Legends Summarized: King Arthur

Everyone knows something about King Arthur, whether you watched Sword in the Stone as a child, listened to Camelot as an adult, or simply lived in a part of the world where Britain briefly ruled, you know King Arthur. But if you've ever tried to delve into King Arthur to find some sort of canon for the story, you've probably been confused and disappointed. Maybe you read somewhere that Merlin aged backwards, but couldn't find any evidence to support it. Maybe you wanted to know more about the Holy Grail and ended up reading 50 pages about some Fisher King. Perhaps you wanted to know the sordid story of Arthur and Morgan Le Fay's secret meeting, which produced the treacherous Mordred, and were stunned to find no connection between Mordred and Morgan.

In any case, while the Arthurian myth is widespread and most people have at least some knowledge of the basic structure of the story, when you start pulling at the threads, the whole thing begins to lose its coherence. So what is the Arthurian canon and, more importantly, do we care? To begin, we must talk about the historical context of King Arthur: the time period in which he is believed to have existed and the events and achievements for which he is generally credited. But since tal

king

about history gives me hives, I asked Blue to do it for me.

Blue? Blue: At the end of the year 400 AD. C., after the Germanic incursions and the fall of Rome, the power structure was quite dispersed. And a handful of German warlords ruled over an ethnically mixed Latin and German European population. In terms of this division, Britain was in the non-Latin corner because Rome had territory there for only a few centuries, although it was still predominantly Christian. When the Roman Empire disappeared, there was a fierce struggle over who would fill the various power vacuums that had emerged. In Britain, the main conflict at the time was between the local quasi-Roman Britons and a series of raids by the Angles and Saxons (Germanic tribes from nearby Scandinavia who arrived several centuries before the Vi

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s).

You may recognize some of these names from the word "England", which is "Engla-Land", and also from places like Essex and Sussex - East and South Saxony. So our friend Artie, according to the few sources we have, was probably one of those quasi-Roman Britons who fought against the Scandinavian invasions. That said, the sources are pretty spotty, so we don't even know if this guy actually existed. He could be an exaggerated version of a real historical figure, as some historians suspect, or he could, like most superheroes, be 100% fictional and then simply set in a real-world setting. But whoever inspired King Arthur, the bottom line is that he had a serious problem with the Angles and Saxons.

Red: Thanks friend. So now that we've got the historical Arthur stuff out of the way, let's talk about the Arthur stuff retold. The first written accounts of King Arthur date back to the mid-20th century in the Annales Cambriae, and are really short and meaningless. One claims that Arthur won the Battle of Baton in 516 AD, and the other claims that Arthur and Mordred fell at the Battle of Camlann in 537 AD. and that there was death and destruction in Britain and Ireland. Unsurprisingly, this isn't much to go on. It doesn't tell us who Arthur and Mordred are or how they are connected.

It doesn't say who they are fighting, whether they are fighting each other or whether they are on the same side. Technically it doesn't even tell us if Arthur and Mordred died. And considering that this story was written about 400 years after Arthur's death, we're already starting with fairly ahistorical source material. The first truly written Arthurian histories began in the early 12th century with Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia regem Britanniae: a Latinized pseudohistory of Britain that begins with Brutus as the first king of Britannia and ends with Cadwallader, a king almost certainly you've never heard of. before because king lines tend to fade once hero kings die.

In the middle of the story all of Arthur's things happen. Geoffrey of Monmouth is practically responsible for the basis of the Arthurian legend, which everyone agrees on. He's got Merlin, Guinevere, Mordred as a traitor, Excalibur, the Battle of Camlann, the Isle of Avalon, that sort of thing. So, according to Geoffrey, the basic timeline is this: Uther Pendragon, king of Britannia, is at war with the Saxons, but he also wants to sleep with Igerna, who is married to Uther's friend Gorlois, the Duke of Cornwall. . Uther and Gorlois go to war over this whole debacle, but Merlin, a wise guy with vaguely defined magical powers, helps Uther fuck Igerna by shapeshifting him to look like Gorlois so he can go behind enemy lines and with another man's wife can do outside.

This is what Arthur happens. Uther then storms the castle and he and Igerna marry and have another daughter named Anna. Uther is then poisoned by the Saxons and dies. Arthur takes the throne at the ripe old age of 15 and spends the next few years conquering a ridiculously large portion of northern Europe, including, but not limited to: Ireland, Iceland, Norway, and Gaul. If you've ever read an Asterix book, you already know that he was dominated by the Roman Empire. So, by conquering Gaul, Arthur has practically declared war on the empire. Blue: What do we get now, Geoffrey?

That's not even slightly credible historically. Red: So Arthur continues to fight against Rome, but while he is away, his cousin Mordred marries Arthur's wife, Guinevere, and usurps the throne. Arthur returns to fight Mordred at the famous Battle of Camlann, and while Mordred dies in battle, Arthur is mortally wounded and taken to the magical island of Avalon to be healed. Geoffrey has previously mentioned Avalon as the place where Arthur's sword, Caliburn, was forged. Caliburn will change to Excalibur in the coming centuries as the word becomes more "French." Geoffrey seems to have gotten the name Caliburn by Latinizing a Welsh word (which I don't expect to pronounce correctly, but it's spelled that way), which could also simply be an archaic word for "sword." At this point, Caliburn isn't fancy or magical or anything like that.

It is simply a very good sword. Geoffrey portrays Arthur as a conquering king, Merlin as a classical druid, Mordred as a traitor who usurps the throne, Excalibur as Arthur's beautiful sword, and Guinevere as Arthur's wife. But Geoffrey barely managed to publish Historia regum Britanniae before people started writing fanfics about it. The first ones were written just a few decades later by Chrétien De Troyes, a French poet whose name I can't pronounce either, who wants to show an OC that he is super proud of. Maybe you've already heard of the character. Does Lancelot sound familiar to you?

Yes. Lancelot "World's Finest Knight" Du Lac, an exiled prince who was raised by the Lady of the Lake in her magical fairy kingdom, who is super handsome and completely unbeatable and all the girls like him and he gets her too. girl instead of Arthur, is the original character (Don't Steal). He tried to contain his shocked disbelief. So Chrétien is actually responsible for some important Arthurian elements outside of Lancelot. He introduced the Lancelot-Guinevere romantic subplot, and also introduced the Grail, although it is still not the Holy Grail. We'll get to that in a moment, because the Lancelot-Guinevere relationship is a major theme in all later versions of the myth, and is generally seen as a reason for Camelot's eventual demise.

But in Chrétien's version, the romance between Lancelot and Guinevere doesn't look bad at all. It's a beautiful, secret love story that's not even the slightest bit wrong and how the hell did that happen? We must understand one thing: courtly love was just beginning in France at this time. Courtly love is a little complicated. It's kind of an amalgamation of a number of different ideas about love, none of which originate in France or even Western Europe. Those ideas about love are respectively: love for love's sake, that is, the idea that love in itself is reason enough to pursue the whole thing, which also includes the idea that it is morally wrong to be in love with someone who married with someone. the rest is conveniently avoided.

The elevation of the Beloved Lady, who treats the lady in question as her personal goddess. Think of “as you wish” from The Princess Bride as an example of how this works. The ennobling power of love, the idea that being in love makes you more noble, spiritually enlightened or something. And love is desire that will never be fulfilled, the idea that courtly love can go nowhere. You just have to remain in a perpetual state of mutual desire until one of you dies or the whole thing becomes public and falls apart. One of the reasons courtly love arose in France around this time was that the First Crusade had just ended and all the French crusaders were returning home, bringing with them some very interesting cultural ideas.

Furthermore, the Reconquista was in full swing, causing a similar cultural hemorrhage into France from Islamic Spain. The four elements of courtly love can easily be traced back to contemporary Islamic and Arab views on love. Love for love's sake and the exaltation of the beloved lady are themes of Arabic literature of the 9th and 10th centuries, while Avicenna discusses in detail the ennobling power of love in his Treatise on Love from the early 11th century, and love as Never wishing to be fulfilled is an important theme in Arabic poetry, as is the general idea that love is something that completes a person and is indeed a form of enlightenment, which is also reflected in courtly love.

Courtly love became big in France and as a result, Chrétien wrote many courtly love stories, all of them about Lancelot and Guinevere. In the first story in which they appear together, Lancelot saves Guinevere from a villain, Meleagant, they spend a passionate night together and lead to a classic courtly love, in which in fact it is a very careful dance to avoid being discovered, while they are still quite in love with each other. Lancelot has to go through all kinds of tests to defend Guinevere's honor, Guinevere at one point tells him to deliberately lose a tournament to prove his love for her, but when he starts losing she says "I changed my mind" and ends . by hugging them very gently in public.

Although the secrecy of their relationship is a priority, it is never said that they are to blame for maintaining that relationship. Guinevere is married to Arthur, but she is in love with Lancelot. A very classic courtly love setup. Lancelot and Guinevere slept together even though Guinevere was married, and this was justified by love for love's sake, and all of this actually made Lancelot more noble instead of less through the ennobling part of love. And of course, since they could never be together, they got the last part right: their love could never be realized. We will return to the problems this caused later.

Chrétien and also introduced the concept of the Grail: in the story of the Fisher King, which you may have also heard of. The entire story of the Fisher King is that he is a king who has been injured in a very unfortunate place and, as a result, cannot have children. This negatively affects his kingdom, which becomes a wasteland due to the king's infertility. A knight named Percival encounters the Fisher King and is invited to a banquet, but is warned not to talk too much. While he is there, he sees a procession of people carrying strange things, such as a bleeding spear and a candelabra, and finally a girl carrying a Grail.

Afterwards, one of the courtiers angrily tells him that if he had simply asked who the Grail was for and why the spear was bleeding, the Fisher King's wound would have healed and everyone would have been saved. Percival then has to go on many quests to right his wrong, although Chrétien angrily did not finish this story, so we don't get a resolution until later writers write that Percival returns and cures the Fisher King. The next large part of Arthurian literature is probably also one of the most famous: it is called the Vulgate Cycle, written in the early 13th century and, among other things, does much to Christianize the myths, adding things like the part " Holy" in The Holy Grail and things like adultery have consequences for Lancelot's personal character arc.

The Vulgate cycle also produces Le Morte d'Arthur, written by Thomas Malory a few centuries later, which contains basically the same stories, but slightly rewritten for clarity. For starters, before the Vulgate Cycle was written, this guy Robert of Boran wrote a poem about Merlin that developed his backstory. And the poem was lost, but it was transcribed into prose and included in the Vulgate, so we still know what it said. The Borans went far in Christianizing Merlin's backstory. Before this, Merlin had been deliberately mysterious. It was based largely on two quasi-historical figures: a mad prophet and a bard called something Welsh that I can't hope to pronounce but that's how it's spelled, and the other Aurelius Ambrosius,a mysterious wise man of unclear origins.

Boran throws that out the window and turns Merlin into the Antichrist. Or rather, an attempted antichrist. A group of demons sent an incubus to impregnate a virgin. But the virgin objected, she told her confessor, and the two baptized the baby Merlin and saved him from a possible antichrist. His demonic heritage gave him some useful superpowers, such as shape-shifting and perfect knowledge of the past and present, but he also gained the power of prophecy from God, which brings him closer to omniscience. Boran also expanded Merlin's mythic role in Arthur's upbringing, from "orchestrating his conception" of him to "counseling him throughout his childhood and adulthood", making Merlin a more permanent presence in Arthur's life.

The Vulgate Cycle also introduces the concept that Arthur was not known as the son and heir of Uther Pendragon, and that he had to prove his identity by pulling Excalibur from an anvil. So this is also the origin of the sword in the stone concept. In this version, Merlin's story ends either quite tragically or hilariously, depending on your perspective. He falls in love with a lady, Niviane, who has incredibly little interest in him and is upset by his perseverance, his old age, and his demonic origins. When Merlin won't leave her alone, Niviane asks him to teach her everything she knows about magic, and when she does, she uses her new powers to lock him away so he will leave her alone.

Points for problem solving. Anyway, on top of all that, we also pay more attention to Arthur's knights when we get to the quest for the Holy Grail, which also features Galahad: the illegitimate son of Lancelot and Elaine, who, because Lancelot was a man For a woman, he magically became Guinevere so that he could sleep with her. Galahad is basically Lancelot, but better. Better like “don't sleep with another man's wife.” Galahad begins his act of being better than Lancelot by sitting in a chair that only the Grail Knight can sit on; otherwise, he will die. Galahad, who does not die, is recognized as the Knight of the Grail, and therefore the one who will find the Holy Grail.

He also pulls a magic sword out of a stone, simply because it wasn't symbolic enough yet. Knights participate in jousts and festivals and some people said that Galahad is a lot like Lancelot, but better. And that night, everyone has a vision of the Holy Grail covered by a cloth, which also causes a bunch of food to appear out of nowhere. Gawain declares that he really wants to see the Grail, and this causes 150 of Arthur's knights to decide to go in search of the Grail, which Arthur thinks is a bad idea and blames Gawain. So Lancelot, Galahad, Gawain, Percival, and Bors, along with 145 other knights who are considerably more expendable, independently search for the Grail.

And by the way, this Percival is the same Percival who also appeared in the previous Grail story, basically included in the story as the previous candidate for the Grail Knight so that Galahad can also be shown to be cooler than him. But besides showing how cool Galahad is, the whole story really tries to make clear how NOT cool Lancelot is, because almost every step in the search for him is another God-given sign that he is not worthy of seeing the Grail. This culminates when he arrives at the Grail chamber, which fires a fireball at him, rendering him unconscious for three and a half weeks.

Galahad, who has spent his time fighting villains, rescuing maidens, repairing swords with a single touch, and healing the Fisher King (because, oh yeah, that still exists), finally arrives at the Grail with Percival and Bors in tow, where in that moment, after several pranks, Galahad is taken to heaven by a choir of angels and the Grail is never seen again. Lancelot, having learned a valuable lesson about his sinful behavior, decides to stop the adultery: a decision that lasts until the next time he sees Guinevere. What we see here is the clash between the concept of courtly love as a good thing and the concept of being faithful to one's spouse as a good thing, creating a sort of strange moral conflict as a result of these two contradictory views of what love and trust are. love. marriage should really mean.

Anyway, in addition to all that Lancelot drama, we also get some major developments in Morgan Le Fay's character. We haven't talked about her yet because she hasn't really been important until now, although her character already appears in Geoffrey's Story, where she is characterized as the eldest of nine fairy sisters who live in Avalon. She is completely benevolent in that version and is, in fact, the one who heals Arthur while he rests in Avalon. Chrétien introduced the idea of ​​Morgan being Arthur's sister, as well as his future rivalry and dislike for Guinevere. And the Vulgate Cycle expands on this by giving it a whole backstory.

In this version, Morgan is King Arthur's older half-sister, and her stepfather Uthor betroths her to an allied king he really doesn't like. Morgan, as a classically rebellious teenager, expresses her displeasure by sleeping with a group of them, but she is caught by Guinevere, marking the beginning of her famous rivalry with both Guinevere and Arthur. Morgan, among other things, is very well educated and teaches astronomy, astrology, magic, healing, etc. She studies with Merlin for a time, but mostly spends her time devising very complicated magical plans to overthrow Guinevere and Arthur. One of his most famous attempts, described in "Gawain and the Green Knight," involves summoning an indestructible knight to come to Arthur's court and have his head cut off in the hopes that the shock of his sight will kill Guinevere. in the act. make it fall.

It's all very "Wile E. Coyote." We already touched on this when we talked about the Grail, but throughout the Vulgate Cycle, Guinevere and Lancelot (of course) continue their adventure of courtly love. But probably due to the Christianization of this version of the story, this is treated less like noble courtly love and more like adultery. This version is also the first story in which Mordred discovers his affair, but although he tries to get the other knights to make a fuss, no one does. Basically, Arthur finds out about the whole trap thing from Morgan Le Fae, but it's not actually one of his plans or anything like that.

After a long and varied career trying to destroy Arthur and everything he loves, one day Morgan simply stops and Arthur assumes she is dead, until several years later he stumbles upon her castle and discovers that she does not live alone, but who has She is also completely reformed and plans to move to Avalon to live with all the other sorceresses. While she's there, Morgan decides that she can't keep Lancelot's tryst a secret and shows her the giant painting that Lancelot made while she was in prison there that documents the whole thing, for some reason. Don't know.

Lanzarote is stupid. Anyway, Arthur is very upset, returns to Camelot, starts a big conflict with Lancelot, who flees to Gaul, and while Arthur is away fighting Lancelot, Mordred casually usurps the throne. In this version, Mordred fails to marry Guinevere because she hides from him in the Tower of London, but otherwise the rest goes as expected. Arthur returns, the battle of Camlann, Mordred dies, etc, etc, etc. In this version, Morgan completes her redemption streak by being the first of the sorceresses to arrive to take Arthur to Avalon. As a result of this whole debacle, Guinevere becomes a nun, Lancelot a monk, and thanks to a promise he made at some point, he will not even be able to be buried next to his beloved when he dies, because the moral of the Vulgate is that adultery It's bad, children.

One meta thing we should talk about is that while Arthurian folklore has a lot of Christian elements (with the Holy Grail and all), there is also a lot of traditional Celtic (or pagan, if you want to say) folklore. that way). I mean, Morgan Le Fae literally means Morgan the Fairy. The Lady of the Lake is obviously supernatural without being divine, and in the 14th century poem "Gawain and the Green Knight", the Green Knight is a suspiciously fairy-like entity (with immortality, illusions, green aesthetics, etc.) . .), and could actually be a variant of the mysterious and folkloric Green Man.

And even though the Christianization of the story is almost as old as the idea of ​​transcribing it, elements of Celtic folklore continued to be added for centuries! Not all of them are remnants of the original story, whatever it may be. The idea that Excalibur was a gift from the mysterious fairy tale Lady of the Lake dates back to the 15th century and is not an original pre-Christian idea. The stories adopted more pagan elements at the same time as they adopted more Christian elements, and there is much debate about how exactly this fusion of conflicting worldviews occurred, but if I had to guess, I'd say it's probably a pretty classic case. of belief systems that intersect without colliding.

I have seen this many times, especially in the historically Celtic parts of Europe. Many fairy tales and ideas have survived to this day: not as fun mythical folklore, but simply as things that people know to be true. Ireland still isn't talking about witch rings! And seen from this perspective, the coexistence of Christianity and a fundamentally pagan belief system of supernatural interference in fairy tales is actually quite a precedent. But again, it's just a theory, and we're not sure what the logic behind the folklore was because it was centuries ago. After Malory wrote Le Morte d'Arthur, which was basically a remix of the Vulgate Cycle, there was no interest in the Arthurian myths for a few hundred years.

People stopped writing Arthurian poetry proper and there was also growing concern about the historicity of King Arthur and whether the stories about him could be considered remotely true, or if he had even existed. These questions were uncomfortable because Arthur was practically the foundation of all of Britain, and the idea that he might not exist was uncomfortable in many ways. So nothing really Arthurian happened until the early 19th century, when Le Morte d'Arthur was reprinted for the first time in over a century. With the benefit of nostalgia, Arthurian folklore became popular again, as a romantic ideal of chivalry and all.

Unfortunately, World War I apparently affected the popularity of the idea of ​​chivalry somewhat, but the story remained popular and has remained so to this day. The canon of modern Arthurian folklore is not really the same as the Vulgate canon or the Death of Arthur canon. There have been changes over the last few centuries and I think this is because the way we think about King Arthur has changed. Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote a fictional story that was supposed to be based on real historical events. Chrétien used Geoffrey's Arthurian canon to glorify his character Lancelot and, with it, the French ideals of courtly love.

The following centuries brought strong Christianization and an exploration of Christian themes, with Merlin's magic attributed to demonic forces, Morgan Le Fae becoming a scholar rather than a ghost, and Lancelot's fundamentally contradictory characterization of the supposed noble model. and chronic adulterer used to explore the concepts. of sin and impurity in the search for the Holy Grail and the eventual demise of Camelot. In the centuries when interest in the Arthurian canon waned, Arthur was rarely discussed and was only used for political commentary on modern events. For the last thousand years, the Arthurian canon has been used to glorify specific movements and agendas, but recently we have stopped expanding the Arthurian canon and begun to reinvent it.

The Arthurian canon has basically been given the urban fantasy treatment. Instead of focusing on the story itself, we treat it as source material. Everyone knows King Arthur, but what if King Arthur was a lady? Everyone knows Merlin. But what if Merlin was a skinny Brit? Everyone knows Mordred. But what if Mordred is a sympathetic pawn of his evil mother? Maybe to bring your modern urban fantasy story to life you need the Fisher King or the villain to appear. Make Morgan Le Fae or throw the Grail for fun. Instead of treating the Arthurian myth as historical fact or a moral creed, we treat it as mythology.

And just as modern urban fantasy casually mixes the events of the great Norse myths to make an incredibly entertaining movie, rewrites Greek myths to be more character-driven, or simply invents new gods, the entire story of King Arthur is in fact an open source grab bag of modern fantasy ideas. And on top of that, modern writing puts much more emphasis on character telling than story telling. Until now, the Arthurian canon has been written and expanded for specific reasons. People added adventures to set a precedent for social movements or to add characters they liked, but much modern writing puts almost all the emphasis on dealing with characterization, and the story primarily provides context for that characterization, rather than write stories where the characters are incidental or vehicles of the plot.

And because of this focus on characterization, everyoneThey specifically focus on two parts of the Arthurian myth: Lancelot, Guinevere and the whole Arthur situation, and Mordred. The Lancelot-Guinevere-Arthur thing has two angles: either Lancelot is the good guy or Arthur is. If Lancelot is the good husband, then Arthur's character becomes a bad husband. Either he is negligent because he has to fight in all those wars, or he is a real idiot, or he is boring, and Lancelot, on the other hand, is a noble and heroic model who saves Guinevere from her useless husband with the power of love If Arthur is the good guy, then Lancelot is a selfish, self-centered jerk who betrays his trust without a thought, and Arthur is a beleaguered, betrayed man whose royal duty requires him to execute his wife and hunt down his greatest knight.

Still, there's plenty of good characterization material to mine. Arthur's character is further boosted by Mordred's character. The first texts specifying Mordred's relationship with Arthur state that he is his cousin: the son of Arthur's half-sister, Morgause. Later versions changed it so that Mordred was also Arthur's illegitimate son. But the modern version of Mordred is the son of Morgan Le Fay, fathered by Arthur and used by Morgan as one of his many schemes to overthrow Arthur. You will notice that this is unprecedented in myths. Morgan and Morgause are different characters, and Morgan and Mordred have no canon relationship.

Not only that, but Mordred's decision to deprive Arthur of the throne is always his own ambition. And let's not forget that Morgan le Fey has already renounced evil for years when Mordred carries out his betrayal tactics and Arthur falls. But modern versions combined the disparate elements of Mordred's betrayal and Morgan's routine scheming into a considerably nastier and more revolutionary plot, in which Morgan gives birth to Arthur's illegitimate son and raises him specifically to overthrow his father and claim her throne, which is a lot nastier than hiring a local fairy to play a prank on Guinevere and expecting her to die.

But as a side effect, this also changes the entire dynamic between Arthur and Mordred. Classically, Mordred is the traitor and Arthur is the good king who is overthrown, but in this version Arthur is not so good (what's with the whole illegitimate son thing?) and Mordred is not the traitor. He is the pawn of his mother's plans. Or, from another angle, Arthur's tragic karmic demise, caused by his own misdeeds. Mordred becomes sympathetic and Arthur becomes morally complex, at the expense of Morgan, who becomes much more morally simple. So the moral of this complex story spanning centuries is: if Arthur, Guinevere, and Lancelot had been honest about their feelings and entered into a mutually supportive romantic relationship, we might have called it polyarmoury.

Thank you and good night.