Peter's past

New art! I commissioned this pic just this week from my friend J8d, and as always he delivered ^_^

A while back, I got to thinking about exactly how long Peter might've been living in Neverland. Wendy comes from England in about the time that the story was first written, 1904. And well, Hook is a pirate who wants to kill Peter and return to the Spanish Main (an area off the eastern US coast rich in materials). But the Spanish Main was almost entirely depleted by 1700, having been repeatedly looted by pirate ships. So this means that Hook has been in Neverland for at least 200 years! But when Hook arrived, Peter Pan was already there, and looking no different than he does by the time Wendy arrives (if he did, I think Hook would've noticed if he was noticeably aging, even slowly...)

So Peter has been in Neverland for a bare minimum of 200 years. And if the story "Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens" is to be taken as linked to the more popular story involving Peter Pan, then he arrived in Neverland at the age of 7 days old. The only time he would ever age would be during his many brief visits back to England to listen to bedtime stories or take lost children away with him, or to find a mother. So even then, he would age very little compared to most others, and might have been in Neverland for centuries and centuries. If not millennia.

And thus I come to the idea behind this commission I asked J8d to draw me.

Wendy (the Fox's cartoon series version) is exploring Neverland on her own, presumably Peter got bored and flew off to have another adventure somewhere else again. And she comes across a cave, deep in the oldest parts of Neverland, where it seems others have been before. Asking Tinkerbell later, Wendy discovers that the names carved on the walls of that cave are of all the many girls whom Peter has brought to Neverland before Wendy, to be his "mother"....dozens of girls, years, maybe decades apart.

And in particular, one name leaps out at little Wendy Darling. The name "Molly Aster"....the name of Wendy's own mother*.

And Tinkerbell tells her all about how, once every generation or so, Peter returns to England to find a girl to be his new "mother". Meaning Wendy, Wendy's mother, her grandmother, her great-grandmother....just thinking about it is enough to make Wendy dizzy. So many names, so many generations...! But he can't remember things for very long, and so he thinks he's only been in Neverland for a few years. And each time, the girl is the eldest daughter of the girl he took before, drawn back to the same family through magic. Drawn back, somehow, to the descendants of his own younger sister, who was born after he first flew away to Neverland!



Anyway, this is just one possible idea to explain how long Peter has been there and what he does. I just made this up myself. xD

This version of Wendy is from Fox's "Peter Pan and the Pirates" and so belongs to TMS Entertainment if I recall correctly. (although her outfit has been altered here slightly at my request to make it look more summery)
"Peter Pan" (aka "Peter & Wendy" is © to Great Ormond Street Hospital.
This lovely artwork is courtesy of J8d

*Mary "Molly" Aster is the maiden name attributed to Wendy's mother in the Starcatchers prequels (of which "Peter and the Starcatchers" is the first).