Aslan is the great lion and creator figure in C.S. Lewis’s Narnia books.
Aslan first appears in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, published in 1950. He is the principal royal and moral figure of Narnia, and the other characters treat him with a mixture of love, awe, and fear. His name is derived from the Turkish word for “lion.”
Aslan creates Narnia by singing in The Magician’s Nephew, which was published later but is set earlier in the fictional chronology. He also gives his life to save Edmund in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and returns to life, an episode that deliberately uses Christian imagery without making the novel a direct retelling of the Gospels.
Readers sometimes mistake Tumnus, Caspian, or Rilian for the central figure because each is important in a different Narnia story. Tumnus is a faun, Caspian is a king, and Rilian is a prince. Aslan is the recurring lion who appears across the series.