Aslan is the great lion and son of the Emperor-Beyond-the-Sea in C.S. Lewis’s Narnia books.
Aslan is the central guiding figure across The Chronicles of Narnia. He creates Narnia in The Magician’s Nephew, gives counsel to its inhabitants, and repeatedly appears at moments when characters must choose courage, loyalty, or repentance. His authority comes from his identity as Narnia’s creator and king.
Readers often connect Aslan with Christian symbolism, particularly because of his sacrificial death and return in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Lewis discussed the religious meaning of his fiction, but Aslan remains a character within the imaginative world rather than a simple one-to-one translation of a theological figure.
Aslan should not be confused with Peter Pevensie, the human High King of Narnia, or Prince Caspian, another important human ruler. The name comes from the Turkish word for “lion.”