Although C. S. Lewis first imagined the world of Narnia in 1939, he didn’t finish writing the first book in his Chronicles of Narnia series until a decade later. Now, 70 years after the original publication of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Lewis’s stories still capture the imagination of both children and adults.

The most fascinating character in the series is Aslan (the Turkish word for “lion”). Although Aslan is often seen as a “Christ figure,” Lewis explained in a letter to a fifth-grade class that Aslan is not meant simply to “represent” Jesus. “Let us suppose,” Lewis wrote, “that there were a land like Narnia and that the Son of God, as He became a Man in our world, became a Lion there, and then imagine what would happen.” Although Aslan is the only character to appear in all seven books, he never appeared in the first draft of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. “At first I had very little idea how the story would go,” Lewis wrote. “But then suddenly Aslan came bounding into it.”

It’s hard imagine a world without Aslan—either in Narnia or in our own. In honor of the recent anniversary, Dan DeWitt looks at “Aslan’s Legacy at 70,” and what the character has meant to Lewis’s readers. “Lewis wasn’t just trying to sell books or entertain readers,” DeWitt observes. “His narrative was pointing somewhere.”