Orual is the central narrator and 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 older sister. Orual is the queen of the fictional kingdom of Glome, and she presents her life as an accusation against the gods.
The novel explores love, jealousy, religious belief, identity, and the difficulty of seeing oneself honestly. Its title comes from the idea that people cannot truly confront one another—or the divine—until they have developed a genuine face or self.
Psyche is crucial to the plot, but she is not the narrator. Lewis’s version deliberately changes the emphasis of the classical story by giving Orual a complex interior voice and making her interpretation of events central. The book was Lewis’s final completed novel.