Orual is the central human protagonist of C.S. Lewis’s Till We Have Faces.
Published in 1956, the novel retells the ancient myth of Cupid and Psyche from the perspective of Psyche’s sister. Orual is the first-person narrator and eventually becomes queen of the fictional kingdom of Glome. Her account examines love, possessiveness, jealousy, identity, and the difficulty of seeing oneself honestly.
Psyche is the beautiful sister at the center of the myth, but the novel’s unusual viewpoint belongs to Orual. Lewis transformed the classical story rather than simply retelling it, giving the narrator political responsibilities and a long personal history.
The title comes from the novel’s concern with self-knowledge and honest speech. Orual’s movement toward understanding is represented through the image of having a face: a recognizable self capable of truth. The book is Lewis’s last completed novel.