merlyn

It's a set of notes, panel-by-panel (sort of - there are often long stretches without such comments) discussing the historical and legendary elements of "Prince Valiant" as they arise. (The Definitive Prince Valiant Companion was more a story-by-story summary, with a few notes on the individual stories; this one covers the historical and legendary elements in greater detail.)

All this talk about the implication's of Val's "trickster-hero characterization", incidentally, has given me a few additional thoughts for a "Prince Valiant"-related project I'm writing - "Prince Valiant Annotations 2.0" (a revision of an earlier work that the late Greg Stafford hosted before his passing), which focuses on the legendary and historical background of the comic (a lot about the elements of the Arthurian legend that Foster used), but where the thoughts on why Val's done as a trickster at times would fit in, and I'd like to thank everyone here for raising those points. Incidentally, would anyone here like to beta-read the Annotations for the first two years (1937-38) of the comic? (They're broken down in groups of two years, to match the current Fantagraphics Books hardcover reprint.) Please let me know if you're interested.

I've thought that one drawback to making Winchester Camelot is that Winchester was a prominent town in Roman, Saxon, and Norman times, thus taking away the sense of Camelot as uniquely Arthur's, the "brief shining moment" factor.

The Fens rather than the Moors, actually, but that's an accurate comment on the difference between Val and the conventional knights of the Round Table. He's from Thule (Norway) rather than from Britain, and was raised in the Fens as a marsh-hunter rather than a conventional knight, thus ensuring a different set of skills than his peers. (In one story, when Val and Gawain have to live off the land, Val even stresses this difference in their upbringing.)

A good point about the difference between Middle-earth and Dungeons and Dragons; the game actually (despite the Tolkien veneer) drew its inspiration more from "Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser"-type swords and sorcery, whose leads are amoral adventurers who care more about getting rich through a dungeon crawl and then blowing most of their riches at the nearest tavern than about saving the world.

That's a good point about Val; he seems almost an Arthurian Odysseus. Val rarely faced that kind of criticism in the Foster era (at most, King Arthur and his knights were periodically exasperated by Val tricking Arthur's enemies into destroying each other or something of that nature before they got to do anything). One exception was a story where Val, to thwart a rebellious Cornish king, entered his service and destroyed him from within; he was so troubled by the tactics that he'd used afterwards that he offered to resign from the Round Table. King Arthur, desperate to keep Val in his service, placed a tenth of his honor in Val's keeping, and the knights of the Round Table followed suit. Val, moved by this gesture, revoked his resignation. During the Murphy era, Val's son Arn did get criticized by the mayor of a British town he was protecting from the Saxons for the tactics he'd used while battling the Saxon chieftain in single combat (things like throwing a live cat in his face), but the mayor's real motivation was that he was secretly in league with the Saxons. Incidentally, Val's early adventures (when he was Gawain's squire) would often open with a lot of familiar Arthurian conventions (jousting with strange knights, sending the defeated knights to King Arthur's court, etc.), but Val would then start adopting his usual tricks. Later adventures in Arthur's service seemed indeed more evocative of "Hollywood medieval epics" - and closer, at times, to the world of Robin Hood (there was even a recurring character, an outlaw leader named Hugh the Fox, who felt like Robin Hood in all but name) to King Arthur.

From the Foster era, there's a story where Val, Gawain, and a not-too-competent wizard are sent to investigate a haunted castle in Wales, seemingly a home to demons and witches. Val discovers that the "demons and witches" are really ordinary people, who had donned those disguises to discourage attackers. (The castle had originally belonged to a reckless and belligerent king who was always attacking his neighbors, until one of his campaigns got himself and all the men-folk of fighting age slaughtered, leaving only the women and a few old people to defend the castle - and aware that the late and unlamented king had made a lot of enemies thanks to his constant wars, who'd want revenge. The disguises proved the best way of protecting themselves from such retaliation.) Such an adventure could make a big surprise to pull on players assuming that everything that looks magical in Arthurian Britain *is* magical. (Foster did a few other such stories - for example, on another occasion, Val, while investigating the Holy Grail and whether it's real or not, hears of a monstrous troll living in a cave nearby and seeks it out. The troll turns out to be an escaped slave who had disguised himself as a troll to scare his former master's men away; I've suspected, incidentally, that Foster may have borrowed this incident from Edison Marshall's Arthurian novel "The Pagan King", which had been published a year before and featured a similar character.)

Forgive me for asking this, but who is John Wick? As for the "naming matter", I think that a lot of it hinges on the take on Arthur that you're using. If you emphasize the "post-Roman Britain invaded by Saxons", the pre-Saxon place names definitely work best. If you're focusing more on the later medieval romances, in which the Saxon wars and other such fifth/sixth century elements are downplayed or even omitted, the more modern names can work - within limits. (No matter which Arthur, I would advise against using modern place names where the present-day place name is too strongly associated with Britain after the Middle Ages - and especially from the Industrial Revolution onwards.)

Or they believed that protesting Uther's behavior was a sure-fire way to have him invading and ravaging their lands next. (In Geoffrey of Monmouth's version, Uther's army takes the initiative in attacking Gorlois' castle while Uther is in Tintagel, begetting Arthur, which makes it less likely that they were only obeying Uther out of fear of him.)

Gorlois? I thought it was Vortigern.

I was thinking along the lines of "If Gorlois and Igraine have noticed Uther's eyes straying towards Igraine - noticed them enough to become concerned and leave, others at the court might have done the same". (That's how it is in Geoffrey of Monmouth. Malory's version makes the general ignorance of Uther's true motives more convincing; Uther approaches Igraine in secret, asking her to become his mistress. She refuses, and tells her husband.) As I mentioned in a previous post, I suspect that the real reason why the whole business of "Uther is lusting after the wife of one of his nobles" doesn't get commented on by everyone else or raise any concerns is that the central point was to give Arthur a "miraculous conception". In earlier such stories (such as the conception of Heracles), the person who masquerades as the husband is a god or other superhuman being, the husband himself does not perish, and raises the child as his own. I suspect that Geoffrey felt the need to tweak the story to have Arthur be openly Uther's son - meaning that the husband whom Uther impersonates must die quickly, and the most economic way of having Gorlois die is to have him slain in battle against Uther the same night. Having the other characters addressing the morality of Uther's conduct would have distracted from what, to Geoffrey, was the central point.

Thanks. Of course, the whole reason why Gorlois left Uther's court without permission was because of Uther setting lustful eyes upon Igraine. Uther (assuming that he's thinking straight enough to consider such matters) is probably hoping nobody's going to ask what led the Duke to depart like that. (It might help Uther's case in the Great Pendragon Campaign that Gorlois had been in rebellion against Uther for years before Igraine became the center of their quarrel.) One other possible means of disposing of Gorlois (depending on how Merlin is portrayed in the campaign); Merlin arranges Gorlois' death in captivity, so as to ensure that Igraine will be widowed quickly, Uther can marry her, and ensure some level of legitimacy for Arthur. (And, in that scenario, it'd be tempting to even imagine his involving the player knights in the abduction of the infant Arthur, as portrayed in the Great Pendragon Campaign, as a way of getting back at them for giving him that problem....)

Thank you. I will.

Some years ago, I wrote a set of annotations for the Fantagraphics Books soft-cover reprint of "Prince Valiant", discussing the legendary and historical background of Foster's strip. Greg Stafford put it up on his site for a while, but with his passing, his site has gone down. I've been rewriting "Prince Valiant Annotations" for the more recent hard-cover reprint from Fantagraphics Books, but I'll need a new host for it, with Mr. Stafford no longer with us. Does anybody have any helpful suggestions for where to find a new host?