"Can we murder Uther...?" Players grinding against an unjust system...

[mj6373]

I love Pendragon. I love the relatively early start date, and the generational gameplay such a lengthy campaign creates. However, it does create an interesting problem - the rules and genre of the game ask for and incentivize players playing larger than life heroes, people defined by Arthurian ideals of honor and passion and loyalty and courtly grace and noblesse oblige, but then they drop your first characters into the broken world decades prior to Arthur bringing the golden age defined by those ideals. In order to properly contrast Arthur's resplendent, magical, virtuous kingdom with the world before and after, the world before must be filled with the vices, dishonor, and disloyalty Arthur banishes. Yet, with a few exceptions, the rules don't encourage you to have your first character be a bit of a turd compared to his kids and grandkids, to fit the settings they each live within. Instead, you're left trying to live up to the ideals of Arthur's court before Arthur or his court exist to recognize it.

 

So how do we address that? Well, first of all, even before we get into how the culture and on-the-ground viewpoint of the knights would affect character viewpoints, we can take stock of the situation from an entirely ordinary viewpoint. Obviously if the president raped someone, you wouldn't want him in office anymore, but would you immediately stop paying taxes, or try to assassinate him personally? Probably not. Those especially devoted and diligent in their opposition may spend hours using every available means of litigation and protest and publication to undermine him and try to get him lawfully thrown in jail, but it's considerably rarer that one would go so far as to get themselves imprisoned or executed for the extent of their resistance.

 

Second, remember that as far as the Great Pendragon Campaign is concerned, the knights really have no way of knowing prior to Uther's death that he raped Igraine. Obviously this doesn't solve the out-of-character issue, but as far as players being more aware of the event timeline than their characters are goes, it's no secret that the guy will immediately thereafter lose two sons, be sick as a dog for years, then get better exactly long enough to watch all his closest friends die around him before he succumbs to the horrible poison as well.

 

Third, if you're up for a whole lot of creative effort, consider that new stories can result from the characters pursuing more plausible ways to oppose Uther's dastardly activities. If your players really can't countenance serving a guy as he abuses and ultimately kills a loyal vassal before raping his wife, there's a pretty messy yet also wonderfully simple way to resolve that issue - just open up the opportunity for them to swear Homage to Gorlois and serve Cornwall. They can fight to save Gorlois and his castles from Uther's assaults, they can capture the deceitful Prince Madoc who reneged on his honor-bound agreement to help an ally on the continent, they can properly direct their outrage towards the antagonistic King Uther after his magical rape of the duchess comes to light. Maybe they even create a quirky alternate timeline where Uther, rather than Madoc, is the one to perish on the battlefield shortly after conceiving Arthur, creating a brief period where not-very-honorable-but-at-least-opposed-to-rape Madoc takes the throne of Logres and makes reparations to Cornwall in an effort to atone for his father's sins. Things are tense but cautiously optimistic for the next few years as efforts are made to repair relations and Gorlois marries his daughters off to surrounding kings to ally more of the realms against the Saxons. Madoc is, idk, infertile or something, so Arthur stays next in line. (Illegitimate, but so was Madoc, so whatever.) Then bam, all the lords (now including Gorlois and King Madoc) die horribly at a victory feast, Merlin or Ygraine herself run off into hiding with baby Arthur, the PKs play out the Anarchy from a Cornish perspective, and things roughly right course by the time Arthur rises to power, with a few serial numbers filed off and edge cases filled in with new material.

[Hzark10]

Exactly. YPMV. Many of the older GMs have run alternate stories.  I think you should also note that I believe this idea is one that made the designers decide to split up the GPC into smaller chunks where each can have their own theme.  Vortigern: rise and fall of a tyrant who was betrayed. Dark age as the Saxons become more and more powerful. Aurelius: Savior of Britain, would be uniter, but time and tradition working against the King. Uther and Anarchy: you know, perhaps the most freeform of the periods. Arthur and Conquest: the rise of King Arthur, the unification of Britain, and the conquest of the known world. Romance and Tournament: the glorious age where Knights quest to seek wrongs, defend the weak, and do funny things to show their love. Twilight and Downfall: the fall of it all, but can the knights somehow change it?

Or do the entire thing and see the changes within the game, from Dark to high Chivalry and back to Dark.  BUT, things do change. The game challenges you as players to decide what type of knight you will play. Maybe you do play a turd as a grandfather, but as time moves forward, you try to have your son/daughters be better than you were as you try to make the world a better place. 

More specifically to the points raised here, gms may not have all the material they may want to change their game, but the timeline and events on the grand scheme are laid out and creativity can always fill in gaps. The Winter Phase and the concentration of the family can also really change the perspective of the game. KAP has the bones laid out, how I run a campaign and where I concentrate on events has changed every time I have run it. I have never gotten to Camlann, but each time I run Uther+, it has changed, thanks to amazing players.

[merlyn]

7 hours ago, Darius West said:

No Arthur, no Enchantment of Britain, no golden age, no Pendragon Game imo.  You would be stuck in a nasty, ugly, brutal and short dark ages campaign.  Do you fancy retooling Harnmaster for Britain?

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?)

Edited June 11, 2022 by merlyn

[merlyn]

3 hours ago, mj6373 said:

 

Second, remember that as far as the Great Pendragon Campaign is concerned, the knights really have no way of knowing prior to Uther's death that he raped Igraine. Obviously this doesn't solve the out-of-character issue, but as far as players being more aware of the event timeline than their characters are goes, it's no secret that the guy will immediately thereafter lose two sons, be sick as a dog for years, then get better exactly long enough to watch all his closest friends die around him before he succumbs to the horrible poison as well.

 

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.

[SaxBasilisk]

23 hours ago, creativehum said:

So I was looking for clues about how KAP and GPC are actually set up. I understand the text can be sanded down to turn Uther into something he is not in the Le Morte or GPC. But that isn't what I'm looking for here.

I appreciate that, and I think you make some excellent points.

I would say, however, this route may lead to problems down the road, if the players are still reading Malory or other sources. Right now, I'm grappling with the Boy King period, with the corresponding passages from Malory including:

• Sir Balin beheading the Lady of the Lake in court and being allowed to leave, leading indirectly to Colombe's death;
• King Pellinore's rape of Sir Tor's mother*, and letting a woman (who turns out to be his daughter) be eaten by lions;
• Sir Gawaine killing a woman while on quest.

In the Vulgate and Post-Vulgate, we also get Arthur sleeping with Margawse when she thinks he's Lot, not to mention Gawaine's acceptance of maiden-killing incel Marhaus.

GPC does lessen the blow of some of these. Balin's escape is due to him being armed when others aren't, and some of his deeds are cloaked in anonymity later. Pellinore is simply Tor's father, without the grisly details. Gawaine's penance is less grisly. Still, this might not satisfy your players.

I thnk the question to consider here is if there is a point where you want to start sanding down a strict Malory/GPC for the group, and have a conversation about how you're using the sources. Then again, a game in which the PKs end up fighting some of the fiercest knights in legend might also be fun.

* He also steals her dog as a trophy of his conquest.

Edited June 11, 2022 by SaxBasilisk

[Leingod]

Not sure about Malory, but in the GPC Balin beheads the Lady of the Lake for having killed his mother, and she had just been trying to demand that King Arthur murder another woman for her as a boon. I personally wouldn't be too broken up about that, and it's not like Arthur just laughs it off or anything. As for Gawain, his murder of a woman is, IIRC, not remotely intentional on his part, and he's suitably ashamed and guilt-stricken about it.

No such extenuating circumstances for Pellinore, though. Personally, I'd have part of the denouement of that quest be that Pellinore is informed that for his moral failure he has lost the mantle of "greatest knight" and can no longer sit on the Siege Perilous. Depending on how you want to play it, either he's told he'll die outright if he tries and so takes another seat, or perhaps he's told that he'll be cursed but doesn't buy it, thus dooming him to die an ignoble death at the hands of Lot's sons.

Edited June 11, 2022 by Leingod

[creativehum]

Thanks @SaxBasilisk for the post.

For clarity, I don't think the issue for my players (and this one specific player) is "Characters Behaving Badly." In fact, she has made it clear that she's fine with that.

The nub of the issue would have been having to fight for Uther, knowing that Uther is ultimately on a path to rape Ygraine. It is the aiding and abetting of Uther's actions that I think was too much for her. She doesn't what to have to be loyal to a character that she simply has such terrible reaction to in such a moral, emotional, and visceral way.

[SaxBasilisk]

1 hour ago, Leingod said:

Not sure about Malory, but in the GPC Balin beheads the Lady of the Lake for having killed his mother, and she had just been trying to demand that King Arthur murder another woman for her as a boon. I personally wouldn't be too broken up about that, and it's not like Arthur just laughs it off or anything. As for Gawain, his murder of a woman is, IIRC, not remotely intentional on his part, and he's suitably ashamed and guilt-stricken about it.

The key passage in GPC is taken straight out of Malory. Arthur says he isn't upset the Balin killed the Lady, but that he did so at his court. I think modern readers will be more likely to focus on the violence than the royal prerogatives.

1 hour ago, Leingod said:

No such extenuating circumstances for Pellinore, though. Personally, I'd have part of the denouement of that quest be that Pellinore is informed that for his moral failure he has lost the mantle of "greatest knight" and can no longer sit on the Siege Perilous. Depending on how you want to play it, either he's told he'll die outright if he tries and so takes another seat, or perhaps he's told that he'll be cursed but doesn't buy it, thus dooming him to die an ignoble death at the hands of Lot's sons.

Oh - there's an interesting version in the Post-Vulgate. It doesn't show his death, but Merlin foretells it. For those who are curious:

Gawaine attacks Pellinore and leaves him for dead. Tor is riding through the woods chasing Kay, for unknown reasons. Pellinore calls out to his son for aid; Tor decides it's some sort of trick and keeps going. Later, Gawaine comes back and finishes the job.

[mj6373]

1 hour ago, creativehum said:

Thanks @SaxBasilisk for the post.

For clarity, I don't think the issue for my players (and this one specific player) is "Characters Behaving Badly." In fact, she has made it clear that she's fine with that.

The nub of the issue would have been having to fight for Uther, knowing that Uther is ultimately on a path to rape Ygraine. It is the aiding and abetting of Uther's actions that I think was too much for her. She doesn't what to have to be loyal to a character that she simply has such terrible reaction to in such a moral, emotional, and visceral way.

*whispered chanting* Join Cornwall, join Cornwall, join Cornwall-

[merlyn]

5 hours ago, Leingod said:

Personally, I'd have part of the denouement of that quest be that Pellinore is informed that for his moral failure he has lost the mantle of "greatest knight" and can no longer sit on the Siege Perilous. 

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

[creativehum]

I wanted to say quickly that I appreciate all the thought and effort people are putting into this thread.

[Leingod]

7 hours ago, SaxBasilisk said:

The key passage in GPC is taken straight out of Malory. Arthur says he isn't upset the Balin killed the Lady, but that he did so at his court. I think modern readers will be more likely to focus on the violence than the royal prerogatives.

Sure, but since Balin had an understandable if not necessarily "good" reason for doing it, and the Lady in question was repeatedly demanding that Arthur kill a woman for her despite Arthur having said he wouldn't grant her anything dishonorable, it isn't out of the question that Arthur wouldn't have as much of a problem with her death itself as he otherwise would, and would focus instead on the breach of his Hospitality.

Which is not a "royal prerogative;" by the standards of the culture it would be a massive slap in the face to do this in anyone's home to one of their guests, no matter their personal feelings about that guest. Even if Balin had done the same deed elsewhere, whether that be in a vassal knight's manor or even in some peasant's cottage, that host would almost certainly have reacted much the same, if not worse. The only difference would be in whether they had the power to act against Balin or not.

The Pellinore thing is great, BTW; I'd like to use that sometime.

Edited June 12, 2022 by Leingod

[piersb]

So let's say your player's knight doesn't die while attempting to stop Uther. Either by a personal attack or by raising an army against him*. And succeeds. Uther is dead.

Everyone of note dies just before the anarchy, so there's an easy way to get back on track at that point; the only big question is going to be Who Gets To Be Arthur's Dad in this version? Line of succession would tend to indicate Madoc.

How bad *is* Uther in this situation? If your players are OK with exploring this, then he could be even worse than written, so that more of his knights side with Gorlois. If both Uther and Gorlois die at the battle of Tintagel, Madoc and Ygraine could get together consensually within a year or two, and you're back on course.

Your players actions might even decide which side of the battle Madoc fights on.

* Cornwall! Cornwall! Cornwall! hemhem

[piersb]

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Edited June 13, 2022 by piersb

[piersb]

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(posted three times, but I can't see a way to delete...)

Edited June 13, 2022 by piersb

[piersb]

Madoc becoming king could lead to an interesting spin on the Anarchy. If he ascends to the throne and tries to become a better person than his father was in the role - due to the PKs promptings, perhaps? - it'll make his death at the hands of (whoever did it) all the more tragic.

In my own GPC we have a NPK who was widely acknowledged as an utter arsehole. Also didn't believe in the idea of women knights. When a PK beat him in combat and spared his life, he had a change of heart and is now one of the campaign's prime movers for equality, raising his own daughters to become knights.

Every winter phase, I move one of his trait points from Unjust to Just to reflect him trying to be a better person. (I'm going to cap at 16.)

[Mugen]

On 6/11/2022 at 8:38 AM, Darius West said:

No Arthur, no Enchantment of Britain, no golden age, no Pendragon Game imo.  You would be stuck in a nasty, ugly, brutal and short dark ages campaign.  Do you fancy retooling Harnmaster for Britain?

Mythic Britain for Mythras would do the job with no retooling, IMHO

[merlyn]

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.")

[AlHazred]

9 hours ago, piersb said:

(posted three times, but I can't see a way to delete...)

I'm sorry, but by the Rules of the Round Table, you owe us three posts of outstanding luminosity and grandiloquence.

[SaxBasilisk]

On 6/11/2022 at 10:57 PM, Leingod said:

Sure, but since Balin had an understandable if not necessarily "good" reason for doing it, and the Lady in question was repeatedly demanding that Arthur kill a woman for her despite Arthur having said he wouldn't grant her anything dishonorable, it isn't out of the question that Arthur wouldn't have as much of a problem with her death itself as he otherwise would, and would focus instead on the breach of his Hospitality.

Oh, I get your reading - I just think there's another way a modern reader would look at it. Let me write it up this way:

Quote

 

A woman goes to a male authority figure. A man has killed people in her family, and she'd like him to do something about it. What she asked for is over the top, so he does nothing to address her concerns.

The man shows up, shouts at her, and cuts off her head. Nobody does anything to stop it. The authority figure asks the man why he did it, and the man accuses her of all manner of things. The authority figure responds, "I'll just accept everything you said about why she needed to be killed. Nonetheless, you infringed on MY rights, so I'll banish you for that."

The man picks up her head and walks out without anyone stopping him.

 

There's a good number of disturbing parallels here with how authorities can handle cases of domestic violence - so I wouldn't be surprised if some readers or players don't view this incident through that lens. Through that lens, Arthur makes several less-than-ideal choices, and the players may hold him accountable for those.

I'm thinking the best way to handle it would be for Balin to flee immediately after the murder...

Edited June 13, 2022 by SaxBasilisk

[SaxBasilisk]

On 6/11/2022 at 3:52 PM, creativehum said:

The nub of the issue would have been having to fight for Uther, knowing that Uther is ultimately on a path to rape Ygraine. It is the aiding and abetting of Uther's actions that I think was too much for her. She doesn't what to have to be loyal to a character that she simply has such terrible reaction to in such a moral, emotional, and visceral way.

That gives a different perspective. I think others have offered some good suggestions.

Unless something unusual happened, the group is loyal to the count, not directly to Uther. That gives them the opportunity to petition their lord to do something about the situation, or adjust their attitudes toward it, or just convince him not to go after Gorlois. It's not going to be received well by the other nobles, but that's an interesting outcome.

They could also take off for another lord. I also wouldn't want to deny them an Anarchy of some sorts, so I wouldn't want them to just sign up with Madoc, Gorlois, or Idres and have that go smoothly. You could also send emissaries from Cerdic, who might invade early and offer aid to the knights or to Salisbury.

[vegas]

On 6/9/2022 at 2:26 PM, Morien said:

Just to toss this into the pot...

... you could easily go with the idea that Ygraine is married to this older man (Gorlois' stats suck in the GPC in comparison to Uther's in KAP 5.2), and might indeed welcome advances from the more vigorous warrior king, Uther. Indeed, who is to say that she is not in love with him, that the passion is mutual? ...

FWIW this is more or less exactly what Steven Lumpkin did in his Pendragon campaign (youtube it). It was one a few changes they made as concessions to modern sensibilities.

[merlyn]

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.