BY TEODORA DRISCU

In a traditional fairy-tale, the good always triumphs over the evil, which is completely destroyed and condemned to eternal damnation or forgetfulness. However, the realists have always complained about this black-and-white perspective on life and have adopted more down-to-earth paradigms for their heroes. History itself contradicts this radical outlook on reality, giving us the example of antagonists that have passed through a deep process of repentance, such as King David or St. Paul. These historical figures show us that no matter the level of corruption and sinfulness, every person can rise above their condition and invert the traditional course of history—from fall to creation, or better said, re-creation.

C. S. Lewis and Russell Kirk are two authors who engaged with the fantasy genre in a religious sense, putting much emphasis on repentance. The redeemed villain is a motif they both incorporated in their stories, for similar purposes: to show that appearances deceive and reality is often deeper than people might consider, or, in Biblical terms, people’s and God’s ways are not the same: “My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord” (Isaiah 55:8–9 NRSVA). A matter of high importance should be clarified: why would a villain need to be redeemed? In general, we tend to perceive the antagonists as characters delighting in their own mischief, having a sense of accomplishment from inflicting evil upon others. Nevertheless, what if in some cases this was not the norm? What if some villains thought they were actually working for the greater good, being all the while in the dark about the truth? What if some antagonists were in fact protagonists under cover, in a blessing-in-disguise manner? This article will argue that this is the case in two works of fiction that put forward the idea of the redeemed villain: the novel The Last Battle by C. S. Lewis and the short story “The Last God’s Dream” by Russell Kirk.

C. S. Lewis is renowned for the multitude of examples of repentance in his stories. From John in The Pilgrim’s Regress, to the patient in The Screwtape Letters, many bright spirits in The Great Divorce, Jane and Mark Studdock in That Hideous Strength, to many characters in the more renowned Chronicles of Narnia (with the famous instances of Edmund in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Eustace in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader), to name but a few, the British writer seems to be the apologist of repentance and of great inner conversions.

A notable case in point that is slightly different from the ones above is Emeth from The Last Battle (1956), the last book of the Chronicles. A Calormene soldier, “the seventh son of Harpa Tarkaan of the city of Tehishbaan” (Lewis The Last Battle 161), Emeth is an often-ignored redeemed villain in Lewisian scholarship, since he is neither a classic antagonist nor a main character who fundamentally changes the plot. However, he is worth analysing for numerous reasons, especially in view of the unexpected verdict that he gets in the Narnian Last Judgment.

Emeth is completely enchanted by the idea of god, worshipping him with all his might. However, his god is not Aslan, the true divinity, but Tash, the embodiment of the devil in the novel under scrutiny. He comes to Narnia in order to destroy it, under the orders of Rishda Tarkaan. The Calormenes are the enemies of the Narnians, being described as evil men that have no sensitivity for nature or for talking beasts and all they intend is to industrialize this enchanted realm, depriving it of all its charm and beauty. Thus, Emeth is a villain, a representative of the antagonist forces that work for the annihilation of the land we love and admire. Nonetheless, with what conscience is Emeth doing that? Does he listen to orders with a clear mind that he is on the dark side, working against the true God just for the sake of wrong-doing? Is he a devil-type of character, pure evil, like Satan who knew exactly who God was when he decided to raise his throne “above the stars of God” and to be “like the Most High” (Isaiah 14:13, 14 NRSVA)? The answer is revealed in his actions.

This Calormene soldier has always desired to meet God: “For always since I was a boy, I have served Tash and my great desire was to know more of him and, if it might be, to look upon his face” (Lewis The Last Battle 162). With a pure heart and a noble spirit, he is willing to go to great lengths in order to meet the love of his life, including to go into the stable the ape maliciously designed for the perdition of Narnians. He views this as a chance to finally meet the one he has been yearning for, even though this would mean to embrace death. His excitement at this prospect is both marvelous and confounding: “gladly would I die a thousand deaths if I might look once on the face of Tash” (Lewis The Last Battle 111). Emeth is therefore a true seeker of the divine, but he has sought on erroneous ways his entire life, mostly because of the customs and the religion of his country. Not having any other option than Tash and believing that this god is actually the embodiment of beauty, truth, goodness and everything that his pure soul desired, he gave to Tash all that was due to the real God. In other words, he firmly believed he was serving the right side, against the oppression of Aslan, whom he viewed as the enemy. His story resembles very much that of St. Paul the Apostle. They both believed they were doing good deeds, serving the truth, when actually they were far from it.

What Lewis does in this case is remarkable: he does not look at appearances, but at the character’s heart. Emeth goes into the stable to meet the god of his aspirations, he dies as a result and the next time we learn of him he is in Aslan’s country, which is a symbol for Heaven: “The others followed where the Dogs led them and found a young Calormene sitting under a chestnut tree beside a clear stream of water. It was Emeth” (Lewis The Last Battle 159). How could this be possible? Only because “the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7 NRSVA). What is more, the author uses this idea in the construction of his Last Judgment scene, when he makes the main criterion of dividing the talking beasts the way they look at Aslan: those that feel love towards him are sent to his right, an equivalent of paradise, while those that feel hatred go to his left, to eternal damnation. Like a true biblical writer, he leaves room for the mystery of the divine ways, giving his readers only glimpses of how he envisions life after death.

Russell Kirk, an American political philosopher and writer, has among his vast literary works a short story that addresses the same issue, entitled “The Last God’s Dream” (1979). The story imagines a couple traveling in Split, the capital of Croatia, receiving a tour of Roman ruins by Manfred Arcane, an international adventurer who recalls a dream in which he traveled backward in time to meet a Roman emperor. Its main aim seems to be to rehabilitate the image of Emperor Diocletian, imagining some scenes with him and Arcane in which Diocletian repents for his sins to the point that he admits: “I have failed in living; I shall not fail in dying” (Kirk 102). An emperor renowned mostly for his harsh persecutions against Christians (303-311 AD), Diocletian is generally regarded in the Christian world as a villain, because of whom the blood of many martyrs was shed. It is definitely not an easy task to redeem this historical figure, especially since there are no proofs to attest his change of attitude towards the ones he oppressed throughout his life. However, Kirk seems to have a good strategy to bring a positive tone to the remembrance of this personality. He highlights the emperor’s achievements, such as his political reforms that brought peace to the empire, his architectural legacy (especially the Mausoleum in Split) and his strength of character of relinquishing power when he felt he cannot rule anymore. The apology of this famous leader is delivered in many of Arcane’s comments throughout the story, invoking different reasons why Diocletian was so severe, such as the context of that age: “men of good intentions and some talents, compelled by necessity to be harsh in a bent time” (Kirk 112). An interesting aspect that can also be remarked here is the mention of the word “bent”, with the meaning of corrupted, perverted, that C. S. Lewis used in his Ransom Trilogy when he referred to sinful people as “Bent creatures”, claiming they are “full of fears” (Lewis Out of the Silent Planet 105).

Another way to advocate for the rehabilitation of Diocletian was to state that he might have repented in the afterlife, after his eyes were finally opened to the truth. This is what Manfred Arcane’s vision suggests. Camilo Peralta attempts to explain his theory in his article “Timeless Moments: Russell Kirk, Charles Williams, and Stephen King on the Afterlife,” referring to Kirk’s idea of timeless moments, through which time would be abolished and a possible repentance of Diocletian might be valid: “If, as they believe, we experience the afterlife every day, […] then there is no reason to believe that anyone in Hell is doomed to remain there forever” (117).1 Kirk’s inclusivist theory of salvation resembles Lewis’s approach to salvation in The Last Battle, but also the works of Scottish theologian George MacDonald, whom Kirk praised alongside Lewis in his essay “A Cautionary Note on the Ghostly Tale” (Gurion 402–403).

Perhaps the most convincing tactic used in the short story is the allusion to the Last Judgment, in a similar fashion to Lewis. Arcane asks his listeners, “And is Diocletian, a man just and pious according to his ancient lights, damned because he did not understand the New Dispensation? […] God knows what we cannot—the heart. By that knowledge He judges” (Kirk 113). He holds the same belief about the deceptive character of appearances and the possibility that God’s judgment be utterly different from what we presume, leaving place for the mysterious component of a man’s heart: his inclinations, passions, reasons for doing a certain deed.

The two stories use similar literary devices in which onlookers hear a storyteller (Lucy listening to Emeth describe his encounter with Aslan, the traveling couple hearing Arcane describe his encounter with Diocletian) who also discusses the final fate of these men who seem to be damned. It can also be clearly noticed that Emeth and Emperor Diocletian have much in common as personalities. Before delving into their similarities, it is worth noting the significant difference that the former is a fictional character, devoid of any real past, so of any possible prejudices, and the latter is a renowned historical figure, which brings its share of various reactions to his legacy. Both these characters were villains (either in a fictional realm or in real life), having done considerable harm to the good forces. They worked to destroy something of inestimable value: the land of Narnia and the Christian religion. Their activity was thus against the creed of the authors who wrote about them, as C. S. Lewis was a famous Christian apologist and Russell Kirk a Roman Catholic convert.

However, Emeth and Diocletian are both redeemed by the very people we would expect would condemn them. The main ground for this is their truthfulness in serving the moral law under which they have been raised. Emeth was devastating Narnia with the conviction that he was serving his leader and through him, his god, Tash, the embodiment of his longings, while Emperor Diocletian was devout to the Roman pagan religion, persecuting Christians because they undermined the cult of his ancestors and the values that he cherished. Both of them thought they were defending the good side, working for a noble cause, when in fact they were doing the reverse. Emeth’s heart was consecrated to the most noble aspirations, such as seeing the face of God, being willing to sacrifice his life for this aim. As for Diocletian, history does not tell us, since no one can truly know, but Kirk implies that this was also his case, as he was serving his Roman deities by accepting the infamous persecutions.

To put it in a nutshell, the subject of the redeemed villain resonates deeply in our hearts, as it tests our capacity for mercy and forgiveness on a large scale, requiring an opening of the heart to the true Christian commandments and an elevation of the mind to the lofty heights of our Creator. Of the two characters under study, the true difficulty lies in accepting Kirk’s implication, for to love a fictional character is much easier than a real one. Diocletian is the harder to defend of the two, since in hundreds of years so much has been written about him. Will God at the Last Judgment say the same thing to Emperor Diocletian that Aslan said to Emeth when he met him in Heaven: “I take to me the services which thou hast done to him, for I and he are of such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him” (Lewis The Last Battle 165)? Will history remember him differently, now that he was so astutely defended by an important personality of American conservatism? Will Christians cease from judging him because of his terrible deeds, thinking of a possible repentance or a resemblance to the redeemed Lewisian character? Time will tell. How much can one forgive? How much can God forgive? How much will He forgive? None would dare claim to know the answer. We can only hope that He indeed does not judge as we do, for His ways are not like ours.

Editor Footnotes

1 Editor’s Note: Peralta discusses Kirk’s treatment of salvation in “The Last God’s Dream” with further details on the Lewis Carroll-inspired imagery in an article co-written with Blaine McCormick. See “‘The Last God’s Dream’: Russell Kirk’s Moment of Truth” in Works Cited.

Works Cited:

Gurion, Vigen (editor). Ancestral Shadows: An Anthology of Ghostly Tales by Russell Kirk. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2004.

Kirk, Russell. The Princess of All Lands. Sauk City: Arkham House, 1979.

Lewis, C. S. Out of the Silent Planet. Québec: Samizdat, 2015.

—. The Last Battle. New York: Scholastic Inc., 1988.

Peralta, Camilo. “Timeless Moments: Russell Kirk, Charles Williams, and Stephen King on the Afterlife.” Mythlore: A Journal of J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Charles Williams and Mythopoeic Literature vol. 42, no. 2 (Spring 2024): 103–120. https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol42/iss2/7/.

— with Blaine McCormick. “‘The Last God’s Dream’: Russell Kirk’s Moment of Truth.” The Imaginative Conservative, 28 August 2025. Retrieved 5 September 2025. https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2025/08/last-gods-dream-russell-kirk-moment-truth-blaine-mccormick-camilo-peralta.html.

The Bible – New Revised Standard Version, Anglicised. Retrieved August 2025. https://www.biblegateway.com/.

About the Author:

Teodora Driscu received a PhD in English Literature from the Alexandru Ioan Cuza University in Iași, Romania, in 2025 for her thesis on archetypes of death and immortality in C. S. Lewis’s fiction. Her other work on Lewis includes an essay on Lewis and modernism for Linguaculture, an essay on death in The Last Battle for Inklings-Jahrbuch für Literatur und Ästhetik, and presentations at various conferences, including the Sixth International Interdisciplinary Conference, “C. S. Lewis: The Re-Enchanted Academic,” at the University of Iași in 2023.