Eustace Clarence Scrubb: a name almost as bad as the boy who wore it. But it was still written in letters of fire on the stones of the sun. And my father and I had planned for this day for a long, long time.

The Just and the Valiant would be too old to come back to Narnia when Rillian needed them. The convergence pattern of circular Narnian time and linear Earth time ensured that. I knew, further, that even if Edmund and Lucy had been young enough, they would not be when the Ape wreaked his havoc. I needed other humans, and the only names still bright on the sun stones were those of Eustace Clarence Scrubb and a timid girl named Jill Pole.

So Eustace came, blubbing about Plumptree's Vitaminised Nerve Food made with distilled water. And Eustace stayed, stealing water rations and threatening Reepicheep. And Eustace wandered off, becoming the one thing that he truly was already: a dragon, Lord Octesian's heir. And I intervened, changing a boy's dragonish nature, now humbled, to that of a worthy man.