Been a while for me, too, but didn't they find their way back by accident?

Susan was not the sharpest bulb.

Not only that but in the books they live there until they are adults and have forgotten about the real world. They rediscover the wardrobe while hunting. When they leave narnia the become kids again with all their memories intact.

If they were escaping war, they sure did fight a lot in Narnia. And escaping the war has multiple layers in that lots of children were sent away from cities to safer places in the countryside as well as the escapism of Narnia. In the end they also escaped life via train crash, though that's beside the point.

This will give some of the context for the backdrop of the war.

There's a big trend in recent isekai to just outright kill the character at the beginning. So, you're either reincarnated into another world or your soul is snatched upon death and body recreated in the other world as an explanation for why the character isn't spending their whole time just trying to get back, but I do think that would be an interesting angle to explore.

Old isekai had the MC want to go home. Modern isekai has the MC wanting to start over and stay in their new world. You can chart the change based on how dissolutioned young adults are about the Japanese Dream of stable employment and raising a family.

The fantastic book series Magic Kingdom For Sale is basically about this. I started reading what I assumed would be a lighthearted comedy and it literally opens with our main character lost in alcoholic depression because of an awful tragedy. The fantasy land he's sent to is hostile, but it provides him enough hope to fight for a better world there.

I'm aware of a few early isekai works from like the 80's to 90's (Dunbine, Elf Hunter, and quite a few western Choose Your Own Adventure books and pulp novels fall into this category). It seems to be that as a trend, the premise is that the main character wants to get back to the "real" world and that usually drives the main plot.

Then theres a big trend of Isekai light novels (and related anime etc) in the later 2000’s to today. These almost exclusively seem to feature characters who just want to live a life in their new fantasy world. Literal escapism, even. Konosuba is notable for being very popular, maybe being around the start of this trend, and the main character is given a task to complete and be returned to the real world, but he just ignores it.

I guess we can speculate on whether this means people got more miserable in the intervening time.

If I could bring my cat and like 3 other people, I would 100% be like "good luck, losers!" and would never be heard from again lol.

This was me the whole time playing Final Fantasy Tactics Advance

Every character except the main character is MUCH better off in the fantasy realm - the main character's brother is literally crippled and sick in the real world and healthy and robust in the fantasy realm, and the main character still wants to go back to the "real" world. Didn't identify with him at all.

Campfire Cooking is my favorite one of the newer crop of these.

His super power is basically Amazon Grocery. He immediately hides that fact from everyone, tells the people that summoned him he's useless, and leaves the country to live "off grid".

And all that before he even knows how that world works. I'm not even sure he knew he could do other kinds of magic at that point. Natural instinct to GTFO society / authority was something I could identify with

So there's a few problems with that plan:

1. If you leave Narnia, you will eventually forget Narnia. First it's like a dream, then a dream of a dream, and then you just completely forget ever having gone.

2. The same applies in reverse. You will eventually forget Earth and spend your time in Narnia instead.

3. You can't go to Narnia without Aslan taking you there. The Professor, who was infact one of the entities present at the creation of Narnia, tells the Pevensies that they won't be getting back to Narnia through the wardrobe again.

4. Even if you could pass through to Narnia on command, there is a varying degree of time dilation between Narnia and Earth. The entirety of Narnia's 2,555 year existence is compressed into 50 years on Earth, but the first 1000 years of that existence was compressed into the first 40 years of the timeline, and the remaining 1,555 was in that final 10 years. Also, you can spend 10 minutes in Narnia and end up having been gone for weeks on Earth, so the time dilation goes both way and is pretty inconsistent then too.

Yes. They were sent to the countryside to get away from the blitz.