The Pevensie kids are homo sapiens children of WW II England, though they spend most of their screen-time (and alternate lives) in Narnia, where they are royalty. The children's realization that their last visit was 1,300 years earlier is moving, even poetic. "Prince Caspian" takes place centuries after the vanquishing of the titular witch in part one. It is never quite clear, though, who exactly the Narnians are. They're definitely not a species or a race because they include leopards, badgers, dwarves (they're called "dwarves" in the credits, not "little people"), giants, rhinoceroses, unicorns and mice (many of whom are conversant in English) -- but not, as you may recall from the first film, tigers, wolves, cyclopses, miniature Huns or two-legged yaks, all of whom are unaccountably but virulently anti-Narnian.
Now it's Prince Caspian (Ben Barnes, with his indefinable Mediterranean accent -- more Spanish than Italian) who must return from exile to claim the throne, and although he's a Son of Adam (human), he's not a Narnian, he's a Telmarine. And we don't really know what that is, either.
The larger question remains: Why, really, do the Narnians need some anti-democratic, monarchy-loving European Son of Adam to lead them, to protect them, to fulfill their prophecies? Why can't the Narnians just lead themselves?
It's just too bad that the computer-generated bands of warriors grow tedious and conjure memories of The Lord of the Rings, which managed those hugely choreographed clashes more adeptly than any movie in history.
Though the movie could have ended a few scenes earlier, it is still a journey well worth taking.
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