Bother. I tried to post yesterday and it got eaten. Fairytales are based on rule-following. The rules don’t have to make sense, but they’re consistent. So saith Lewis and his literary mentors Chesterton and George MacDonald.
Are you using bother as an interjection, or answering the question?
Interjection.
Didn’t mean to be rude.
Oh, it wasn’t rude. Given that we’re talking about an early/mid twentieth century English author, it was both perfectly appropriate and mildly clever. 
That said: Do you feel Lewis was inconsistent in letting Mabel live?
Hmm. I don’t think so. It reads to me like a eucatastrophe- Digory does the right thing even though it’s hard, and (he thinks) means his mother will die, and is rewarded gloriously. Great good breaking through his despair.
Keep in mind that I’m reading it (eternally) through a ten-year-old’s eyes. Also that I haven’t slept in eight months. 
Because of the lack of sleep, it reminds me a bit of the Eagles rescuing Sam and Frodo after their hard journey. Was that stylistically appropriate?
runs for cover
Yeah. And after all, Aslan is God. I think I like the idea of God being able to do something really cool once in a while, rather than God bureaucratically quoting rules and by-laws at me.
I’m the Silmarillion fan, not hte Lord of the Rings fan. You’ll have to have that argument with someone else.
The thing is, Aslan doesn’t follow rules for the sake of following rules, or set them just because he can. he follows and sets rules because he judges them rule to be correct.
Having said that, LL’s remark about eucatastrophe is partially persuasive to me, as is the notion that Aslan told Eustace what would happen because the situation was somewhat different than it was when Lucy inquired about what would happen had she not sinned.
I still think it’s a lapse, though, and letting Mabel live is a mistake as well, somehow. Less satisfying. But I can understand Jack’s decision, though.
I love using that word- eucatastrophe. I want to make t-shirts that say:
I’m metanoia-d by
your eucatastrophe
I get that, but I think it would have been a little too heavy for what was, again we note, a children’s story. Not that the old man didn’t go ahead and kill off everyone in the world–literally, in every sense of the word–in the very next book. Shrug. What’re ya gonna do?
He killed everyone in Narnia and every living protagonist of the prior books except for Susan. And I have a sneaking suspicion that, though Susan was probably not on the train with the other Pevensies, she was in a sense dead in the last chapter.
You mean Aragorn. 
Yes, see, that bugs me. Also people calling Digory "Eustace.’
I hope I’m not being too dense here. My take on it, though, is simply that Aslan is currently agreeing that she will not forget the weakness of her friend, and is overstepping for the moment - for plot movement, time, giving wounded trust a chance to heal - the issue of forgiveness. Lucy being who she is, Aslan doubtless knows she will decide to forgive her friend, but perhaps one can forgive, truly forgive, and yet not forget.
But that’s a lot to read into just a quick dialog exchange, I admit.
I think it’s a fair point to make that forgiveness doesn’t always mean forgetting. Even should Lucy and the girl in question actually have some future friendship, this event is something that will have a strong effect on how that friendship develops. Forgiveness after all means more than simply saying “Oh, don’t worry about it”.
Aragorn isn’t even a viewpoint character, and he gets much less stage time than any of the four hobbits.
Someone who isn’t me should start a thread arguing about who the protagonist of LotR is.
Also, everyone should remember that when Aslan said that, Lucy had maybe 3 more years to live. Would it have been kinder for Aslan to say “Lucy, my child. ‘great friends all our lives’ means about 3 more years for you. You will not find it in your heart in those three years before you die to forgive and rebuild your friendship”?
Much better for Aslan to say “Better not to speculate” in fancy language.
As I recall, Lewis did not envision the writing of the latter four books when he wrote the first three. Thus, I doubt he knew Lucy was going to die at 16.
The question isn’t “What did Lewis know and when did he know it”, it’s “Did the resoluotion of Magician’s Nephew” seem like a cop-out to you" and for me, it didn’t because of my reasoning above.
I agree with Lissla Lissar. It’s a well-earned ending for Diggory, and a bittersweet one for those of us who couldn’t earn a similar ending no matter how much we wished it to be so.
(Obviously my feelings on this are skewed greatly by the early death of my own mom. I wept at the end of TMN when I first read it in my early 20s, and still weep, thinking about it.)
TMN was comfort food for me in the wake of my mother’s death, particularly since her name was Mabel as well.