merlyn

Malory puts in a quick piece about Merlin getting the blame for it, and never mentions the incident again; in the story of Sir Balin that follows, neither Balin nor any of the other knights display any qualms at siding with Arthur against his enemies after the May Day Deree. Neither does King Leodegrance display similar unease at marrying his daughter off to someone who's committed a Herodian massacre. (I've read that in the "Suite de Merlin", Malory's source, the shipwreck where all the babies except Mordred drown is a ship that's bringing the babies *to* Arthur's court. We'll never know whether Malory deliberately changed his source material or just summed it up in a potentially confusing way.) Perhaps part of the issue comes from this being an adaptation of a recurring legendary motif where a king tries to get rid of the child who's destined to overthrow him but fails, with the approach in most of these stories that his sin was not attempted infanticide but trying to defy Fate. (Note that whatever force of destiny ensures Mordred's survival doesn't bother saving the lives of all the other babies.)

I've wondered whether the notion of a long gap between Uther's death and Arthur becoming King comes from Malory's statement that Uther fell ill "within two years" of Arthur's birth, with the assumption that his last battle and death followed quickly afterwards (though Malory does not say how much time intervened between the start of Uther's illness and his final battle). If Uther's succumbing to his illness did indeed take place not long after its onset, that would mean thirteen years (if we follow Geoffrey's making Arthur fifteen at the time of his crowning) of anarchy (only slightly shorter than the Anarchy Period in the Great Pendragon Campaign). Shortening the gap does make the survival of Britain easier to explain; if the kingdom had been indeed without a High King for fifteen years, it would have most likely fragmented beyond repair (unless they'd found a different way of installing a new High King, like sending abroad to Brittany again to ask for another spare member of its royal family - the way that Uther's father Constantine became High King, according to Geoffrey). The obvious challenge to leaving out the secret upbringing is that it means having to drop the Sword in the Stone (one of the most familiar moments of the Arthurian legend), and probably also making it harder to explain the Incest if Arthur grows up knowing that Morgause is his half-sister. (Arthur's fostering with Sir Ector does seem a plot device to arrange both of these elements.)

The"chipmunk" business reminds me of a mention in "The Boy King" of Merlin having a pet raccoon - another animal native to North America rather than to Britain. I recall bringing that up on an old "Pendragon" mailing list years ago, and someone else insisting, over and over, that the raccoon should stay on the grounds that it was charming and that medieval Arthurian romances featured lions and unicorns in Britain. (Not a perfect analogy, in my opinion, since lions and unicorns were part of "Old World lore", and chipmunks and raccoons weren't.)

In Geoffrey of Monmouth, Gawain is knighted by the Pope, so I'd say it's legitimate for "Pendragon".

There's another drawback to describing Arthur as "King of England" besides the anachronism; "England" and "Britain" are not synonymous. England is just part of the island; Britain is the whole island. Calling Arthur just "King of England" ignores the prominent "Arthurian presence" in Wales and southern Scotland.

If Howard Pyle was the one responsible for Arthur being called "High King of Britain", that stands out all the more, given that we customarily associate the "High King" title with the more "historical" take on Arthur (a post-Romano-British leader fighting Saxons), which Pyle left out of his retelling entirely; his version was a straight "mythical medieval king" with not a hint of fifth/sixth century events.

Since the "bot"/compensation would most likely be paid to the Saxon by his kinsman's captor, rather than to the captor by the Saxon, most likely not.

I found the (probable) reference on page 105 of "Perilous Forest", the "What Cambrians Know" page. A "Prefect Julius, Lord of the Wall" is listed as the ruler of Hexhamshire. I assume that Julius' name was intended as an echo of Julian's.

I hadn't thought of the lands immediately north of Hadrian's Wall in "Pendragon" being northern British kingdoms rather than the Pictish lands, though that's a good point. I take it that the "Ghost Knight" will be such a left-behind Roman soldier who's flesh and blood after all? (As I mentioned in another thread, that definitely matches "Prince Valiant"'s atmosphere, with its numerous cases of the seemingly supernatural turning out to have rational explanations; Val was exposing "phony ghosts" long before the meddling kids and their dog....)

Julian was mentioned in one of the "Pendragon" supplements (I think it was "Perilous Forest", though I'll have to check). The chronology would certainly need tweaking, since Hal Foster set King Arthur's reign in the 450's (having Val get involved in events from that decade such as the assassinations of Aetius and Valentinian III and the Vandal sack of Rome), far earlier than in the regular "Pendragon" chronology.

I agree that it seems less suited to "Pendragon", with its carefully designed maps, in contrast to the movie "Excalibur" where the geography is far more vague.

"Child" could be interpreted as "childe", meaning a noble youth who has not yet been knighted, rather than as a child in the modern sense. But I agree that this change to the chronology works better. The Great Pendragon Campaign does stretch Arthur's reign out; in the Annales Cambriae, only twenty-one years separate the battles of Badon and Camlann, a timeline that Geoffrey of Monmouth apparently adheres to when he divides the period between the two battles as twelve years of peace and nine years campaigning in Gaul. On the other hand, the Mort du Roi Artu, as I recall, describes Arthur as close to a hundred years old by the end of his reign. I suspect that a lot of that might be thanks to needing to stretch out the reign to fit in more and more adventures.

There's also the infamous Triad telling how Tristram looked after King Mark's pigs while the regular swineherd was delivering a message to Iseult, and stopped Arthur, Kay, and Bedivere from stealing them (though I can't see this incident as taking place in a conventional "Pendragon" campaign; an "Arthur dux bellorum" one, on the other hand....). Most of the experts have held that Tristram's incorporation into the Arthurian legend weakened his story (all the more because it included a lot of knight-errantry that distracted from the love story that was the focus of the original tale) - apart from the characterization of the complex rival Sir Palomides.

The most likely explanation for that is that the Grail Quest is not a conventional quest to find Carbonek; the goal is to understand the spiritual significance of the Holy Grail, which can only be done by wandering about in the wilderness, facing a series of tests and challenges. As Phyllis Ann Karr pointed out in her Arthurian Companion, it's more like a vision quest or a walkabout. Also, Galahad has a number of missions to fulfill first, such as delivering the Castle of Maidens from its masters, ending the burning tomb and the boiling fountain, achieving the Shield Adventurous, etc.

Railroading seems inevitable for a role-playing game campaign set in a familiar legend; you can't tamper too much with the original story without taking away the point of using it for a backdrop.

I agree that the Vulgate/Malory version of the Grail Quest is really Lancelot-centered. Its chief goal is to show how Lancelot's affair with Queen Guinevere (and maybe his pride, as well) cost him the Holy Grail, with Galahad as really a sort of "how Lancelot would have fared on the Grail Quest if he hadn't fallen into sin". The earlier, Percival versions work much better if you want to move the story away from "the Lancelotian legend" - if with the challenge that the Grail Quest is here designed for Percival. (Indeed, Gawain is generally the only other knight of the Round Table to participate in the Grail Quest in the Percival version - the notion of the Grail Quest as something that all the knights of the Round Table embark on is apparently the Vulgate Cycle's invention.) One version that stands out to me is the "Romance of Perceval in Prose" (I was fortunate enough to find a modern English translation at a library sale a few years ago), which includes the following features: 1. Perceval's initial blunder here isn't failing to ask the Grail Question, but insisting on sitting in the Siege Perilous when he joins the Round Table; the seat splits in half and trouble descends upon the land, that will only be healed when Perceval fulfills the Grail Quest (and when he does, the Siege Perilous fuses back together). 2. Perceval's fulfilling the Grail Quest ends the "adventures" of Arthur's kingdom, resulting in nothing left for the knights of the Round Table to do, so they decide to leave Britain and search for some other land that *does* still have adventures. Arthur embarks on his foreign conquests (leading to the Roman War) in order to prevent this. (I've mentioned this in another thread.) 3. Merlin doesn't go into full retirement until after the passing of Arthur, which he reports to Perceval at the Grail Castle, after which he withdraws to a mysterious retreat (with no mention of Nimue/Vivien), though he starts the process after Arthur becomes king.

I look forward to seeing it; I have my own thoughts on adjusting it, but will save those for the Grail thread.

My own take on Agravain and his confederates is that they're tired of constantly getting unhorsed by Lancelot in tournaments and of Lancelot winning all the glory, and that the exposure of his affair with Guinevere is designed to secure his disgrace and banishment (or execution), after which they might have better hopes of achieving more renown. With the possible exception of Mordred, I doubt that any of them had intended it to turn into an actual war between Arthur and Lancelot - though they ought to have anticipated that possibility in light of how many enthusiastic followers Lancelot had. On the other hand, were it not for Lancelot accidentally killing Gaheris and Gareth in the Battle at the Stake, the Pope's intervention (much more easy to predict) would have halted the war and might have saved the kingdom. (One other possible take on Agravain and his allies' hostility towards Lancelot; remember that he's from the Continent, as are the rest of the de Ganis clan. Note, also, that many of the other knights from abroad, like Sir Palomides the Saracen and Sir Urre of Hungary, side with Lancelot in Malory. This lays the foundations for a "Foreigners out" agenda for Agravain and his followers, a tone of "Lancelot and his kinsmen are not Britons. They're outlanders, who've only come to court and joined the Round Table to provide themselves with a home base while out having adventures in our land. They owe no true allegiance to our king. Let us be rid of them.")

As I mentioned above, that gives the chronicle version one advantage over the romance version (as found in the Vulgate Cycle and Malory), despite the romance version having greater pathos. In the romance version, when Mordred's treachery takes place, the kingdom is already doomed by the war between Arthur and Lancelot; it's like kicking down an already tottering building. (One could blame Mordred for the civil war, since he was one of the conspirators who exposed Lancelot and Guinevere's affair, but the evidence in both Malory and the Vulgate indicates that Agravain was the leader of the conspiracy. At least, he's the one who speaks up first and proposes bringing the Affair out in the open.)

In Geoffrey's version, the Roman War begins just after Arthur's returned to Britain after nine years away conquering Gaul (his conquest of Gaul, incidentally, is one of the causes of the Roman War; Rome demands, not just tribute from Arthur, but that he face trial for seizing Gaul from the Roman Empire); he's just been home for a short while, and heads off for fresh conquests. It's tempting to imagine Mordred offering himself as a king who will stay home and rule over Britain, rather than a constant absentee ruler who might even have aspirations to stay in Rome as its emperor and treat Britain as just an outlying province which he won't return to, but govern through subordinates. (The mention in Malory that Mordred's propaganda - though Malory treats it as propaganda - claims that under Arthur was nothing but war, while Mordred brings peace, could be an echo of that.) The Romance of Perceval in Prose (also known as the Didot-Perceval) offers its own take on the reason for Arthur's foreign wars and conquests. After Perceval achieves the Grail, the "Adventures of Britain" disappear. The knights of the Round Table, disappointed at the prospect of no further quests and adventures, decide to leave Arthur's kingdom and go somewhere else that does still have adventures. Kay, alarmed, reports this to Arthur, who embarks on his wars abroad (first the conquest of Gaul, then the war with the Romans) to offer his knights activity and keep them from leaving. (It seems almost like a foreshadowing of T. H. White's theory that the real reason why Arthur's kingdom fell was because the knights had run out of adventures, though White had a different take on that.)

I think that Tennyson deserves the credit for the matching that you mention (for the adultery, that is, not the incest, which he omitted); his "Idylls of the King" definitely give the Love Triangle the role of destroying Arthur's kingdom - with the further touch that it's here the Love Triangle itself, rather than its mere exposure, which dooms Camelot. In Malory and the Vulgate, it's the exposure of the Affair that ends Arthur's reign; as long as it was kept secret, the kingdom flourished, and only when Agravain and Mordred brought it into the open did the civil wars erupt. In Tennyson, the Love Affair was dangerous even before the war began, by setting a bad example to the knights and ladies of Arthur's court (Tennyson revising a few originally unconnected tales, such as Balin and Balan, or Pelleas and Ettarde, to stress this interpretation).

Given how often the story of Lancelot and Guinevere and their tragic love affair has resonated in the public imagination, I suspect that a version which downplays that element might not go down that well with many. But I can see some appeal to returning to the older approach. For a start, the familiar Love Affair as portrayed in Malory revolves more around Lancelot than around Arthur and his kingdom; it's a tragedy more because of how it wrecks Lancelot's private life than because it destroys the kingdom. Until the exposure of the lovers, most of the stories about Lancelot and Guinevere focus more on the consequences for Lancelot (Guinevere's jealousy drives him mad, Elaine of Astolat falls in love with him, and when he turns her down, she dies of a broken heart, Lancelot is denied the Grail because of his adultery and is devastated about it), and even when the war breaks out, the attention is more on what this means for Lancelot than for Arthur and the kingdom (to the point where we even have Lancelot making a long speech, after he's banished, about how devastating it is to be exiled from the kingdom where he won so much honor and glory, though trying to console himself with the thought that similar misfortunes befell the great men of classical antiquity, such as Hector of Troy and Alexander the Great). Not to mention that the focus after the departure of Arthur is almost exclusively on Lancelot and Guinevere's religious retirement and Lancelot's repentance (and being forgiven by God and admitted into Heaven on his death), with Constantine of Cornwall's succeeding Arthur to the throne treated as only an afterthought. It would also make Mordred's treachery more conclusive if he usurps the throne just as Arthur is winning a major victory over the Romans (even though it costs him a few of his best knights, such as Kay), than if he's mired in a tragic stalemate with his former best knight (a stalemate since the war's turned into a series of single combats between Gawain and Lancelot, but Gawain cannot kill Lancelot and Lancelot will not kill Gawain) - indeed, in the Malory version, Mordred's rebellion might have been a hidden blessing (the kingdom was going down in ruin anyway; at least Arthur will be fighting his last battle against the traitor and his confederates, not against the de Ganis clan in a lamentable rift, and it brings Gawain to his senses).

It's tempting to wonder whether Pellam was simply ignorant of Garlon's true nature (that gift of invisibility would certainly make it handy to cover up his guilt in murdering or wounding his many victims), though as other posters here have said, even if he knew what Garlon was really like, he'd still have Love (family) and Hospitality to motivate him. Maybe a bigger question is how the Holy Graiil could tolerate Garlon's presence at Carbonek, something which, as best I can tell, Malory and his predecessors never addressed. Certainly he seems to have been an utter disgrace to the Grail Family, without facing the consequences, until Balin tracked him down. (Might the Dolorous Blow have been, in part, Pellam's punishment for overlooking his brother's crimes, with Balin as an unwitting instrument for divine retribution?

Just give me instructions on how to send you the text of the annotations for the 1937-38 period, and I'll e-mail it to you. The hardcover Fantagraphics Books edition is the best, from what I've seen of the different reprints. They're up to Volume Twenty-one (1977-78), which is almost the end of the Foster era. The next volume, covering 1979-80, will see the end of the Foster era; I don't know if it'll be the last volume in the reprint, though.

Thanks. Please give me directions for sending you the notes to Volume One (1937-38).