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Appendix of Round Table Knights


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Hello, I was just looking through the GPC today wistfully looking at the future when the Anarchy phase would be over for my poor, poor players. (I use that Manorial luck table and thanks to a bad roll on that, a bad roll on a Yearly Event table which resulted in a lost of of a wife with a distaff of 21, and then the negative effects from the tributes; We had one player get impoverished, which is just a brutal time for everyone involved. So many dead kids.) I was reminded that Gareth really seems missing in the GPC. He doesn't really show up, I'm not sure if at all other in the gossip columns, until he dies and the players are supposed to be upset. There's 20 references to his name, 10 are after he dies, and 1 of those is in the stat block for dwarves. He's such a prominent Round Table Knight it seems like a shame. That got me thinking that I need an appendix of Round Table Knights.

 

So does anyone have a list of the "official" Knights of the Round Table? I'm thinking about compiling a list, but wanted to check first. If I do the list, I'd like to have birth dates, death dates, and date of Round Table achievement. And, on Gareth, do any of you run through the events of when he comes and pretends to be a kitchen servant? When do you introduce him?  

 

Edit: I'll keep the latest file up here. Thanks for all of the help everyone.

Here is the spreadsheet. Make comments please.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ZuhD4aBCxQfsP-182khXSgAOhgl03kl34ofJBKNcSrM

Appendix of Knights of the Round Table ver. 0.75.pdf

Edited by Username
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Gareth is somewhat older than Mordred, who is born in 512. Since Gareth is a 'boy' (16-18) in his 'Tale', it should take place in the mid-520s.

I have a list of all the RTKs mentioned in the Vulgate and the Post-Vulgate and there's a list of nearly 150 that appears in the Prose Tristan and Post-Vulgate Quest. It's the same one that was the basis for the "Armorial of the Table Round" that was circulated in the late Middle Ages. It has a lot of unknowns in it. These are supposedly the knights that swore to seek the Grail (a major aberration is the presence of King Ryons, but otherwise it's mostly a good source of names and heraldry).

Karr's King Arthur Companion gives a list of everyone mentioned by Malory (and I think Chretien). There's also a list at the healing of Sir Urre in Malory, though some people have 'come back to life' (this suggests that at one time this story was placed earlier in the timeline, I suppose).

There are some remarkable inconsistencies. First, many RTKs show up in the Story of Merlin in c.510 (which is partly adapted by Malory) and are still 'young' in the 530s. For the most part the more gradual timeline from the Post-Vulgate is used in KAP: a lot of the great knights appear in the 520s and 530s. I'd date Chretien's Erec to c.534-8 (two parts), the Charette to 534, Yvain to 538, and Perceval is in 534-9 in the GPC. Many of these works mention RTKs.

 

Edit: the French Wikipedia has the Armorial I mentioned above: this would be the complete table in the mid 550s: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armorial_des_chevaliers_de_la_Table_ronde

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1 hour ago, jeffjerwin said:

Karr's King Arthur Companion gives a list of everyone mentioned by Malory (and I think Chretien).

I forgot about that! I have her book too. I'll take a look there.

About the list from the post-Vulgate and Vulgate and Prose Tristran, how many do you use? I have a list of, I think, 74 and it has most of the notables. Or at least names I recognize. How big do you run the Round Table? 

The GPC mentions the Round Table as having 150 spots. Do you try to rectify that with the large number of knights?

I'll take a look at the French Armorial. Thanks.

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3 hours ago, Username said:

I forgot about that! I have her book too. I'll take a look there.

About the list from the post-Vulgate and Vulgate and Prose Tristran, how many do you use? I have a list of, I think, 74 and it has most of the notables. Or at least names I recognize. How big do you run the Round Table? 

The GPC mentions the Round Table as having 150 spots. Do you try to rectify that with the large number of knights?

I'll take a look at the French Armorial. Thanks.

I take the French list as a basis for the Grail Quest and Downfall, but delete a few minor or unknown knights to include Malory's characters. Keep in mind there are empty seats up to the Quest (when there's one left, the Perilous Seat). I don't really like nailing down the exact list because you never know when you need to introduce a new character, though knowing when the major knights come in is useful. The GPC tells you the date for many of them. There's 32 initial members in 514, but Arthur starts adding members right away.

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31 minutes ago, jeffjerwin said:

I don't really like nailing down the exact list because you never know when you need to introduce a new character, though knowing when the major knights come in is useful. The GPC tells you the date for many of them.

Yeah, plus I like to keep enough seats vacant so the PKs have something to aspire to.

Chaos stalks my world, but she's a big girl and can take of herself.

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1 hour ago, jeffjerwin said:

I don't really like nailing down the exact list because you never know when you need to introduce a new character, though knowing when the major knights come in is useful.

 

1 hour ago, Atgxtg said:

Yeah, plus I like to keep enough seats vacant so the PKs have something to aspire to.

Hear hear.

 

1 hour ago, jeffjerwin said:

There's 32 initial members in 514, but Arthur starts adding members right away.

Didn't Leodegrance's gift include like hundred of Cameliard knights as well already enrolled or something like that?

"And so Leodegrance delivered his daughter Guenever unto Merlin, and the Table Round with the hundred knights, " (Merlin having come to ask Guenever's hand for Arthur)

Sounds to me someone overinvested into household knights during the Anarchy & Unification! :P

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50 minutes ago, Morien said:

Didn't Leodegrance's gift include like hundred of Cameliard knights as well already enrolled or something like that?

"And so Leodegrance delivered his daughter Guenever unto Merlin, and the Table Round with the hundred knights, " (Merlin having come to ask Guenever's hand for Arthur)

Sounds to me someone overinvested into household knights during the Anarchy & Unification! :P

Unless you subscribe to my wacky theroy that Merlin and Uther prepared things for Arthur before Uther's death. So Leodegrance was responsible for selecting a core cadre of skilled loyal knights for Arthur. Maybe Uther even gave him some libra to finance the extra knights. 

Chaos stalks my world, but she's a big girl and can take of herself.

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56 minutes ago, Morien said:

Didn't Leodegrance's gift include like hundred of Cameliard knights as well already enrolled or something like that?

"And so Leodegrance delivered his daughter Guenever unto Merlin, and the Table Round with the hundred knights, " (Merlin having come to ask Guenever's hand for Arthur)

Sounds to me someone overinvested into household knights during the Anarchy & Unification! :P

Yeah, that's right. I was thinking of the thirty-two knights at the Battle of Carohaise, who end up in the RT right away.

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5 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

Unless you subscribe to my wacky theroy that Merlin and Uther prepared things for Arthur before Uther's death. So Leodegrance was responsible for selecting a core cadre of skilled loyal knights for Arthur. Maybe Uther even gave him some libra to finance the extra knights. 

At first I misremembered Merlin being opposed, but at most Merlin obliquely warns Arthur about Guinevere, doesn't he, and the Round Table is her dowry... he tells him she will be a 'mixed blessing' more or less. He makes no further attempt to dissuade Arthur, however. Of course this could be reverse psychology on Merlin's part.

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8 hours ago, jeffjerwin said:

At first I misremembered Merlin being opposed, but at most Merlin obliquely warns Arthur about Guinevere, doesn't he, and the Round Table is her dowry... he tells him she will be a 'mixed blessing' more or less. He makes no further attempt to dissuade Arthur, however. Of course this could be reverse psychology on Merlin's part.

I was thinking more of the knights. Uther died before Gwen was born.

Chaos stalks my world, but she's a big girl and can take of herself.

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13 hours ago, Morien said:

Didn't Leodegrance's gift include like hundred of Cameliard knights as well already enrolled or something like that?

In the French Vulgate, they said that Leodegrance welcomed in his house all the surviving knights of the first Round Table after Uther's death, which explains the whole thing.

15 hours ago, jeffjerwin said:

I take the French list as a basis for the Grail Quest and Downfall, but delete a few minor or unknown knights to include Malory's characters. .

It's a good basis. BUT. The list of RT knights is not static. Each year, especially during the wars, you can suppose that a few died, retired in an hermitage, etc.  All the great names stay however until the last years.

Half the RTK are supposed to die during the Grail Quest, but few are named, all secondary (Bagdemagus, Calogrenant, Yvain l'Avoutre).

In my campaign, after 540, I considerer that the Round Table a complete. There is no room for the new heroes, which can generate frustrations.

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2 hours ago, Tizun Thane said:

In the French Vulgate, they said that Leodegrance welcomed in his house all the surviving knights of the first Round Table after Uther's death, which explains the whole thing.

It's a good basis. BUT. The list of RT knights is not static. Each year, especially during the wars, you can suppose that a few died, retired in an hermitage, etc.  All the great names stay however until the last years.

Half the RTK are supposed to die during the Grail Quest, but few are named, all secondary (Bagdemagus, Calogrenant, Yvain l'Avoutre).

In my campaign, after 540, I considerer that the Round Table a complete. There is no room for the new heroes, which can generate frustrations.

Note that there aren't many surviving Round Table knights at Uther's death because of the violence of those years. It certainly isn't more than a few dozen, I think. A handful are depicted as not returning to the "New Table" in the Guiron-Palamedes romances. Some even become villains.

The problem here is that the magical names on the seats do not go away unless the knight dies. This means that absent knights can't be replaced right away until the enchantment fails. (Which I'll get to in a moment). This is one reason Arthur remains confident that Lancelot is alive when he's missing for years at a time.

The Table is linked by miracle or enchantment to the Grail Quest. One of the prophecies behind the Quest is that when the table is complete, that is, when every seat is filled, the Grail will manifest and the time for the Quest has come. We see this when Galahad safely sits on the Perilous Seat. The Round Table is in some way linked to the smaller table, also round, at the Grail Chapel, where there are 13 seats. Thus the 'completion' of the Round Table really belongs to that moment. If you mean that the Perilous Seat is not taken, I guess so... but I'd suggest 'nearly complete' or maybe a little over 140 members by then.

There is a much fuller account of all those slain in or during the Grail Quest in the Post-Vulgate, but yes, we don't know all their names. I wouldn't call Tristram or Erec secondary.

Replacement of living but rebellious knights only occurs in the Downfall, once the magic of the Table has been severed, as the Grail has left Britain. That's when the House of Ganis and their supporters are stripped of their rank.

Edited by jeffjerwin
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Does anyone run a much larger Round Table? The number of seats varies quite a bit, if you do, why?

I'm working on my list now, I want it to include the more prominent examples. It should be fun for my players. Some of them are familiar with the stories and there's a good chance some of them will research the names given by me. I've got nearly 80 now. Related, what page in the GPC are the identities of the Brown Knight and White Knight?

Related to the changing nature of the Round Table, I don't really have any plans for it to ever be "full" until the inception of the Grail Quest. As mentioned previously, the players need something to aspire too.

This has been a really interesting conversation though. I have never read the post-vulgate, but @jeffjerwin is selling me on it.

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1 hour ago, Username said:

\This has been a really interesting conversation though. I have never read the post-vulgate, but @jeffjerwin is selling me on it.

The Lacey edition is a bit pricey but in English. Note, however, that no French original has survived in full, and large portions were reconstructed by Fanni Bogdanow and others by the using the more complete Spanish copies. This includes the list of Grail questers, which appear in the Lacey edition without being 'corrected' from the somewhat garbled Spanish attempts at the names. The list from the armorial survives separately but by comparison with the Spanish list it's clear that the two derive from a common source, which must be the lost complete French Post-Vulgate.

The Post-Vulgate is a 'grim-dark' remake of the original Vulgate and it is there that the transformation of Gawaine from hero to heel occurs. It's very influential for Malory, but his book also includes a lot of stuff from earlier and English tradition: ultimately Malory's Arthur is the heroic king of English and Welsh legend, not the fading, cursed, king of the Post-Vulgate. If he had not adhered to this ideal, we might be playing a game with a different name...

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2 hours ago, Username said:

Related, what page in the GPC are the identities of the Brown Knight and White Knight?

The Brown Knight of the Wilds: GPC, p. 162

The White Knight: GPC, p. 176

The People directory at the end of GPC (p. 437) is also a good place to check the names and pages.

 

Edited by Morien
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11 hours ago, Morien said:

The Brown Knight of the Wilds: GPC, p. 162

The White Knight: GPC, p. 176

Thanks a lot, I kept passing over that section. Here's my list of Round Table Knights. I used the GPC as the basis for all of the dates, but there were many blanks to fill. I added Sir Wade based off of the folktales of Wade the Giant, I believe I had a plan to include Wayland the Smith. Anyways, this is here for critique (Am I missing anyone big? Or do I have any dates that would be wildly inaccurate? Many birth dates and death dates were based on impressions, the GPC where available, or some wikipedia research.) and for use if anyone wants a list of 80ish knights of the Round Table. I wouldn't mind adding another 20-30 to the list to fill it out some more. I would say that I haven't gotten the chance to look through the old supplements, though I know many of them will add a few knights.

Appendix of Knights of the Round Table ver. 0.5.pdf

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10 hours ago, Username said:

Thanks a lot, I kept passing over that section. Here's my list of Round Table Knights. I used the GPC as the basis for all of the dates, but there were many blanks to fill. I added Sir Wade based off of the folktales of Wade the Giant, I believe I had a plan to include Wayland the Smith. Anyways, this is here for critique (Am I missing anyone big? Or do I have any dates that would be wildly inaccurate? Many birth dates and death dates were based on impressions, the GPC where available, or some wikipedia research.) and for use if anyone wants a list of 80ish knights of the Round Table. I wouldn't mind adding another 20-30 to the list to fill it out some more. I would say that I haven't gotten the chance to look through the old supplements, though I know many of them will add a few knights.

Appendix of Knights of the Round Table ver. 0.5.pdf 429.14 kB · 2 downloads

Wade? He's one of Dietrich's men, though.

Pellinore is king of Gomoret and the Isles, not Listeneisse, which is another name for the Fisher King's realm.

Caradoc the Younger should be a round table knight after c.539, since his story takes place after the return of Percivale to Arthur's court.

Ywain de Cenel/Rivel, Aiglin des Vaus, and Keu d'Estraus are missing, Acanor the Ugly Brave, Helains the White, Meraugis, also.

 

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And Ironside The Red Knight of the Launds.

Ironside became a knight of the Round Table. Malory mentions him at least twice more, as one of the guests at Guenevere's small dinner party and as one of ten knights to ride a-Maying with the Queen when Meliagrant ambushed her. He also appears among the would-be healers of Sir Urre.

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Thank you!  It's a great list ^^ My quibbles:

  • Baudwin is mentionned as well in the adventure of the Castle of Joy. He is a bishop and a knight. I think he retire as an hermit.
  • Bagdemagus did not die in 536. He died during the Grail Quest
  • Boso is count of Rydychan.
  • Tor (in Malory, and therefore in the GPC) is the son of Ares, and the bastard son of Pellinore
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On 8/22/2019 at 9:47 AM, jeffjerwin said:

Wade? He's one of Dietrich's men, though.

I mean this Wade. Also, thanks for the list. I added them

@Percarde Thanks! Updated it. 

@Tizun Thane Thanks for the info. I must have missed it for Tor. Bagdemagus was ancient to have lived so long. He had to be born at a minimum of 496 to have Malegeant become a Round Table Knight at 21 and have two or three years before he was killed. That's assuming that he and his son become a Round Table knight when they turn 21 also that he had Malegeant when he turned 21, all of which is unlikely. I made him born in 486, which makes him 69 years old in 555. No wonder he died in the Grail Quest. 😀
 

I'm adding the latest file to my original post

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37 minutes ago, Username said:

I mean this Wade.

Same guy. "Thidrek" is Dietrich of Bern/Verona. He becomes one of Dietrich's early followers in the 450s or so. Keep in mind his relationship to Weyland/Volundr, who is firmly placed in the first half of the 5th century by his association with Siegfried/Sigurdr and the Burgundian kingdom on the Rhine.

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33 minutes ago, jeffjerwin said:

Same guy. "Thidrek" is Dietrich of Bern/Verona. He becomes one of Dietrich's early followers in the 450s or so. Keep in mind his relationship to Weyland/Volundr, who is firmly placed in the first half of the 5th century by his association with Siegfried/Sigurdr and the Burgundian kingdom on the Rhine.

Neat, where is this from? I'd like to take a look. Is he already related to King Arthur somehow?

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2 hours ago, Username said:

Neat, where is this from? I'd like to take a look. Is he already related to King Arthur somehow?

The Thidrekssaga, which also has a King "Artus" in "Bretangaland" (Brittany or Britain). They don't really cross paths, though Dietrich sends his nephew to visit Artus at one point, which doesn't go well (the nephew elopes with Artus' "daughter" who was intended to marry Dietrich instead - basically the Tristram story). Wade is mentioned, though not in a context that means he is a contemporary, in the 14th century Morte Arthur poem, from which Malory derives his mention.

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  • 2 weeks later...

So... Uther had a round table? When did this get established (KAP) and who were its members?

I do seem to recall something to the effect that this was so, in a source, and that the table was given to Leodegrance for safekeeping....

Also, where did Uther get the table from? Do we know?

--Khanwulf

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