merlyn

Of course, there's still the "Uther lusts after the wife of one of his noblemen and plunges the kingdom into civil war as a result" aspect. As for the deception of Igraine (and all of this, I should warn, is coming more from the perspective of an amateur Arthurian buff than a gamemaster, I should add), it is (from the perspective of Geoffrey of Monmouth's account) the whole point of the story - to give Arthur a magical and marvelous conception (one used for other mythical or semi-mythical heroes such as Heracles and Alexander the Great). Although I can't help thinking that the story doesn't quite match this element to its surroundings. The obvious difference is that Uther is at war with Gorlois over Igraine at the time, a concept not found in other such tales (in which the "real father disguised as the husband" is a god or magical being who visits the mother in disguise while her husband is away, opportunist fashion). I suspect that Geoffrey, setting Arthur's birth after Britain had been converted to Christianity (necessary when following Arthur's dating to the Saxon invasions), felt that he couldn't use the notion of a god siring Arthur in that setting - so he had to make it Uther, and in turn, have Gorlois slain quickly afterwards so that Uther could marry Igraine and bestow some level of legitimacy upon Arthur (with a separate party - Merlin - providing the magical disguise). And in turn, the most economical way of doing this was to have Gorlois slain fighting Uther over Igraine. But in the new setting, the more logical solution of Uther's problem would be to defeat and slay Gorlois (breaking the apparent stalemate in the siege of Gorlois's castle somehow) rather than to pay a one-night visit to Igraine in Tintagel, disguised as Gorlois (even if Uther apparently seems too impatient to wait for a plan to resolve the aforesaid stalemate - which, ironically, is resolved shortly after he leaves), especially since, if anything went wrong, Uther would be trapped in the castle surrounded by men loyal to the Duke. It feels like moving a painting to a new frame that doesn't suit it as well as the original. All the same, there is one advantage of having the King Uther Period with all the examples of Uther and his nobles' "Might makes RIght" attitude (not only the case of Gorlois and Igraine, but also, a bit earlier in the "Great Pendragon Campaign"'s account, Uther and Prince Madoc deserting Syagrius in spite of their alliance with him); it brings home the need for something better, something to be represented by Arthur and the Round Table.

One advantage with starting during the Boy King Period (or later): You don't have to worry over the player knights' response to Uther's war with Gorlois over Igraine (I recall an earlier thread here on that subject), and possibly trying to change history by getting rid of Uther before he can beget Arthur.

I'm definitely interested in The Arthurian Concordance. I understand it's some sort of annotation to Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, which I'd certainly enjoy reading.

They could do what Green Knight Publishing did, and reprint many old works of Arthurian fiction.

I've only glanced at it so far, but the artwork looks very appealing - it definitely catches the design of a medieval illuminated manuscript.

I'm interested in the Arthurian Concordance as well.

Will we get reprints of earlier works of Arthurian fiction (the way Green Knight Publishing reprinted works like "The Life of Sir Aglovale de Galis", "To the Chapel Perilous", and "Kinsmen of the Grail") as well as new works in this line?

I've sometimes imagined a scenario where the players succeed in disposing of Mordred and Agravaine, breaking up Lancelot and Guinevere's affair, etc. - confident that they've saved the kingdom. Then, after the Quest of the Holy Grail (which only a few knights still successfully achieve), the kingdom enters a decline with nothing left to do. The Adventures of Logres are over with the Grail's passing. Arthur enters a decline and, after Guinevere's passing, falls under the spell of a scheming mistress who, once he dies in bed, pulls the rings off his fingers and flees. (Yes, I did have Alice Perrers in mind; it seems all the more appropriate in light of Edward III modeling himself so much on King Arthur but having a different end.) The splendors of Camelot and the Round Table are tarnished by this decay, and the player knights realize too late that the traditional Downfall was actually a merciful act, to bring the kingdom to a quick end once it had passed its climax and thus avoid such a fate.

I wonder whether the Arthurian Companion is a new version of the one written by Phyllis Ann Karr, in the early days of "Pendragon", or something else.

I've just been reading a newly-published book on King Arthur, John Matthews' "The Great Book of King Arthur and His Knights" of the Round Table", a collection of retellings of Arthurian tales not found in Malory (though some well-known in their own right, such as the red and white dragons at Vortigern's castle). In the Introduction, Matthews mentioned working on a new edition of Malory for Chaosium Inc., which, he stated, will contain "marginal glosses" to fill in the background on Malory's work. This is the first I've heard of this edition, and Chaosium Inc.'s involvement suggests it's connected to "Pendragon" (and probably the sixth edition in particular). Does anyone know more about it? (The annotations are the part that's triggered my curiosity.)

I wonder whether this is just one of those inconsistencies in Malory's work that we should not worry too much about; elsewhere, for example,he seems uncertain over whether the Dolorous Blow was inflicted by Sir Balin, or by a spear (apparently floating in mid-air) in retribution for the Fisher King trying to draw the sword aboard the Ship of Solomon meant for Sir Galahad. (Not to mention equal uncertainty over whether King Pelles is the Fisher King/Maimed King or whether they're different people.) He even states, at the end of the story of Pelleas and Ettarde, that Pelleas would achieve the Holy Grail, but that doesn't happen when he gets to the Grail Quest itself.

Since dwarfs almost always appear in the role of attendants (except for a dwarf knight whom Gawain meets at the start of the Pelleas and Ettarde story), I suspect that these are human dwarfs, treated as freaks and curiosities in a crueler time.

While making such changes to the story could be considered whitewashing, similar changes *did* take place during the medieval development of the Arthurian legend. Take Percival, for example. In Chretien de Troyes' poem, he, upon finding out that knights exist, runs off for Arthur's court, callously abandoning his mother who promptly dies from a broken heart (he sees her swoon out of grief but rides away with a tone of "Who cares?"), thoughtlessly gets a lady in trouble with her knight by helping himself to her ring, and kills a knight for his armor (a knight who has challenged Arthur's court and stolen a cup off Arthur's table, but with Percival caring only about the armor - which, admittedly, he mistakenly believes to be rightfully his due to not understanding Kay's sarcasm) - all behavior that can only be excused by the fact that he's young, naive, and ignorant about the outside world. Malory's account of how Percival came to Arthur's court considerably softens the story. He has Percival's older brother Aglovale bring him to Arthur's court to be knighted, without any mention of Percival abandoning his mother (we learn later, during his version of the Grail Quest, that she did indeed die soon after his departure, but with much less sense of his deserting her), the misadventure in the pavilion and the fight with the Red Knight are omitted, and the main event is the mute handmaiden speaking when she greets Percival - but without Kay whacking her and Percival subsequently avenging her - giving the scene more the gentle tone of a New Testament miracle, in better keeping with the atmosphere of the Grail Quest in Malory. Returning to the story of the conception of Arthur, Geoffrey of Monmouth, Wace, and Layamon (with whom the story of Arthur's conception began) are ambivalent on whether Igraine was indeed faithful to Gorlois or secretly attracted to Uther (it is Gorlois who makes the resistance; on the other hand, the fact that Uther is disguised as her husband, to deceive her, suggests that she *is* a faithful wife). In Malory, as I've mentioned above, Igraine is definitely faithful, rejecting Uther when he tries to make her his mistress at court and immediately alerting her husband. Of course, even if Igraine is attracted to Uther after all, he's still adulterously desiring another man's wife (and that man one of his subjects, at that) and plunging the kingdom into civil war when it already has enough problems already.

One way to deal with Uther's bad behavior without endangering the player knights' honor - find ways of appealing to the nobles and the Church (ideally, getting a critical on Orate) to point out to them the danger of letting Uther do something like this - especially bringing the Church in, which can threaten him with excommunication if he does not back down and leave Gorlois and Igraine in peace. (And with two of the leading Christian prelates at the time being Dubricius and David, both saints, the Church's opposition ought to be taking place. It's one of the more artificial parts of the legend that it doesn't; modern retellings, which make Britain in Uther's day more pagan, with the Church lacking the authority that it would have had in Norman-Angevin times. As I've mentioned elsewhere, I suspect that Geoffrey of Monmouth couldn't afford to have such opposition to Uther's conduct - a tone of "Yes, it's tyrannical behavior and rape, but it's the closest I can get to making Arthur, the central king in my epic, a demi-god.")

Actually, in Malory, Pellinore never actually sits in the Siege Perilous, but in one of the seats nearby

A good point - the event is apparently secret in Malory. Indeed, in Malory, Uther's motives for the war can be read as secret as well. He makes adances to Igraine in private, which she rejects and immediately tells her husband, leading to their departure from court. When Uther meets with his council about it, the only people who know about Uther's lust for Igraine are Uther (who presumably doesn't mention the truth), Igraine, and the Duke (the latter two of whom are not present, of course). All that the council knows is that the Duke had left the court without permission (a serious offense), and thus Uther is legally within his rights in waging war on him if he refuses to return. (Even by the time that Uther marries Igraine upon her husband's death, the only others who now know what the war was really about are Ulfius and Melrin, both of whom also apparently hold their peace. In Malory, Ulfius presents the notion of Uther marrying Igraine to the nobles as if it was merely a sensible piece of diplomacy for improving relations with Cornwall.) The Great Pendragon Campaign does present the player knights as possibly knowing the truth about Uther's true motives through successful Intrigue, but that can be changed - meaning that the players know about it, but their characters don't.

Obviously not, but there is still the fact that the golden age of King Arthur is built upon Uther's sins towards Gorlois and Igraine, and the implication that the downfall of Camelot (which leaves Britain even worse off than before) is a consequence of that. (If perhaps, by its timing and allowing the golden age to last many years before it, sending a mixed message.) The saintly Galahad who achieves the Holy Grail is also born through rape (though without any counterpart to the War between Uther and Gorlois accompanying it, and with a woman doing it to a man) - without any doomed end for him, though. (Of course, Galahad ends his mission by taking the Holy Grail away from Carbonek permanently, to be taken up to Haven - meaning that his grandfather Pelles, who had helped arrange his conception, no longer enjoys the prestige of being the Grail's guardian. An ironic punishment for him?)

I'd noted Uther and Madoc abandoning Syagrius as well (Madoc's conduct indicates that he shares his father's lack of honor note, for that matter, that when he secretly tries to talk Uther out of the war with Gorlois, his reason is "priorities and proprieties", suggesting that his opposition is based, not on Uther's behavior being wrong, but on it being bad timing). The Earl of Salisbury, clearly troubled about it, tries to defend it by arguing that keeping their alliance with Syagrius would have entangled them in Continental wars just when they've got plenty of troubles at home - without mentioning that in that case, it would have been wiser not to make an alliance with Syagrius that they couldn't afford to keep.

Malory's version definitely indicates that Igraine is true to her husband the Duke; in it, while they're at court, Uther tries to persuade her to become his mistress; Igraine virtuously rejects him and tells her husband about it, leading to their fleeing back to Cornwall. Which suggests in turn that Gorlois is the loving husband trying to protect his wife from the unwanted attentions of a lustful tyrant - and who unfortunately doesn't realize that here, the story's about the conception of a larger-than-life king, which requires the lustful tyrant to win. (Geoffrey of Monmouth *does* portray Uther and Igraine having a harmonious and loving marriage afterwards and even living as equals, though - which doesn't match the notion of Uther as just the villain.)

I can't think of any candidates myself - though as I mentioned above, it is possible that Uther is caused to desire Igraine by someone or something (Merlin, for example) who believes that this is how Arthur is to be conceived - the mother visited by someone magically disguised as her husband whose combined lust and the magic of his disguise will in some way energize Arthur to be no ordinary king (the same method used to father Heracles and Alexander the Great). (And who then possibly manipulates the situation further to ensure that the rest of the kingdom makes no outcry against Uther's war on Gorlois, that Gorlois and Igaine are conveniently in separate castles, that Gorlois makes a sortie and gets killed in it the same night that Uther is at Tintagel, etc.)

By the time Merlin enters the story, Uther is already at war with Gorlois, besieging his castles and ravaging his lands, so he's not the complete enabler (unless you have him magically filling Uther with lust for Igraine - and the mad "out-of-nowhere" desire Uther displays towards Igraine would make the notion that he was bewitched seem tempting). While the sordid business at Tintagel does produce Arthur, the Morte and the utter collapse of Britain before the Saxons afterwards may suggest that the right was short-lived. One tempting route for player knights opposed to Uther's lust to embark on would be to not only seek to get rid of him, but seek to abolish the Kingship of Britain in favor of another form of rule in which one man won't have so much power that, if he develops a lust for the wife of one of his subjects, everyone else is powerless to stop him. (And if that seems too modern, remember that in the legendary history of Rome according to Livy, which would be available to anyone in Britain with a good classical education, the Romans abolished the kingship for the Republic after the son of the last king of Rome raped Lucretia. And he didn't even use royal authority to carry out the rape but just broke into her home.)

While I've seen many such comparisons (including one in a variant version of Geoffrey of Monmouth's work), I think the similarity has been exaggerated. David's motive in getting Uriah killed was not out of covetous desire for Bathsheba, but to cover up his taking her - a tone of "If I can get him killed in battle and marry the widow quickly enough, I can make it look as if the child was begotten after the wedding and nobody will know the truth". (The fact that his initial plan was to call Uriah back on the pretext of wanting a report from the front but really in the hopes that Uriah would spend enough time with his wife to make it look as if he'd gotten her with child then, foiled by Uriah's integrity, makes that clear.) Indeed a close look at the Biblical story suggests that David's original taking of Bathsheba was driven more by boredom than by passion.

A few thoughts (that stem more from someone with an interest in the Arthurian legend than a "Pendragon" gamer. 1. Uther's dark reputation stems from his conduct in the story of Arthur's conception, which is definitely bad - he lusts after the wife of a loyal nobleman (and in Geoffrey of Monmouth's account, the earliest version we have, he owes his kingdom to Gorlois' loyal support; without the duke's wise counsel, he'd have lost the Battle of Mount Damen to the Saxons, and all Britain might have fallen) - and one who has virtuously refused him as that (meaning that he can't seem to grasp that "No means no"), waves war on the nobleman to gain her (thereby plunging his land into civil war) and finally takes her by deception and a form of rape. This would be enough to consider him a dark tyrant. But I suspect that this came more from Geoffrey being eager - even desperate - to make Arthur as close to a demi-god as was possible in a Christian setting - adapting the story (told of other legendary and semi-legendary figures, such as Heracles and Alexander the Great) of a larger-than-life man who was begotten by a god in the shape of a lady's husband. Geoffrey couldn't make Arthur's father a god and still place him on the timeline after Britain became Christian, so presumably came up with "So I'll have to make his father the king before him, who has to marry the woman afterwards so that their son can be at least semi-legitimate, and therefore kill off the husband, and the simplest way of doing that is to have them fighting over her". (Indeed, the new setting makes the "disguise Uther as Gorlois" scheme seem a bit artificial - a much simpler means of getting at Igraine would be to break the stalemate in the siege of Gorlois' castle and slay the Duke, which doesn't appear to occur to anyone in the story. Of course, Uther seems too overwhelmed with desire for Igraine to the point where it's affecting his health , and believes he can't wait that long. We can also assume that Merlin's choosing this method out of the realization that a method such as this is necessary to make Arthur a larger-than-life king, and that if Uther simply married Igraine after Gorlois''s death and then begat Arthur upon her under ordinary circumstances, he'd be an ordinary king. For that matter, these changes to make the legend fit a Christian setting raises the additional query of why the Church doesn't step in to halt Uther from his actions, such as threatening to excommunicate him if he does not leave Gorlois and Igraine alone, or at the least, deliver a Nathan-style rebuke to him afterwards. Nor is Uther punished for his actions. At first, his debilitating illness seems like such a punishment - but Uther then proceeds to win a major victory over the Saxons at the Battle of St. Albans, which would be unlikely if he really was under divine punishment, unless he'd been confronted with his wrong-doing and repented of it, and there is no mention of it in Geoffrey.) In neither Geoffrey of Monmouth nor Malory is Uther reprimanded by the narrator's voice or anyone in the story - apart from Gorlois and Igraine, of course; nobody speaks up against Uther on a simple basis of right and wrong. To both Geoffrey and Malory, the central point of the story, I believe, is not "Uther behaved like a tyrant" but "Arthur was conceived through a wondrous act of magic". Uther's lust for Igraine, war on her husband, and deception were, to these men, just plot devices to get the story to go the way they wanted it to, that should not be examined too closely. 2. In medieval doctrine, the king was king by divine will, and if he behaved like a tyrant, it most likely meant that the people were behaving badly and the king was being used by God as a scourge to punish them, in which case, the proper response to Uther's misrule would be for the player knights to see how they might amend their own lives rather than plot to overthrow Uther - indeed, they would probably receive warning that if they did succeed, it could lead to even worse disaster (such as the Anarchy Period coming - but this time with no one to pull the Sword out of the Stone - with the Saxons ravaging the island from one end to the other). Cf. Shakespeare's history cycle where the overthrow of Richard II, despite his being a narcissistic tyrant, results in one disaster after another for England. 3. As I mentioned above, the point behind Uther's conduct in the treatment of Gorlois and Igraine is a vehicle to give Arthur a "Hero's Conception". Although what follows would probably be a tall order for the knights they could seek out the "powers that be" (in a long and perilous quest with many obstacles) and appeal to them to find a different way to arrange the birth of the great king to come, with a tone of "the methods you used back in the days of Heracles and Alexander are no longer lawful. Abandon that approach and come up with something else - maybe the 'mysterious arrival as a child in a boat' like Scyld at the start of 'Beowulf'." (Tennyson did provide something similar in The Coming of Arthur" as an alternative birth-myth for Arthur.)

Except in T. H. White's version.

I've thought that Morgan's real hatred being towards Guinevere for breaking up her affair with Guinevere's cousin in the Vulgate Cycle could explain a lot about her actions. Her attempts to kill Arthur all take place before Lancelot comes to court. From this perspective, Morgan's real target in those assassination attempts could be Guinevere, who would go from Queen of Britain to a powerless widow. Even the plans to assume the throne might stem, not from ambition or even a belief that she's better suited to ruling the kingdom than Arthur, but to humiliate Guinevere further, who will now see Morgan decked in the honors that were once hers. When Lancelot arrives and he and Guinevere fall in love, that changes everything. Morgan now concludes that if she did away with Arthur, Guinevere would be free to marry Lancelot, so that Arthur's death wouldn't be such a blow to her. Thus, her plan turns to exposing the Love Affair, which would see Guinevere sentenced to the stake as an adulteress. (Hence, also, her periodic attempts to seduce Lancelot, to hurt Guinevere all the more.) Hence, perhaps, also her willingness to take Arthur away to Avalon, since the reason for the feud is long over.