Orual is the central figure of C.S. Lewis’s novel Till We Have Faces.
Published in 1956, the novel retells the ancient myth of Cupid and Psyche from the perspective of Psyche’s older sister, Orual. Orual is the ruler of the fictional kingdom of Glome, and she narrates the story as a personal confession and accusation against the gods.
Psyche remains crucial to the plot, but she is not the novel’s narrator or central viewpoint character. Lewis’s choice to tell the myth through Orual allows him to examine jealousy, possessive love, self-knowledge, and the difficulty of seeing other people clearly.
Till We Have Faces was Lewis’s last completed novel. Its title points toward the book’s concern with identity and honest self-examination, themes that distinguish it from the children’s fantasy of Narnia and the science fiction of the Ransom Trilogy.