s later role as the witch and Rilian’s captor is confirmed by the account of his enchantment. The narrative first presents an eerie meeting and an unexplained absence, then lets the search uncover the living captive behind them. That delayed knowledge transforms the disappearance from a mystery of where Rilian went into the history of how he was taken and held.