First of all, it wasn’t until after I finished reading it and I went to Amazon to read reviews by other authors that I even realized I had read the 2nd book, not the first, in the series. I had thought it was the first since inside the book is a list of the author’s other works and it is listed above Sword of Darkness, which made me assume it was the first and Sword of Darkness the second in the series. Nowhere on the front or back cover was it indicated in which order to read the books. However, I don’t feel I missed anything by not reading the first in the series and I have no intention of reading it in the future.

I also discovered at Amazon that Kinley MacGregor is a pseudonym for Sherrilyn Kenyon, whose name I had heard in reference to her vampire novels, although I had not read them. Those vampire novels might be worth reading, but when I did a little more research and found this author has written over 60 novels and is only in her mid-40s, I understood why Knight of Darkness is so bad. No author can whip out that many books in 20 years and expect to create quality. That she is a bestselling author is just a sign of how good marketing can sell anything. The attractive cover must have helped sell this book–the writing inside sure couldn’t.

Actually, Knight of Darkness didn’t start out too badly. The main character, Varian duFey, is the son of Sir Lancelot and an evil woman who is Morgen le Fey’s right hand. Varian, however, works for the good guys–including Merlin, but a female Merlin–and as a hired assassin for them. The book is set in modern times as well. I was slightly intrigued by the situation.

When a grail knight is assassinated, Varian is supposed to find out who the murderer is. So far, so good, and for about fifty pages, I was interested, despite the writing not being of the first quality, but then the book falls into campiness. Varian is captured and imprisoned, and in his efforts to escape, becomes involved with an unattractive woman, Merewyn, who agrees to seduce him in exchange for becoming beautiful–and Varian’s mother is the one who makes the deal with her. I just read this book a couple of days ago, but I’m having trouble remembering the details of what they even wanted from Varian–a sign the plot wasn’t thought out well. Varian has magical powers they want to prohibit, but they also want to stop him from learning who murdered the grail knight.

But what makes things really difficult is the whole mystery gets forgotten in the ridiculous overuse of magic throughout the novel, Varian and Merewyn’s escape into some sort of inbetween realm that doesn’t make sense–really is nonsensical, not to mention cheesy–and a whole lot of erotic scenes between Varian and Merewyn that go on and on and tend to be more boring than titillating. Add into it Merewyn falling into a slough of despond or some such name that sounds like something out of Pilgrim’s Progress, and mix into that a bunch of characters who keep quoting from Spamalot–a show I like but which I don’t need to have replayed for me in the pages of the book (I won’t even get started on the book’s other faults, including the talking rock that’s supposed to grow up to be a gargoyle and all the ridiculous geeky dialogue). Suffice it to say, this book may well be tied with the movie Quest for Camelot for the title of the ultimate Arthurian cheesefest!

Seriously, I don’t mind some humor–I find Spamalot very funny–but cheesiness is more than I want. The Arthurian legend has prevailed for centuries because of its tragedy, its romance, its awe and mystery, its sense of ideals to strive for, even if they may not always be reached. None of that exists in the pages of this book. All that is here is a badly-written, badly-thought out story, that I would not have even finished reading if it hadn’t been the only book I had to read while on an airplane.

If you want some cheesy Arthurian time travel in other dimensions type story, go check out the worst of the remakes of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court–there are plenty of them, and they are all better than this book. Knight of Darkness is truly a dark night for Arthurian literature.

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Tyler R. Tichelaar, Ph.D. is the author of King Arthur’s Children: A Study in Fiction and Tradition, available at www.ChildrenofArthur.com

The Revelation of King Arthur by Robert Bruce Fruehling

Fruehling has an M.A. and M.Div. from Ashland Theological Seminary and ministers through “aviv Ministries.” And he clearly knows the Bible well from the way he has researched his theories and quotes from the Bible in this book.

The Guards’ Account in the subtitle refers to theories, based on lies spread by Roman soldiers following the Crucifixion, that Jesus’ body was stolen and that he did not rise from the dead but simply had not died. This story spread as a lie throughout the ancient world and Fruehling shows it is the origin to more recent works like The Da Vinci Code and Holy Blood, Holy Grail that claim Jesus had children with Mary Magdalene. Basically he explores in great detail the reasons why these stories are not true and debunks these myths.

I have never bought into these fantastic theories about Jesus’ descendants, although Jesus’ siblings were likely to have descendants, among whom King Arthur is usually included. And in my research for writing King Arthur’s Children, I never came across any legitimate claims that King Arthur was directly descended from Jesus, nor do I believe that to be the case. Fruehling does an effective job of showing how unbelievable these theories are.

The second part of Fruehling’s book explores the Arthurian legend. Fruehling relies on some unreliable scholarship—especially that of Norma Lorre Goodrich, although he assumes her work is impeccable—but ultimately, her often contradictory theories have little bearing on Fruehling’s main argument. Nevertheless the book wanders about in places talking about Martin Luther’s opinions of the Jews and how they influenced Hitler, how the Society of St. Vincent de Paul was a secret society (highly questionable) and misunderstanding history—such as attributing Princess Diana’s ancestor being a King of Jerusalem to refer to her being descended from Jesus via the Merovingians—I guess he never heard of the Kingdom of Jerusalem set up by the crusaders. He also acts like Laurence Gardner, the late author of Bloodline of the Holy Grail, was a legitimate scholar—something I have yet to believe considering he could never document anything properly in his books.

Aside from such wanderings and relying upon weak sources, Fruehling’s primary focus is upon how the images in the Book of Revelation relate to King Arthur—particularly the image of the red dragon on the flag of Wales being the beast in Revelation, a sign of the AntiChrist.

I won’t go into detail about the comparisons made between King Arthur Book of Revelation, but those interested can explore all the evidence Fruehling cites there. I have to admit that while Fruehling gives plenty of evidence to back up his theories, I remain skeptical simply because plenty of biblical scholars have tried to explain Revelation ad nauseam. Frankly, I don’t believe the biblical book of Revelation accurately depicts how the end of the world will happen and I think the book has done more harm than good. If only the Church fathers had been wise enough to leave it out of the Bible.

Fruehling also takes issue with novelists who depict King Arthur’s return, primarily Stephen Lawhead, who is generally regarded as a Christian author, and influenced by Tolkien and C.S. Lewis—also considered Christian authors. He shows how all of these authors strayed from orthodox Christianity and introduced and blended pagan myths with Christianity which is not acceptable as a belief system for a true Christian. Fruehling is completely correct in these charges against these authors, but they wrote great fiction nonetheless.

I can’t say that I agree with Fruehling’s religious beliefs wholeheartedly, but he makes a solid argument that will win over orthodox Christians, and it does give much pause for thought. I suspect we will never see the return of King Arthur in reality, or the events of Revelation, but perhaps both will result in some new fiction depicting a false King Arthur as the Antichrist. I don’t wish to be cynical, but after two thousand years of waiting for Jesus to return and countless people trying to analyze the book of Revelation to determine when and how that will happen, despite Jesus himself stating that no one will ever know that hour, I remain skeptical. Still, I have to admit I found myself wondering why the legend that King Arthur will return is so fascinating to us—perhaps because we want a savior who does not have a religious context. Much as I am a fan of the King Arthur legend, and I am more than willing to write fiction about his return because it makes fabulous fiction—it would be just that, fiction. Jesus is, by comparison, a much more likely to be historical person, and from all written about King Arthur and Jesus, King Arthur could in no way compete with Jesus to be the better savior.

Fruehling closes by saying “We are on the eve of the revelation of King Arthur. We are also on the eve of the return of Jesus of Nazareth. Which ‘messiah’ will you choose? May we choose our hero wisely.” I imagine most of us would choose wisely—I’m just skeptical, after centuries of hearing we are “on the eve” that we will need to make a choice. As I said, Revelation has probably done more damage than anything else the way it has held our imaginations hostage for all these centuries.

Despite my personal qualms with the arguments in Fruehling’s book, I did find it compelling reading and I encourage people interested in Christianity and King Arthur to read The Revelation of King Arthur and make decisions for themselves.

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Tyler R. Tichelaar, Ph.D. is the author of King Arthur’s Children: A Study in Fiction and Tradition, available at www.ChildrenofArthur.com

While the Tudor family’s connection to King Arthur remains unconfirmed, the Tudors certainly took full advantage of the possibility, beginning with the first royal Tudor, Henry VII.

After King Henry V died in 1422, his widow, Catherine of France, fell in love with the Welsh prince, Owen Tudor, who claimed Arthurian descent. Their son Edmund Tudor would marry Margaret Beaufort, a member of the English royal family (of the Plantagenet line and a descendant of King Edward III). Through this marriage the future King Henry VII was born. Henry VII, as a member of the House of Lancaster, had the Red Rose of Lancaster as his symbol. To strengthen his claim of an Arthurian descent, he had the Red Rose of Lancaster painted in the center of the Round Table at Winchester. King Henry VII also named his eldest son Arthur, but the prince died before he could become King Arthur, and so his brother instead succeeded to the throne as King Henry VIII.

Henry VIII had King Arthur's image (with Henry's face) painted on the Round Table at Winchester

Henry VIII continued the belief in a descent from King Arthur through his Tudor ancestors by having a figure of King Arthur painted on the Round Table, with Henry VIII’s own face painted as that of Arthur (Le Morte D’Arthur). A family resemblance between the ancient and present king was the purpose, and since no one can say what King Arthur looked like, no one could deny that Henry VIII did not resemble his supposed ancestor of a thousand years before.

Queen Elizabeth I (reigned 1558-1603)

Queen Elizabeth I continued the Arthurian tradition in the family. Brinkley declares that “the Arthurian ancestry of Elizabeth was given especial emphasis at the time of her coronation” . When Elizabeth visited Kenilworth in 1575, an Arthurian costume party and masque were held. Upon the queen’s arrival, she was met by a woman dressed as Morgan le Fay, who greeted the queen as Arthur’s heir. During the revels, a set of trumpeters signified that the men of Arthur’s day were superior to modern men. Elizabeth talked with the Lady of the Lake, and her presence allowed her to free the Lady of the Lake from the persecutions of Bruce sans Pitee. A song was also sung of Rience’s demand for Arthur’s beard. It is clear that these events of Kenilworth were based upon Malory’s writings (Merriman 201), and the masque in Chapter 37 of Sir Walter Scott’s Kenilworth borrows and fictionalizes from this historical event.

For more about the British royal family’s claims to being King Arthur’s descendants and how they tried to promote the idea, despite a lack of proof, see King Arthur’s Children at www.ChildrenofArthur.com.

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Tyler R. Tichelaar, Ph.D. is the author of King Arthur’s Children: A Study in Fiction and Tradition, available at www.ChildrenofArthur.com

The Winter King by Bernard Cornwell

While these novels adopt Arthur’s children from Welsh tradition, Cornwell allows the children’s personalities to deviate from the characteristics attributed to them in Welsh legend. At the opening of The Winter King, Arthur has two bastard twin sons, Amhar and Loholt, by his mistress Ailleann. Arthur is a neglectful father, and throughout the novel the children are scarcely mentioned, appearing only on pages 108, 163, and 182. When they are mentioned, they are dismissed simply as brats.

Enemy of God by Bernard Cornwell

Enemy of God seeks to expand the role of Arthur’s bastard children as well as providing Arthur with a legitimate son, Gwydre, by Arthur’s marriage to Guinevere. In Welsh tradition, Amhar and Gwydre’s mother is never named, while Llacheu is sometimes the son of Guinevere, so it is strange that Cornwell picks Gwydre rather than Loholt as Guinevere’s son. Gwydre is significantly younger than his half-brothers who are already adults when he is born. Amhar and Loholt have now matured into wicked young men who hate their neglectful father. They become the followers of the cowardly, yet handsome, Lancelot, the exiled prince of Benoic. Lancelot eventually becomes King of the Belgic lands in Britain. Guinevere, who is hungry for power, wishes Arthur to declare himself King of Dumnonia, then unite and rule over all Britain. Arthur, however, refuses to usurp the throne from his nephew, Mordred. Seeing Arthur will never rule Britain, Guinevere turns her attention to Lancelot, becoming his lover and political supporter. Eventually, Arthur and Lancelot go to war, and Arthur’s twin sons, Amhar and Loholt, side with Lancelot. Amhar and Loholt claim to be great druids who have combined ancient druidic lore with the knowledge derived from other religions such as Christianity and the Cult of Isis which have come into Britain. Merlin, however, scoffs at their claims to be druids, for the greatest magical feat the twins perform are simple tricks like pulling eggs from people’s ears. During the conflict between Arthur and Lancelot, Guinevere and Gwydre become hostages in Lancelot’s castle. Arthur, wishing to regain his wife and son, attacks Lancelot’s strongholds, first defeating one held by Loholt. When Arthur asks the defeated Loholt how he could raise a hand against his own father, Loholt replies, “You were never a father to us” (387). Arthur then requests that Loholt place his right hand upon a stone. Loholt thinks he is about to take an oath of loyalty to his father, but instead, Arthur cuts off Loholt’s hand (388), then sends Loholt to Lancelot as a warning of the approach of Arthur’s army. By the novel’s end, Arthur has defeated Lancelot’s armies and rescued Guinevere and his son, Gwydre.

Excalibur by Bernard Cornwell

In the final novel of the series, Excalibur, Arthur’s three children continue to have prominent roles. The novel begins with Arthur preparing to battle the Saxons. Derfel, the narrator, travels to the court of the Saxons to bargain with them. Here, he discovers Lancelot has allied himself with the Saxons, and Lancelot’s supporters, Arthur’s two sons, Amhar and Loholt, are also present. When peace cannot be made, the Britons and Saxons battle, culminating in Arthur’s victory at Mynydd Badon. Amhar and Loholt survive the battle while Lancelot is killed. Arthur’s villainous twin sons then disappear from the novel for several pages. Meanwhile, Merlin has attempted to save Briton from the Saxons by having the Old Gods return to Britain. In order to bring about the old religion’s return, he must sacrifice the son of a ruler and throw the body into the Cauldron of Clyddno Eiddyn, one of the Treasures of Britain which is said to bring to life anyone who is sacrificed and thrown into it. Among Merlin’s intended victims is Arthur’s son, Gwydre, but Arthur rescues Gwydre before such an atrocity can be committed. As Gwydre grows up, he becomes Mordred’s rival for the throne, for Mordred and his wife, Argante, have been unable to conceive a child. Gwydre marries Derfel’s daughter, Morwenna, and has two children by her, a son Arthur-Bach (meaning Arthur the Little) and a daughter, Seren (298-9). Mordred, meanwhile, plots against Gwydre, by going to France and then spreading rumors that he is dying. Mordred suspects that Arthur and Derfel will now try to win the throne for Gwydre, and when they do so, he can accuse them of treason. Unaware of Mordred’s plan, Derfel travels south to proclaim Gwydre’s claim to the throne. Unfortunately, Derfel is captured by Mordred’s forces and taken prisoner. Here he discovers that Arthur’s twin sons have resurfaced as Mordred’s followers. Derfel manages to escape during the night when everyone is asleep, but before he leaves the castle, he runs a blade through Amhar’s neck, killing him (342). Mordred’s forces now attack Arthur. Arthur does not want war, so he tries to leave Britain for Gaul, but Mordred’s troops quickly attack Arthur, resulting in the Battle of Camlann. Loholt is killed in battle, and Arthur slays Mordred. Arthur and Mordred’s forces are both destroyed, but as the battle ends, a neighboring king, Meurig, appears with an army to claim the right to rule Dumnonia. Arthur, Gweniver, Gwydre and Morwenna, and their children manage to escape on a fishing boat and head to France. The novel ends with Derfel watching the boat depart, and stating that no one has seen Arthur since (433).

With the end of Cornwell’s trilogy, one receives the sense that Gwydre’s chance of gaining the throne is now hopeless. Arthur’s family, however, may live on in Gaul, where Gwydre’s children will marry and multiply, thus continuing Arthur’s bloodline.

The above passage is from King Arthur’s Children: A Study in Fiction and Tradition. For more information, visit http://www.ChildrenofArthur.com

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Tyler R. Tichelaar, Ph.D. is the author of King Arthur’s Children: A Study in Fiction and Tradition, available at www.ChildrenofArthur.com

Find out the Fact from the Fiction and Far More in:

King Arthur’s Children: A Study in Fiction and Tradition

by

Tyler R. Tichelaar, Ph.D.

 Available at:

www.ChildrenofArthur.com

www.Amazon.com

www.BarnesandNoble.com

________________________

Tyler R. Tichelaar, Ph.D. is the author of King Arthur’s Children: A Study in Fiction and Tradition, available at www.ChildrenofArthur.com

This final episode drags through its first half. Arthur shows himself to be fairly stupid in remaining behind at Bardon Pass to fight Morgan’s soldiers by himself just to prove himself to the men, after they are upset with him for sleeping with Leontes’ wife Guinevere. Arthur doesn’t really prove anything except his stupidity. He does make some entertaining traps to stop the enemy, but in the end, he needs the other men to come back and help him anyway. The best part of this whole scene was when one of the opposing soldiers tells Arthur they fight for Morgan and adds, “You’re a fucked up family all right.”

Leontes gets mortally wounded in the battle. As he’s dying he tells Arthur to “treasure her.” Of course, Leontes knows Arthur and Guinevere will get together–this isn’t permission so much as his accepting reality and Leontes is a gentleman to the end. Too bad he has to die; to bad he wasn’t king and Arthur couldn’t die instead. What a waste to create a fake Arthurian character only to kill him off. Why not start out with Lancelot in the first place since Lancelot is apparently going to show up in season 2? Later in the show, the Round Table is built and a special seat is created in Leontes’ memory until someone as good as him can take it. Gawain says it will remain empty, but I suspect it’s the Siege Perilous which normally in the legend only Galahad is pure enough to take, but the writers probably planned to have Lancelot take instead–thus beginning the Arthur/Guinevere/Lancelot triangle.

Merlin also decides to leave after Morgan’s plot is foiled. He should have left a long time ago. While Arthur has been away fighting, Morgan almost ends up being crowned queen, under the belief that Arthur has died. Merlin is tied up and helpless and completely useless to stop the crowning. As I’ve said previously, he’s the most pathetic version of the great wizard in any film or written version of the Arthurian legend to date.

I’d like to mention here that a lot of people have posted about Camelot online besides me, and I’ve read several of the other posts. One I think particularly worth reading is at:
http://www.denofgeek.com/television/938298/camelot_episode_10_review_reckoning_season_finale.html
because the reviewer thinks the show as ridiculous as I do.

That said, I disagree with this reviewer, as well as most of the others, that Merlin was the best part of Camelot. In fact, as I’ve pointed out in every post I’ve written about Merlin so far, he’s the worst depiction of the famous sorcerer I have ever seen, and totally incompetent when he’s not doddering. Other than getting Arthur a sword and getting him elected king, what has he done of any real value? Did all his stupidity in going with Igraine to Morgan’s castle reflect a deeply thought out plot to get Morgan to Camelot to seize the crown so she can be exposed? If so, he didn’t foresee that Igraine would get killed in the process; and his being tied up and unable to escape during the crowning ceremony just makes him look all the more unimpressive.

Then, after Arthur accuses Morgan of treason and Sybil takes the blame for it, Merlin has to be a total prick by going to watch Gawain behead Sybil and tell her, “There is no God.” Perhaps he’s just that small that he needs to taunt her, to kick his enemy when she’s down, but seriously, how stupid is he to think there’s no God? How else do you explain the other supernatural elements in the show like magic and witchcraft. It’s possible the god in this show isn’t a Christian god, but there’s got to be some godlike force in this program, and God isn’t going to be nice to Sybil after all the bad things she’s done anyway. Saying there’s no God implies there’s no afterlife. But the show obviously makes it clear that’s untrue when Morgan prays at Sybil’s grave and then hears a voice telling her what to do. Sybil is able to influence Morgan from beyond the grave, and since Merlin is now going off to “find himself” as one reviewer put it, I imagine Sybil will have more power than ever, even if it’s filtered through Morgan. At the end of the day, if you had Sybil and Merlin match wits, odds are Sybil would come out ahead. Too bad we can’t give Sybil and Merlin I.Q. tests. I’d rather have a clever villain than a stupid good wizard any day.

I admit I was impressed by the final twist. When Guinevere showed up in Arthur’s bedroom I thought she must be a total slut–Leontes is barely dead and she’s throwing herself at Arthur already–wait at least 30 days, I thought. But we then find out Guinevere was really Morgan in disguise–something I should have guessed from Sybil’s voice telling Morgan to sire a king. This plot twist completely worked for me and solved the problem of Morgan getting pregnant with Arthur’s child–Mordred. In fact, other than Marion Zimmer Bradley’s depiction in The Mists of Avalon of how Arthur and Morgan come together to have a child, I thought it the best explanation for the incest twist in the legend that I have seen. I admit, it made me anxious to see the next season–the season that will not be.

My personal opinion, in the end, is that Camelot had great potential but just about fell flat on its face. Ultimately, only Sybil was able to capture my imagination and retain it through the 10 episodes, although Morgan came close. And if the show is cancelled, we’ll never know just exactly what that wolf was that Morgan slept with. Oh well, there’s always season 4 of Merlin to look forward to.

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Tyler R. Tichelaar, Ph.D. is the author of King Arthur’s Children: A Study in Fiction and Tradition, available at www.ChildrenofArthur.com

Elliott’s books seek to place the Tristan and Isolde legend into a new and perhaps more historically correct context within the Arthurian canon. The Tristan stories have always been a sort of digression from the main tales of Arthur and his knights, just plopped into Malory and other works, and not really feeling like they belong there. Elliott bases her versions on the knowledge that Tristan probably lived a couple of generations after Arthur in late 5th/early 6th century Britain, so she sets the novels in the  post-Arthurian era.

Isolde is the main character of the series through whose eyes we see almost everything with occasional switches to Trystan’s viewpoint and even Morgan’s. Isolde is actually Arthur and Morgan’s granddaughter, the daughter of Mordred and Guinevere. In earlier versions of the Arthurian legend, Mordred is said to have sons by Guinevere (see my earlier post While King Arthur was Away did Guinevere with Mordred Play?), but never a daughter. However, I found Isolde being made into Arthur’s granddaughter to be an interesting change.

Isolde is viewed as a sort of trophy wife by the Britons–the heir to Arthur, but a woman unable to inherit, and the local Britons view her more as the traitor’s daughter than the great king’s granddaughter. When the first book opens, Isolde is grieving the death of her husband Constantine “Con” who was chosen to succeed Arthur, and who in legend is the traditional heir of Arthur after Camlann. Isolde soon realizes her husband was most likely murdered and the primary culprit is Lord Marche (Elliot’s version of King Mark of Cornwall, though I don’t understand why she felt the need to change the name’s spelling). Marche now seeks to wed Isolde, although she is rather appalled by the idea. Isolde also encounters Trystan, who is in a prison, and as the novel progresses, she realizes he is Marche’s son and her former playmate as a child. Trystan despises his father (who does not recognize him). With Isolde’s help he manages to escape from prison.

By the second book, Marche wants to become High King of Britain, but Madoc instead is crowned. Marche then seeks to ally himself with the Saxons and it is up to Isolde and Trystan to stop him from trying to seize the crown.

I won’t give away more of the plot than that, and we will have to wait to see how things turn out in the third book. It’s sufficient to say though that King Arthur’s great-grandchild is likely to be born soon based on how the second book ends.

In addition, Elliott creates a bastard son for Arthur, Amhar, based on legendary versions of his son Amir, one of the original sons given to Arthur in Welsh legend; Amhar died at Camlann, several years before the novels open, so he does not figure as a character in the novels, though his mother, Arthur’s mistress, does slightly. Elliott does not mention Llacheu or Gwydre, Arthur’s other two obscure sons in the Welsh legends.

I was really intrigued with Elliott’s ideas for these books and how she maneuvered the characters’ places in the legend. I have to admit, however, that I didn’t think the writing equaled the concept. The books were overly long – each runs about 420 pages, which is typical of Arthurian novels, but I felt Elliott’s scenes dragged and each could have been as much as half as long. I found myself skimming through most of the second book, reading just the dialogue and a sentence here and there of the description to see what would happen. I also never really figured out why she used “Avalon” in the titles since no scenes take place there. “Camelot” might have been more fitting.

Despite my not caring for Elliott’s writing, I will probably read the third book when it is out because of my interest in depictions of King Arthur’s descendants, and I am curious to read her two short stories, one about Morgan and Merlin and the other about Dera, a secondary character in Twilight of Avalon. Other readers may enjoy the books more than I did; before you buy, view free excerpts and download the short stories free at Elliott’s site. I suspect female readers will enjoy the books more than male because they are told more from a woman’s perspective.

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Tyler R. Tichelaar, Ph.D. is the author of King Arthur’s Children: A Study in Fiction and Tradition, available at www.ChildrenofArthur.com

German Painter Julius Hubner's depiction of Melusine

For those who don’t know Melusine’s story, here is a summary of the legend as it appears on Wikipedia:

Elynas, the King of Albany (an old name for Albania), went hunting one day and came across a beautiful lady in the forest. She was Pressyne, mother of Melusine. He persuaded her to marry him but she agreed, only on the promise — for there is often a hard and fatal condition attached to any pairing of fay and mortal — that he must not enter her chamber when she birthed or bathed her children. She gave birth to triplets. When he violated this taboo, Pressyne left the kingdom, together with her three daughters, and traveled to the lost Isle of Avalon.

The three girls — Melusine, Melior, and Palatyne — grew up in Avalon. On their fifteenth birthday, Melusine, the eldest, asked why they had been taken to Avalon. Upon hearing of their father’s broken promise, Melusine sought revenge. She and her sisters captured Elynas and locked him, with his riches, in a mountain. Pressyne became enraged when she learned what the girls had done, and punished them for their disrespect to their father. Melusine was condemned to take the form of a serpent from the waist down every Saturday. In other stories, she takes on the form of a mermaid.

Raymond of Poitou came across Melusine in a forest in France, and proposed marriage. Just as her mother had done, she laid a condition, that he must never enter her chamber on a Saturday. He broke the promise and saw her in the form of a part-woman part-serpent. She forgave him. When during a disagreement, he called her a “serpent” in front of his court, she assumed the form of a dragon, provided him with two magic rings, and flew off, never to return.

What fascinates me about the legend is two-fold: the fact that Melusine is a fairy who grows up in Avalon (did she know Morgan le Fay and King Arthur?) and how royal lines, including the House of Lusignan, and their descendants, the royal family of England, claim descent from her–why want to be descended from a cursed fairy?

Recently, I discovered Manuel Mujica Lainez’s novel The Wandering Unicorn (1965). More than just a retelling of the Melusine legend, Lainez tells the story in first person from Melusine’s viewpoint but quickly sums up the known story in the first few pages. Rather than a retelling of the story, Lainez continues Melusine’s tale. Tired of hanging around the castle of Lusignan and being invisible, Melusine decides to accompany her strikingly gorgeous descendant Aiol (a fictional character to the best of my knowledge), on his quest to find the lance that pierced Christ, reputedly hidden somewhere in the Holy Land. The novel takes place during the time of the Crusades, and for those familiar with the movie, Kingdom of Heaven(2005), it basically recounts the same events surrounding the reign of the Leper King, Baldwin IV, his death, and the fall of Jerusalem to Saladin.

"The Wandering Unicorn" by Manuel Mujica Lainez

Today, the novel is a bit hard to find but used copies can be bought online. Some reviewers at Amazon have complained that it’s slow. I admit it isn’t an action-adventure novel or even one fully rich on character development, other than Melusine’s character. It reads less like a novel than an old-fashioned French romance or chronicle, with a touch of magical realism. In most of the narrative, Melusine describes what she sees since she is invisible and cannot interact with the other characters. Later, she is granted her request by her mother to be made human–only to be tricked by being transformed into a man so she cannot possess Aiol, whom she is crazy in love with. But Lainez’s prose is musical and magical, and his research into Jerusalem and the Holy Land in the 12th century must have been extensive for Lainez knows the gossip and autobiographical details (some of which I’m sure he makes up) for many of the key and minor players in the politics of the Holy Land during the Crusades.

I found The Wandering Unicorn a fascinating novel, and I can’t say how thrilled I was to discover it because as many of my readers know, my book King Arthur’s Children was written as a form of research into the legend and background for the series of novels I am currently writing about King Arthur, in which I plan to carry King Arthur’s descendants up to modern times, and I have long planned to have both Melusine and the Crusades play a role in those books, so it was fascinating to me that nearly half a century ago, someone else had the same idea. And why not? If Melusine grew up in Avalon and did know King Arthur and Morgan le Fay, how could she not be a significant character in the aftermath of events that happened following Camlann? If Morgan le Fay can show up in the Charlemagne legends, why not Melusine? Even one of my other favorite literary characters, the Wandering Jew, makes a cameo appearance in The Wandering Unicorn. What’s not to like?

It may be years before I finish writing my own novels and creating a new story for Melusine, but she leaves much room for imaginative possibilities; she has definitely become one of my muses, and as one of her descendants (through my descent from the Plantagenets), who can say that she is not guiding me to retell her story? I hope to post more about her in the future. Meanwhile, I encourage people to read Coudrette’s late medieval work The Romans of Partenay or of Lusignen: Otherwise known as the Tale of Melusine and Lainez’s fascinating The Wandering Unicorn. As Melusine herself says in The Wandering Unicorn:

“My name is Melusine, which should tell you all you need to know. But alas, at present it may not be enough. Indeed, what is enough these days, when students have to absorb so much abstruse and futile information that they have no time left for the fundamentals?”

Melusine’s legend is definitely one of the fundamental great legends of Western literature. Explore it.

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Tyler R. Tichelaar, Ph.D. is the author of King Arthur’s Children: A Study in Fiction and Tradition, available at www.ChildrenofArthur.com

Among the comments made are:

“Though a slender volume, Dr. Tichelaar’s book examines an impressively large amount of texts in its pursuit of all information that could potentially shed light on its subject of study, which is in some ways a bit obscure. Loads of scholarship exists on King Arthur himself and the main body of legends, but surprisingly little is known about his progeny except for Mordred, the bastard son of Arthur’s incest with his half-sister Morgan (whose name has numerous spellings). There are actually quite a few others just in the medieval and Old Welsh sources. The great virtue of King Arthur’s Children is how methodically Tichelaar goes through every mention of a character being a direct descendent of Arthur and examines all possible ways in which that mention interacts with other versions of the story.”

You can read the full blog review here:

http://twilightswarden.wordpress.com/2011/06/16/book-review-%E2%80%9Cking-arthur%E2%80%99s-children-a-study-in-fiction-and-tradition%E2%80%9D-by-tyler-tichelaar/

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Tyler R. Tichelaar, Ph.D. is the author of King Arthur’s Children: A Study in Fiction and Tradition, available at www.ChildrenofArthur.com

King Arthur's Children

Here are just a few of their comments about the book:

“Tichelaar has made a solid and scholarly effort to untangle the many threads in Arthur’s tapestry so that readers can come to their own conclusions and perhaps create further tales that enrich the Arthurian legend.

Though neither Agatha nor I are in any way serious scholars, we both enjoyed King Arthur’s Children with its earnest historian’s voice and fascinating subject matter.”

Don’t forget you can buy your own copy of King Arthur’s Children at www.ChildrenofArthur.com

In The Mists of Avalon, we have all the renowned characters of King Arthur’s Court, the love of Gwenhwyfar and Lancelet, Arthur’s battles against the Saxons, the quest for the Holy Grail, and all the other traditional storylines that are found in Arthurian legend.  But if this novel had only been meant as a retelling, there would have been no purpose for its being written.  Instead, the novel retells the Arthurian legends from the women’s point of view, something that has never been done before, and it is done more splendidly than anyone else could have ever imagined.

But why did Marion Zimmer Bradley decide to retell the Arthurian legend from the feminist perspective, and what purpose did she think it would serve?  I believe she wished to express her own views on religion, in contrast to how far she thought the negative reactions of the women’s movement toward patriarchal religions were practical.

When the women’s movement began, one of its major goals was to overthrow the patriarchal society in which women lived.  This patriarchal society was largely formed as a result of the Jewish and Christian religions.  These religions worship the god, Yahweh, and because He is a male god, they hold the belief that men are superior to women.  Examples of this sexist behavior can be found in the Bible and the Judaic Christian traditions.  One example is the tale of Adam’s first wife, Lilith.  Because she refused to have Adam lie on top of her, therefore allowing him to be the dominant figure in the relationship, Lilith was thrown out of the Garden of Eden.  The Jewish tradition then turned her into a witch who curses men with sterility and wet dreams.  The first woman who sought to be liberated was cursed and ridiculed by men (Goldenberg  72-3).  Other examples can be found in the epistles of St. Paul when he tells women to be submissive to their husbands.

“Wives should be submissive to their husbands as if to the Lord because            the husband is head of his wife just as Christ is head of his body the church, as well as its savior.  As the church submits to Christ, so wives                             should submit to their husbands in everything” (Ephesians 5: 22-4)

Marion Zimmer Bradley is a feminist who believes we must rewrite myth and history;   women should no longer be portrayed as evil because of things they did which were in conflict with patriarchal society;  instead, they should be credited for all the good they have accomplished for mankind.  This includes rewriting myth so that women, who were misunderstood by patriarchal societies, are not perverted in the retelling of the story as they have been in the patriarchal versions;  instead, in rewritten myth, the women should be depicted as they very probably were, rather than how patriarchal societies chose to view them.  By retelling the story through the character of King Arthur’s sister, Morgan Le Fay, known as Morgaine in The Mists of Avalon, Bradley shows how the Arthurian legends were distorted by male writers.

The front page of the novel begins with a quote from Sir Thomas Malory’s Morte d’Arthur, saying “Morgan le Fay was not married, but put to school in a nunnery, where she became a great mistress of magic” (Bradley n.p.)   Then in the prologue, Bradley allows Morgaine to speak for herself and refute Malory’s statement as being untrue:

“In my time I have been called many things:  sister, lover, priestess, wisewoman, queen.  Now in truth I have come to be wise-woman, and a time may come when these things may need to be known. But in sober truth, I think it is the Christians who will tell the last tale.  For ever the world of Fairy drifts further from the world in which the Christ holds sway.  I have no quarrel with the Christ, only with his priests, who call the Great Goddess a demon and deny that she ever held power in this world.  At best, they say that her power was of Satan.  Or else they clothe her in the blue robe of the Lady of Nazareth – who indeed had power in her way, too – and say that she was ever virgin.  But what can a virgin know of the sorrows and travail of mankind?” (Bradley ix)

These words begin the enticing novel, which then goes on to show us who the real Morgaine was … a priestess of the Great Goddess, and a woman who fought to preserve her religion against the spread of Christianity, which claimed the Goddess was evil and that Christianity was the only true religion.   Morgaine, as a priestess of Avalon, is a devotee of a matriarchal type of religion because her religion worships a Goddess, rather than a God.  Whenever a patriarchal religion such as Judaism or Christianity came into contact with a matriarchal religion, it tried to transform the matriarchal religion’s beliefs to be in agreement with their own.  What the patriarchal religions could not convert into their own beliefs, they then perverted to makeit appear evil.  In many cases, this meant that patriarchal religions believed religions where a goddess was worshipped had to be evil simply because women are evil.

And of course, women inherited this evil from Eve when she sinned in Eden.

“…it was through a woman that mankind had fallen into original Sin, and every woman must be aware that it was her work to atone for that  Original Sin in Eden.  No woman could ever be really good except for  Mary the Mother of Christ;  all other women were evil, they had never had any chance to be anything but evil” (Bradley 268)

In The Mists of Avalon, not only are women evil, but the Christian priests whose religion is replacing the religion of the Great Goddess in King Arthur’s Britain, are imposing evil interpretations upon Morgaine’s religion.  As Christianity compares all women to Eve, thus making them evil, so “the priests say that their Goddess is that same old serpent of evil whom our Lord drove from the Garden of Eden!” (Bradley 554).  What the priests are doing to the Goddess in Celtic Britain is exactly what their forebears in the patriarchal Jewish religion did to the matriarchal societies they came into contact with.  Archeological evidence shows that the worship of a Goddess at one time was common throughout most of the Western world, and probably existed even before the patriarchal religions.  Joseph Campbell believes the Goddess, which was originally an Indo-European belief that spread throughout the ancient world, survived longer and in a closer to the original form in Ireland than in any other part of the world.    Campbell discusses how  the patriarchal religions did not always wipe out the belief in the mother goddess, but instead they rewrote the belief in the mother goddess for their own benefit.  In the Levantine, before the Jewish people came in and rewrote the story of Adam and Eve to their own advantage,  there existed a belief in a goddess whose consort was a serpent;  this serpent’s title was Ningizzida, “Lord of the Tree of Truth” (Campbell 9).  The goddess and her serpent consort also had a son who had to follow a “quest for release from the bondages of birth, disease, old age, and death” (Campbell 16).  Joseph Campbell goes on to explain how this family, which was worshipped throughout the Middle East, was transformed by a patriarchal religion into the Biblical Adam and Eve story.  The goddess was transformed into Eve, and because she listened to the serpent, she became evil.  Ningizzida, “Lord of the Tree of Truth,” is of course, the serpent who already ate of the apple, and because he is wise, therefore the patriarchal religions decided that he was also sinful.  The son of Ningizzida and the Goddess is probably the Adam of the Bible story.  In the Biblical version, Adam is then made to be the spouse, rather than the son of Eve.  Whereas his mother should be dominant over him, the patriarchal religion then did something even worse, by stating that Eve was created out of Adam’s rib, therefore again stating that men are superior to women. (Campbell 29-30)

In The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley shows how this old Mother Goddess/ Serpent religion which had been wiped out by patriarchal religions in the Middle East, was still in existence in fifth century Celtic Britain.  Along with the worship of the Goddess, the serpent was also preserved in the Celtic religions.  In The Mists of Avalon, the kingmaking involved the king taking part in the Beltane festivals.  At this festival, the king would marry the land and pledge to support the holy isle of Avalon.  As a symbol of their support, kings would be given serpent bracelets or tattoos around their wrists.   At one point in the novel, Morgaine states that the story of how St. Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland is really a way of saying he drove out the Druids – which are the serpents of wisdom (Bradley 769).  The druids were renowned for their wisdom, and therefore their connection to serpents is not surprising;  furthermore, the connection of serpents to wisdom can obviously be seen as stemming from the old story of Adam and Eve, where the serpent is wise from eating of the apple, no matter whether you look at the Biblical or the more ancient version.  Furthermore, the idea of the apple as providing wisdom was also preserved in the Celtic world, because the name of the holy isle, Avalon, comes from the welsh word “aval” meaning “apple” (Westwood 21), and this isle was said to be filled with apple trees, as Bradley describes it in her novel.

In the novel, King Arthur’s reign is a time when Britain and the Celtic religions are in danger of succumbing to the patriarchal religion of Christianity.  Since Britain is one of the last strongholds of the “true religion,” the religion of the Great Goddess, Morgaine cannot allow Christianity to rewrite the Goddess and her religion as evil or to reinterpet it to suit their conventions.

Throughout the early part of the novel, Morgaine does not agree with the Christian priests, but she also feels that everyone has a right to believe what they want.  However, when her brother, King Arthur, marries Gwenhwyfar, the trouble begins.  King Arthur has been sworn to protect the isle of Avalon and promote the worship of the Goddess, since Avalon helped to set him on his throne.  Yet at the same time, he allows Christianity to exist in his realm, believing that all men have the right to choose their own religions.  However, Gwenhwyfar is a very strong Christian woman, and like the Christian priests, she believes that the Goddess and all religions other than her own are evil.

After several years of marriage to Arthur, Gwenhwyfar is still unable to produce an heir to the throne.  Her strong Christian faith leads her to believe that the reason she cannot have a child is because God is angry with Britain since the pagan religions are still allowed to exist in it.  Gwenhwyfar thinks that if Arthur truly makes Britain a Christian land, then God will look with favor on Britain, provide an heir for the throne, and continue Britain’s stability.  When Arthur’s army goes out to battle against the Saxons, Gwenhwyfar convinces her husband not to carry the banner of Avalon, but only the banner of Christ into battle.  After much argument, Arthur agrees with his wife, but this makes many of his people, who are followers of Avalon, angry enough with Arthur to desert his army.  Even with reduced numbers, Arthur still succeeds in winning a major victory against the Saxons.  Gwenhwyfar convinces him that it is God who has given him this victory because he has put away the old pagan ways and carried the banner of Christ into battle against the pagans.  When the King of Britain forsakes Avalon, which he has sworn to protect, by becoming a Christian, the religion of the Goddess cannot expect to survive.

Morgaine, of course, is furious that her brother has betrayed the holy isle.  The final straw for her is when peace is made with the Saxons, and Arthur’s sword, Excalibur, which is part of the holy regalia of Avalon, is flipped upside down to form a cross, upon which the Saxons and King Arthur swear an oath of peace.  Morgaine knows that if her religion continues to be treated with such disrespect, and the sacred regalia of Avalon continues to be desecrated, her religion will disappear.  She makes an attempt to kill her brother and establish her lover and fellow worshipper of the Goddess, Accolon, upon his throne, but instead Arthur slays Accolon, and Morgaine flees to Avalon where her brother can not reach her.

After several years of hiding, Morgaine decides that she must return to Camelot one last time to remind Arthur of his vows, by force if need be, and to try and preserve the religion of Avalon and the Goddess.  With her fellow priestess, Raven, she disguises herself as a peasant woman and journeys to Camelot.  The two priestesses arrive on Pentecost, the greatest feast day in Britain, when King Arthur hears petitions from his people.  On this particular feast day,  the Church and kingdom are celebrating Christianity’s conquering of the old pagan ways in Britain.  To solemnize this event, a mass is going to be held, and the bishop intends to use the holy cup of the Druids in the Mass to symbolize that Christianity has defeated the evil pagan ways.

Already, the sword of the Druid Regalia has been used sacriligeously, and Morgaine cannot allow such an act of sacrilege to also occur against the holy cup.  As one woman, there is not much she can do to stop it, but she prays to the Goddess to use her as a means to prevent this from happening.  Suddenly, her body is literally taken over, and she is transformed into the Goddess.  She picks up the holy cup of Avalon, and holding it in her hands, she appears as the Goddess before all of the court.  Morgaine floats about the room in the form of the Goddess while she brings the cup to everyone in the court and they drink from it;  they drink the holy water of the sacred well of Avalon, drink from the cup which represents the cauldron of Ceridwen, the Goddess, which is the cup of life.

After everyone has drunk from the cup, through the power of the Goddess, Morgaine makes the cup disappear from the court and return to Avalon so it can never be under threat of desecration again.  Morgaine then resumes her regular form, but this remains unnoticed by everyone because they are too overwhelmed at the miracle.  Before anyone realizes what they have actually seen, the bishop goes around the room telling everyone they have seen Mary, the Mother of God, and that the cup which they have all drunk from is nothing less than the Holy Grail, the cup which Christ used at the last supper.  Everyone believes this, and when Gawaine notices that the vessel is gone, the knights become determined to bring it back to Camelot, thus beginning the famous quest for the “Holy Grail.”

Meanwhile, Morgaine returns home to Avalon.  Years continue to pass as she hears tales of how the knights have left Camelot on their quest and how many of them have died.  Eventually, she also hears that Mordred, Arthur and Morgaine’s son who was conceived in an act of incest before Arthur and Morgaine realized they were brother and sister, attempted to steal the kingdom from Arthur, resulting in both father and son being slain.

Morgaine goes to Arthur as he is dying; she takes the holy sword, Excalibur, from him and throws it into the lake where it will forever be safe from the Christians.  As her brother now lies dying in her arms, she is no longer angry at him for his betrayal of Avalon.  He is simply her brother, the same brother who lay in her arms as a child.  While his kingdom is torn by war, and he lies dying in his sister’s embrace, he asks:

“Morgaine, was it all for nothing then, what we did, and all that we tried to do?  Why did we fail?”

[Morgaine replies,] “You did not fail, my brother, my love, my child.  You held this land in peace for many years, so that the Saxons did not destroy it.  You held back the darkness for a whole generation, until they were civilized men, with learning and music and faith in God, who will fight to save something of the beauty of the times that are past.  If this land had fallen to the Saxons when Uther died, then would all that was beautiful or good have perished forever from Britain.  And so you did not fail, my love.  None of us knows how she will do her will – only that it will be done.” (Bradley 867-8)

In the epilogue, Morgaine goes to Glastonbury to visit the graves of her brother, Guinevere, and her aunt, Viviane, who had once been Lady of the Lake.  They are all buried at Glastonbury, a Christian abbey.  Yet, despite the spread of Christianity throughout Britain, Morgaine is not upset.  This visit is an awakening for her – particularily when she is surprised to see that among the Christian saints, St. Brigid is venerated at the abbey.

“But Brigid is not a Christian saint, she thought, even if Patricius thinks so.  That is the Goddess as she is worshippped in Ireland.  And I know it, and even if they think otherwise, these women know the power of the Immortal.  Exile her as they may, she will prevail.  The Goddess will never withdraw herself from mankind.”  (Bradley 875).

Because the church has made Brigid a saint, another example of how patriarchal religions distort other religions to fit their own needs, the Goddess will live on in Christian form.

As the novel ends, Morgaine prays to the Goddess:

“Mother,” she whispered, “forgive me.  I thought I must do what I now see you can do for yourself.  The Goddess is within us, yes, but now I know that you are in the world too, now and always, just as you are in Avalon, and in the hearts of all men and women.  Be in me too now, and guide me, and tell me when I need only let you do your will….” (Bradley 876)

Morgaine realizes that even if the Goddess is not apparent in the world, she still exists there.  The same is true with the holy chalice of the Druid Regalia.  It is no longer in the world, but in the holy isle of Avalon, yet as Morgaine knows, “It is in Avalon, but it is here.  It is everywhere.  And those who have need of a sign in this world will see it always.” (Bradley 876)

The belief in the Goddess has returned to mankind because of the women’s movement.  Women are angry at patriarchy, and part of the patriarchal religions which have kept them down.  They are tired of a male God who works the way that men want Him to, and they are equally tired of hearing that women are evil as the Bible claims they are.  Because of this dissatisfaction with Christianity and other patriarchal religions, women are rediscovering the ancient Goddess whom the patriarchal religions oppressed and destroyed, just as men oppress women.  Because the Goddess has reemerged and women are turning to her, seeing themselves as having the Goddess within them, many in the women’s movement  believe patriarchal religions will come to an end.

Christianity is trying to make peace with the women’s movement by showing verses in the Bible that praise women, or state that God is not just a God for men.  One of the most often quoted verses for this purpose is that “in Christ ‘there is neither male or female’” (Goldenberg 80).  Christianity is trying to make God appear androgynous so He can be a god for both men and women.  The women’s movement, however, doesn’t seem to be buying this idea.

Today there is a large number of women seeking to become priests, ministers, or holders of other positions in the clergy which have traditionally been held by men.   Many denominations, including the Catholic Church, are against having women enter the clergy.  Pope Paul VI made a statement in 1977 that if women were to play at being priests, then they would play at being God, and Christianity can only afford to have men in that role (Goldenberg 7).  The women’s movement interprets this as men’s fear that women will take over religion and destroy the male god.  Women intend to do this.  They firmly believe that “Every woman working to improve her own position in society or that of women in general is bringing about the end of God” (Goldenberg 10).  When women become liberated, men will realize they are no longer the supreme rulers on earth, and if they cannot rule on earth anymore, shouldn’t they also realize that they can no longer rule in Heaven (Goldenberg 9)?  But men should not fear this – by toppling Yahweh and Christ, men will finally be able to free themselves from their Oedipal prisons, their fear of a supreme male figure which keeps them from being whole, self-reliant men themselves (Goldenberg 31,36).

Will this happen?  Will Christianity and other patriarchal religions fall because of the women’s movement?  Although there are women in favor of the fall of Christianity, there are also members of the women’s movement who believe the Goddess must be brought back, but at the same time, the continual presence of male gods won’t be harmful to women.  Women may even be able to find some value in keeping old patriarchal gods and finding places for them in religion (Goldenberg 82).  There are also some women who want to keep a male god simply so they have someone to yell at and blame for things that go wrong, and then they can turn toward the nurturing, caring Goddess for comfort.  In a way, even these ideas are being stolen from Christianity or at least rewriting it;  whereas now we have God who is good, and the Devil who is evil, if these women get their way, then God will become the bad guy, and the Goddess shall be the one mankind, and womenkind, turn to in their time of need.  Even if these changes take place, to put a single deity in charge of evil is a Christian tendency (Goldenberg 82), yet it is a tendency the women’s movement may not want to give up if they want to continue blaming men.

But how does The Mists of Avalon fit in with this desire to topple God and bring back the Goddess?  Marion Zimmer Bradley certainly believes that patriarchal religions have rewritten pagan religions to be evil, rather than the beautiful things that many of them were.  Her argument with Christianity, told through Morgaine’s voice, seems to be that the Celtic religions and the Goddess are needed because Christ is not enough for a religion to be.  The Celtic religion was very similar to Hinduism in that it also believed in the concept of reincarnation.  At one point in the novel, Morgaine and Arthur’s mother, Igraine, has the thought “Christians said they were free of the superstitions of the Druids, but they had their own, and Igraine felt that these were even more distressing, being separated from nature” (Bradley 48).  In truth, Christianity does not seem very connected to Nature because mankind is not supposed to be in communion with Nature, but the master of it, and therefore, above it.  However, Morgaine feels the need to commune with Nature because “Those who live in close kinship with the earth need something more than salvation” which is all that Christianity offers (Bradley 681).  Morgaine believes Christianity does not work because fear of priests, or God’s wrath “or anything else, will ever keep mankind from committing sins,” …. “but only when they have gained enough wisdom in all their lives that they know that error is useless and evil must be paid for, sooner or later” (Bradley 783).  Morgaine believes Christianity’s beliefs are wrong, that as a religion they have forgotten the true Mysteries, the ones which her religion follows, but then she realizes:

“They have not forgotten the Mysteries,” she said, “they have found them too difficult. They want a God who will care for them, who will not demand that they struggle for enlightenment, but who will accept them just as they are, with all their sins, and take away their sins with repentance.  It is not so, it will never be so, but perhaps it is the only way the unenlightened can bear to think of their Gods.”

Lancelet smiled bitterly.  “Perhaps a religion which demands that every man must work through lifetime after lifetime for his own salvation is too much for mankind.  They want not to wait for God’s justice, but to see it now.  And that is the lure which this new breed of priests has promised them.” (Bradley 808).

Morgaine, like her modern day counterparts in the women’s movement, seeks to overthrow Christianity, and make sure the Goddess is remembered, but by the end of the novel, she is no longer advocating this.  As at the beginning of the novel, Morgaine realizes that she has “no quarrel with the Christ, only with his priests…” (Bradley ix).  It is not necessarily the God the Christians worship who has made women subordinate to men, but the men who are in charge of running that religion.  As Elizabeth Cady Stanton said, “The first step in the elevation of women under all systems of religion is to convince them that the Great Spirit of the Universe is in no way responsible for any of these absurdities” (Daly 13).  Morgaine realizes that “the God they both worshipped was greater and less bigoted than any priesthood” (Bradley 118), and that “our differences make no difference at all to God” (Bradley 38). At the end of the novel, she has gone even a step further by stating,  that whatever is the will of the Goddess, it will happen, and no matter how mankind fights for or against this will, it will come to pass if it is what the Goddess wants to happen.  Perhaps this is Marion Zimmer Bradley’s view of the women’s movement and their feelings toward religion.  Patriarchal religions have repressed women and matriarchal religions.   Perhaps the women’s movement is right and we should pray to the Goddess instead of God, and perhaps God will be toppled, but Morgaine herself has no real argument with God, only with the religions that claim it is God who says women are evil and inferior.  Marion Zimmer Bradley may choose to believe in the Goddess, yet at the same time, she doesn’t seem to believe we have to get rid of God and Christ.  In one sense, she doesn’t take a definite stand on which side is right.  Instead she seems to be saying that whatever the truth is, and no matter what the women’s movement or any other groups say, what the Goddess, or Supreme Being wants to happen is what will happen.

Upon the publication of The Mists of Avalon, the reviewers did nothing but rave.  Isaac Asimov called it “The best retelling of the Arthurian saga I have ever read.  Completely compelling” (New York Times Book Review 8).  Other reviewers compared the novel to Mary Stewart’s Merlin novels written in the 1970’s and early 1980’s, and also as of equal or greater value to T.H. White’s The Once and Future King (Cassada 2351).  Even Christian reviewers applauded the novel.  One female Christian said that the novel raised fundamental questions about the relationship of the old Goddess religions to Christianity, and that it “Offers a feminist critique of patterns of power, sexuality, and salvation which the Christian Church and contemporary society take for granted.” (Zikmund 490)

The Mists of Avalon gives all of its readers a lot to think about, whether they are Arthurian Scholars, Christians, women seeking liberation, or simply lovers of books.  Members of the women’s movement, who are waiting for the fall of Christianity and patriarchal religions, believe that once this downfall occurs, patriarchal religious texts will no longer be useful in the new religions which are established.  Men and women will both have to find new stories and new scriptures (Goldenberg 120).  For many Christians, who may see this downfall coming, and for the women’s movement who wish it will come, The Mists of Avalon may very well become one of these texts.

Works Cited

Bradley, Marion Zimmer.  The Mists of Avalon.  New York:  Ballantine Books, 1984.

Campbell, Joseph.  The Masks of the Gods:  Occidental Mythology.  New York: Penguin Books, 1976.

Cassada, Jackie.  Rev. of The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley.  Library Journal 107 (1982):  2351.

Daly, Mary.  Beyond God the Father:  Toward a Philosophy of Women’s Liberation. Boston:  Beacon Press, 1973.

Goldenberg, Naomi R.  Changing of the Gods:  Feminism and the End of Traditional Religions.  Boston:  Beacon Press, 1979.

New York Times Book Review 11 (1983):  8.

Westwood, Jennifer.  Albion:  A Guide to Legendary Britain.  Gr. Brit:  Grafton, 1985.

Zikmund, Barbara Brown. “Favorite Books and How They Influence.”  Rev. of The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley.  Christian Century  104 (1987):  490.

Note: The above article was written in 1993, prior to Bradley’s death in 1999.

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Tyler R. Tichelaar, Ph.D. is the author of King Arthur’s Children: A Study in Fiction and Tradition, available at www.ChildrenofArthur.com

• The Eagle (2011) starring Tatum Channing – see my previous blog on this film:
  http://childrenofarthur.wordpress.com/2011/02/27/the-eagle-a-peak-into-pre-arthurian-roman-britain/
  
• The Last Legion (2007) starring Colin Firth, which ties the legion to the Arthurian Legend and Julius Caesar (I’ll write about this film in an upcoming post)
• The Centurion (2010) starring Michael Fassbender

Of these three films, I’m afraid The Centurion is the one I find the least interesting. Like the other films, The Centurion is about what happened to the Ninth Legion that seemingly disappeared – although historians now think they were transferred and later destroyed on the continent. How they were destroyed remains lost to history, but authors like Rosemary Sutcliffe, whose novel The Eagle of the Ninth, which the film The Eagle is based upon, have been writing books about it for many years, surmising what may have occurred. Usually the stories suggest the legion went north of the area where Hadrian’s Wall separated the “uncivilized” Britons from the territory the Romans had conquered.

The problem I have with The Centurion is not the suggestions of what may have happened to the Ninth (an interesting historical mystery) but the film’s lack of character development as well as my difficulty with identifying with the main characters. In this film, the Roman legion is led north with the aid of a Brigantes woman who is apparently going to lead them to where they can attack the Picts. Instead, she tricks the Romans and leads them into an ambush (big surprise). The sad thing is that while I just watched this film a few days ago, I can’t even remember any of the characters’ names and I can barely remember the actors’ faces. I know there was a main character Roman, the deceitful native Briton woman, and a bad guy who caused treachery, and a couple of other survivors. Eventually, the Romans who survive the attack and enslavement manage to escape from the Picts who have captured them, and the rest of the film shows their attempts not to be recaptured or killed and to get back to the Roman outposts. The villainy by a fellow Roman is almost a subplot and the overall plot is loose and not in any way complicated. Perhaps the best part of the film (SPOILER ALERT) is the end when the surviving Roman returns, only to have his fellow Romans try to cover up what happened to the legion so its defeat will not make Rome look bad.

What makes this film additionally difficult for me is that because none of the characters were strong enough for me to identify with one of them, I wasn’t sure what to think of it. When the film started, although I knew the Romans would be “the good guys,” I wanted the Picts to win. Why? Because I know I am descended from the Picts through Scottish royalty, while I do not know of any Roman ancestors in my family tree, though I do not doubt I have them, and also because the Picts and other Britons were conquered people whom Rome just felt it was their job and right to conquer and civilize or eliminate. While I did not agree with this philosophy in either The Eagle or The Centurion, at least in The Eagle, the main character played by Tatum Channing is well portrayed as a very loyal Roman who believes in his Roman traditions and duties. I may not agree with what makes him tick, but I understood his motives. The Eagle also raised interesting questions of right and wrong and Channing’s character has a slave who makes it clear that Rome is not in the right, leaving a world of questions for viewers to consider, even while Channing’s character is left staying staunch to what he believes in, too brainwashed into the Roman way to consider what he may have done wrong as a Roman, although I think the film’s viewers realize the film questions who he really is. The Eagle is still somewhat weak in this respect, but far superior to The Centurion.

By comparison, the native Britons are given almost no sympathy in The Centurion. The Brigantes woman who deceives the Romans is insulted by them as being a “she-wolf.” She seems merciless in her desire to destroy the Romans, but her behavior is completely understandable to me despite the Romans thinking ill of her. We are told that she watched the Romans destroy her family, then rape her and cut out her tongue. Despite this information, she is impossible to identify with because she is unable to speak her pain, and similarly, except for one of the Picts telling the Romans what the other Romans did to her, equally the film is unable to speak about who is right and who wrong in this film. In short, it is unfocused and uncertain if it has any agenda or message to share. I know life isn’t always possible to tie into a neat message but the woman becomes so focused on her mission and so unable to display any emotion or human characteristics we can identify with, that while she is the character I felt most sympathy for in the film, she is unable to make a real connection with the viewer, she is unable to speak her pain, and therefore, unable to make the viewer form a bond with her or anyone in the film. And I think the film itself, or its creators, were unsure themselves what if any point the film was supposed to make.

I don’t want to say this film is a mess, but it is a disappointment. It kept my attention due to some of the action as the Picts chased after the Romans, but I had a hard time knowing what to think at the end. Ultimately, I have to say that if the Roman Ninth was slaughtered by the people it was trying to conquer, well, who can blame the Britons for protecting their homeland? I don’t condone killing, but the Romans started the killing in Briton and they got what they deserved.

The film also raises questions for me about King Arthur himself, often depicted as heir to the Romans and of Roman descent, yet considering himself a Briton–and fighting against the Saxons who would conquer him. If he’s of Roman descent, is Arthur a good guy? If he is of Briton descent, then Arthur must see the Saxons as equal to the earlier Roman invaders. More likely, Arthur’s bloodline would have been a mix of Briton and Roman. In the end, did the two races not blend? Were they not allied at the least in their fight against the incoming Saxon invaders?

Eventually in all cultures, the conquerors and the conquered’s great-grandchildren intermingle and hatreds are put aside and forgotten as time marches on. Too bad the great-grandparents couldn’t learn to do that themselves to save a great deal of bloodshed.

I encourage lovers of Arthurian literature interested in the prehistory of the Arthurian legend to watch both The Eagle and The Centurion to understand what Briton would have been like in the Romans’ early years in Britain and how those events shaped the world a historical King Arthur would have been born into. And I’d welcome comments from other viewers.

And if you are interested in reading more about Roman Britain in novel form, I highly recommend Rosemary Sutcliffe’s novel series, including The Eagle of the Ninth and Sword at Sunset (the first novel to create a historical King Arthur), and especially, I recommend for great reading pleasure Jack Whyte’s novel series The Camulod Chronicles, about Arthur’s Roman ancestors and how they established Camelot as a way to maintain peace in the years when Rome was pulling out of Britain.

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Tyler R. Tichelaar, Ph.D. is the author of King Arthur’s Children: A Study in Fiction and Tradition, available at www.ChildrenofArthur.com

Guinevere Comes Alive as Thirteen-Year Old Prospective Bride in Children’s Novel

Guinevere: On the Eve of Legend by Cheryl Carpinello

There is no end to the number of novels being written about the Arthurian legend, and exciting new children’s author Cheryl Carpinello can now be added to the number of writers recreating the legend for new generations with “Guinevere: On the Eve of Legend.” Carpinello has been teaching the Arthurian legend to her high school English classes for nearly twenty years, and now that interest has resulted in her first novel about a young Guinevere, on the eve of her thirteenth birthday, when her life is about to change forever.

The reader is first introduced to Guinevere when she is in the forest hunting rabbits with her seven-year old friend Cedwyn. She is not quite as ladylike as a princess should be, considering she is the daughter of King Leodegrance. Nor is she happy that as her thirteenth birthday approaches, she will be expected to take on a more adult role in the castle and prepare for possible marriage.

Guinevere finds that things get a bit easier when the wizard Merlyn arrives to participate in her birthday celebrations. But King Arthur also comes, and through her father, he makes a proposal she is uncertain is in her best interests.

After a fantastic birthday party and a couple of encounters with a magical beast in the forest, Guinevere starts to accept what her role will be in the future. She also realizes she still has some time left to enjoy her youth, and she is happy that her adult role will allow her young friend, Cedwyn, eventually to fulfill his own dream of becoming a squire and then a knight.

“Guinevere: On the Eve of Legend” is not a long or complicated story. It is just over one hundred pages, but it is a pleasant reading experience. It does not try to accomplish too much, but rather it is one of those rare books where the author understood that less is more and fully delivers in making each page valuable and interesting. The sighting of a unicorn in the book is an example of this—the delicate handling of the scene leaves the reader as much in awe as Guinevere over the magical beast. Similarly, the illustrations are not elaborate but simple drawings, yet they are magical for what they leave to the reader’s imagination. While the influence of T.H. White can be felt in the novel’s pages, and perhaps a bit of Disney’s film version The Sword in the Stone in the illustrations, Carpinello manages to create a unique and original version of Guinevere’s childhood.

Carpinello is obviously enthusiastic about sharing the Arthurian legend with young readers. Her biography states that “The focus in her writing is on reluctant readers.” I felt she provided enough magic and detail to appeal to readers of all ages, especially in her realistic portrait of Guinevere coming of age. I also appreciated her short, educational section at the book’s end, including a discussion of the King Arthur Legend, a glossary, discussion questions, and some additional reading. The book is suitable for readers, depending on their reluctance or proclivity to read, from about third grade through middle school, although as an adult, I enjoyed the book thoroughly.

Well done all around, “Guinevere: On the Eve of Legend” is a novel sure to win readers’ hearts and add to the many fans of the King Arthur legend. Perhaps best of all, Carpinello is now busy writing “The King’s Ransom,” the first in her prospective “Young Knights of the Round Table” series. To learn more about Cheryl Carpinello and her books visit www.beyondtodayeducator.com

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Tyler R. Tichelaar, Ph.D. is the author of King Arthur’s Children: A Study in Fiction and Tradition, available at www.ChildrenofArthur.com

Chapter 5

The Character of Mordred 

            The name of Mordred is synonymous with traitor to those familiar with the Arthurian legends. If ever a cursed figure has existed in literature, it is Mordred, for how can one feel sorry for him when he is the murderer of King Arthur, the greatest, most noble king Britain ever had? Yet Mordred was not always an evil character in the legends. In the Welsh tradition, he was even honorable and admired.

The earliest written source we have for Mordred is the tenth century Annales Cambriae where it states that Arthur and Mordred fell at Camlann in 539, but no mention is made of their relationship or their being on opposite sides. Mordred may only be mentioned as falling with Arthur because he was one of the highest and greatest members of King Arthur’s court.

Sir Mordred

Whether Mordred was actually Arthur’s nephew before Geoffrey of Monmouth’s writings cannot be determined; in “The Dream of Rhonabwy,” he is mentioned as Arthur’s nephew (Jones, Mabinogion, 140), but this Welsh tale could have been influenced by Geoffrey of Monmouth since it was not written down until the fourteenth century. Furthermore, we must notice that Mordred is described in the above passage as a “kingly” knight, and later he is grouped with the King of Denmark. “Kingly” would seem to mean that Mordred was himself a king, or at least of royal blood. He would be royal if he were the son of Arthur’s sister and King Lot; possibly, he would have even inherited a kingdom upon his father’s death. In some later versions of the legend, he was supposed to inherit Arthur’s throne, as will be further discussed in Chapter 9; therefore, the hint that Mordred may have been a king could be well founded.

Mordred’s ability to persuade people so that none could refuse him may need to be looked at a little more hesitantly. It sounds almost as if he were capable of manipulating people, but this interpretation may be false reading between the lines in an attempt to find sarcasm where it was not intended. Such a negative interpretation was often used by the later romancers in their portraits of Mordred. They may have simply been misinterpreting what the Welsh had said of Mordred, or the person who wrote these Welsh traditions down may have been fusing the Welsh traditions with other more recent concepts of Mordred’s character.

One quality attributed to Mordred that we cannot overlook is his purity. Mordred is perhaps the last character in the legends one would expect to have been pure. In Geoffrey of Monmouth, Mordred is so far from purity that he is trying to force Guinevere into marriage with him. However, the sin of marrying his father’s wife is a sin Mordred originally seems innocent of having committed since it is not mentioned in any of the earlier Welsh versions of the legend.

One final clue to what may have been Mordred’s true character is that the Welsh Triads give two reasons for the Battle of Camlann. One of these is the blow Gwenhyvar struck to Gwenhwyvach, said to be her sister in “Culhwch and Olwen” (Jones, Mabinogion, 106). The other, surprisingly enough, is the blow Arthur gave to Mordred (Guest, Mabinogion, 343). Here it appears as if Mordred is not even at fault, but rather Arthur! Does this statement mean Mordred is the good guy or on the right side in the battle? This interpretation may seem impossible, but we must keep it in mind because it will need to be further explored when we discuss the Battle of Camlann. Since the passage does not give Arthur’s reason for striking Mordred, it could also be interpreted that Mordred started the trouble and Arthur was merely retaliating.

Although the Welsh tales do depict Mordred as rebelling against Arthur, it is strange that if they were influenced by Geoffrey of Monmouth, they would have said so many nice things about Mordred which Geoffrey does not credit to Mordred. The writing of the Welsh tales may have been influenced by Geoffrey of Monmouth’s The History of the Kings of Britain, but they may have also been drawing on independent Welsh traditions from which Geoffrey may have also drawn. Perhaps Geoffrey only borrowed the negative aspects of Mordred’s character, while The Mabinogion presents Mordred as a more rounded and realistic character.

Geoffrey of Monmouth’s portrayal of Mordred as completely evil allowed Geoffrey’s successors to exaggerate this wickedness to extremes. Mordred’s character became darkest when the author of the Mort Artu (1205) decided to make him the child of incest. As we have seen, this incestuous birth may have been an almost forgotten tradition about Mordred; however, it also could have been invented to degrade Mordred further. A person born of incest was viewed as being nothing short of a devil by the Christian writers of the Middle Ages; these writers viewed Mordred’s incestuous birth as an act of lust, and through this act of lust, even greater lust was conceived; therefore, Mordred became the most despicable, lustful character in the romances, quickly losing his last good characteristic, his purity.

A few examples of the lustful deeds attributed to Mordred during the Middle Ages can be found in the Huth Merlin and Claris et Laris. In the former, Mordred is so lacking in gratitude toward his host that he seduces the girl who is his host’s amie (Bruce, Evolution vol. 2, 345). Even worse than seducing maidens, in Claris et Laris, Mordred attempts to rape a girl, but she is rescued before he can succeed. Later in the romance, he again attempts to rape a girl, but he is foiled in his attempt when the girl turns out to be a knight in disguise (Bruce, Evolution vol. 2, 271, 273). And of course Mordred is guilty of making attempts against Guinevere, which will be further explored in Chapters 6 and 7.

One reason why all this evil may have been attributed to Mordred could go back to our earlier discussion of his name origins. The Welsh form of Mordred’s name was Medraut or Medrawt, but it was later changed to Mordred, the Mor part of his name suggesting connotations to various European words for the sea. The stories of Mordred’s connection to the sea may have caused writers to believe he had some connection to death, specifically by drowning—hence his rescue from drowning at birth, so they borrowed from this new suggestive meaning in his name to depict him as evil. Of course, it could be that the name change was the result of writers wanting a name that more accurately depicted his already established evil character. In any case, Mordred’s character makes a change for the worse at approximately the same time as his name passes from the form of Medraut to Mordred.

Mordred’s wickedness, rather than growing into a more grotesque depiction, has received more sympathy from modern writers. We now live in an age of psychology where we look at the environment of the child that formed the adult. Consequently, trying to understand Mordred’s villainous behavior has provided him with a degree of sympathy; after all, how can he help hating his father, when that father tried to drown him, and furthermore, he must deal with the knowledge that he is the child of incest?

In some of the modern fiction, Mordred even appears to be regretful of his evil ways prior to the Battle of Camlann. Often he appears to be the victim of fate, trapped in a situation he is unable to avoid (Lacy, Arthurian Encyclopedia, 394). Even when he is not a sympathetic character, some writers depict him as not being completely at fault for the Battle of Camlann. Writers over the centuries, from Sir Thomas Malory to Mary Stewart in her novel The Wicked Day (1983), have arranged a meeting between Arthur and Mordred before the Battle of Camlann. In The Wicked Day, it is decided that Mordred will be king after Arthur’s death and have lands of his own until that time. In both Malory and Stewart, the Battle of Camlann begins during this meeting. While Mordred and Arthur are negotiating, one of their soldiers steps on an adder, which then attacks him; the soldier’s reflex is to draw his sword and kill the snake. The flash of the sword, at the same time Arthur happens to raise his arm, is interpreted by the two armies as the sign to start the battle, and so the wicked day begins. Here Mordred, although desiring the kingdom, was at least trying to make peace with Arthur so there need be no more battles, but it is Mordred and Arthur’s fate to slay each other, as Merlin predicted would happen when Mordred was born.

Occasionally in the modern texts, Mordred is even seen as having a purpose besides his own selfish desires for the throne. In The Mists of Avalon (1982), he is the arm of his mother, Morgan le Fay, sent to punish King Arthur for betraying the Isle of Avalon and forgetting his vows to the Goddess. Although Morgan seems a little fanatical at times in this work, the reader always sympathizes with her and so Mordred comes out on what is viewed as the side of good.

Perhaps the most unusual view of Mordred lies not so much in whether he was a good or an evil person, but in the theory that he, and not Arthur, was the rightful King of Britain, which would give a new understanding to his actions, making them merely an attempt to regain what was rightfully his. This interesting theory will be discussed more fully in Chapter 9. First, let us follow our chronological scheme of study and see what lies behind the tale of Mordred’s abduction of Guinevere since that is generally one of the causes for the Battle of Camlann.

For more information about Mordred or to purchase a copy of King Arthur’s Children, visit www.ChildrenofArthur.com

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Tyler R. Tichelaar, Ph.D. is the author of King Arthur’s Children: A Study in Fiction and Tradition, available at www.ChildrenofArthur.com

The Marriage of Arthur and Guinevere

On Friday, Prince William, descendant of King Arthur, will marry. In the newlyweds’ honor, I am posting the marriage of Arthur and Guinevere as written in Lord Tennyson’s Idylls of the King. May Prince William and his future bride have a wonderful life together and a far happier end than Arthur and Guinevere.

Then Arthur charged his warrior whom he loved
And honoured most, Sir Lancelot, to ride forth
And bring the Queen;–and watched him from the gates:
And Lancelot past away among the flowers,
(For then was latter April) and returned
Among the flowers, in May, with Guinevere.
To whom arrived, by Dubric the high saint,
Chief of the church in Britain, and before
The stateliest of her altar-shrines, the King
That morn was married, while in stainless white,
The fair beginners of a nobler time,
And glorying in their vows and him, his knights
Stood around him, and rejoicing in his joy.
Far shone the fields of May through open door,
The sacred altar blossomed white with May,
The Sun of May descended on their King,
They gazed on all earth’s beauty in their Queen,
Rolled incense, and there past along the hymns
A voice as of the waters, while the two
Sware at the shrine of Christ a deathless love:
And Arthur said, `Behold, thy doom is mine.
Let chance what will, I love thee to the death!’
To whom the Queen replied with drooping eyes,
`King and my lord, I love thee to the death!’
And holy Dubric spread his hands and spake,
`Reign ye, and live and love, and make the world
Other, and may thy Queen be one with thee,
And all this Order of thy Table Round
Fulfil the boundless purpose of their King!’

So Dubric said; but when they left the shrine
Great Lords from Rome before the portal stood,
In scornful stillness gazing as they past;
Then while they paced a city all on fire
With sun and cloth of gold, the trumpets blew,
And Arthur’s knighthood sang before the King:–

`Blow, trumpet, for the world is white with May;
Blow trumpet, the long night hath rolled away!
Blow through the living world–”Let the King reign.”

`Shall Rome or Heathen rule in Arthur’s realm?
Flash brand and lance, fall battleaxe upon helm,
Fall battleaxe, and flash brand! Let the King reign.

`Strike for the King and live! his knights have heard
That God hath told the King a secret word.
Fall battleaxe, and flash brand! Let the King reign.

`Blow trumpet! he will lift us from the dust.
Blow trumpet! live the strength and die the lust!
Clang battleaxe, and clash brand! Let the King reign.

`Strike for the King and die! and if thou diest,
The King is King, and ever wills the highest.
Clang battleaxe, and clash brand! Let the King reign.

`Blow, for our Sun is mighty in his May!
Blow, for our Sun is mightier day by day!
Clang battleaxe, and clash brand! Let the King reign.

`The King will follow Christ, and we the King
In whom high God hath breathed a secret thing.
Fall battleaxe, and flash brand! Let the King reign.’

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Tyler R. Tichelaar, Ph.D. is the author of King Arthur’s Children: A Study in Fiction and Tradition, available at www.ChildrenofArthur.com

            Still, no direct or indisputable genealogical line connects the British royal family to King Arthur. One other possibility may exist in the theory that the King Arthur of legend is the historical Riothamus. Riothamus had a son David who then had a son Budic. This Budic lived in Britain as an exile for some time. It is possible that Budic might be an ancestor of the Tudors, and a closer look at Welsh and Breton genealogies could then give us a connection between Riothamus and the British royal family (Ashe 196).

            Of course, if Cerdic is Arthur’s son, as Geoffrey Ashe has also suggested, then the British royalty would also be descended from Arthur because Cerdic was the ancestor of Alfred the Great, and through him, the British royal family. The fact that Debrett’s Peerage, the official heraldic society in Britain, backed Ashe’s book suggests that the British, if not the royal family itself, still wish to make this link between their present day monarch and King Arthur.

            If there is a link between King Arthur and Prince William, it may be years, if ever, before it will be discovered or researched thoroughly enough to be convincing. It also seems unlikely that a tradition of descent that does not seem to have begun until Henry II in the twelfth century is any more than a convenient forgery. If there is a connection, it is probably through the Welsh Tudor family, and it is there that the greatest scrutiny may need to be used.

For more about the British royal family’s many attempts over the last thousand years to claim descent from King Arthur, be sure to read my book King Arthur’s Children available at www.ChildrenofArthur.com.

Among those who have tried to claim descent from King Arthur, the most prominent and most determined have been the monarchs of England. As we have already seen, little chance exists that any of King Arthur’s children outlived him, and the only grandchildren he had were murdered by Constantine. These two grandsons could have been old enough to have had children of their own before they died, but this theory is only a surmise since no record, chronicle, or romance states they had heirs. Therefore, it is highly doubtful that King Arthur had any descendants who lived beyond the sixth century. Yet the royal family of England has claimed, at least since the time of the Plantagenets, that they are descended from King Arthur.

During the reigns of the Saxon kings in England, from the sixth century until 1066, there is no monarch known to have claimed descent from Arthur. It was not until after the Norman invasion that this idea became popular, and even then it seems to have been the result of the popularity of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s The History of the Kings of Britain, which appeared around 1136. Geoffrey ended his chronicle with King Cadwallader, whom he states probably died around 689 (289). Cadwallader has numerous descendants living today, but he is not a descendant of King Arthur; neither is he from any records I have been able to locate an ancestor to the present royal family of Britain (although DNA research suggests the odds are that he is). Geoffrey leaves unaccounted for over four hundred years, from the time his book ends until the 1100s, except for making prophecies of what will happen. However, none of these prophecies hint that Arthur’s descendants will reign over England. Since Geoffrey gives King Arthur no descendants, it is inconceivable how the Plantagenets could have claimed an Arthurian lineage.

The popularity of Geoffrey’s book gave rebirth to the tales of King Arthur and made the conquered Anglo-Saxon peoples believe King Arthur would return to rescue them, a belief that might seem strange since the Anglo-Saxons had originally been Arthur’s enemies; however, by the twelfth century, Celtic blood had so intermixed with Anglo-Saxon blood that nearly anyone in England could claim to have ancestors whom Arthur had been king over.

The belief that King Arthur would return might have made King Henry II fearful that the conquered people would become restless, and so as we have already seen, he may have staged the finding of Arthur’s body at Glastonbury. To keep the conquered under control, the royal family decided it needed to prove its members were the rightful heirs to the throne of all Britain because of their descent from King Arthur or at least his family.

Arthur's most likely Faked Grave at Glastonbury Abbey

King Henry II’s ancestors included the Counts of Anjou; his descent from William the Conqueror was through his mother, whereas it was his father who was Count of Anjou. However, William the Conqueror’s great-grandparents included a daughter of the House of Anjou, and a Duke of Brittany, both of whom could possibly have claimed an ancestry from Arthurian times. William the Conqueror’s paternal lineage from the Dukes of Normandy went back to a Scandinavian and Viking ancestry that settled in Normandy in the 800s. The House of Anjou can trace its descent back to Tertulle, Count of Anjou (born about 821), and his wife Petronilla, Countess of Anjou (born about 825), who was a granddaughter of the Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne (Ancestral File). However, the House of Anjou would have to trace its ancestors back another three hundred years if it were to claim descent from King Arthur, and it is probably no longer possible to make genealogical connections for these families that stretch so far back in time.

Despite these loose claims, the Plantagenet and Tudor dynasties would make many more attempts to link themselves to King Arthur, and even today, both Prince Charles and Prince William have middle names that include Arthur….

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Tyler R. Tichelaar, Ph.D. is the author of King Arthur’s Children: A Study in Fiction and Tradition, available at www.ChildrenofArthur.com

When the previous volume, Pendragon’s Banner, ended, Arthur and Gwenhwyfar’s three sons were all dead but Gwenhwyfar was pregnant. When this novel opens, Arthur and Gwenhwyfar have a little girl, Archfedd.

Arthur has two other children (not counting all the bastards he apparently has who don’t figure in the story): Medraut, who lives with his mother, Morgaine, and is just a small child; and Cerdic, son to Winifred (Arthur’s divorced first wife), who is entering his teen years.

Arthur goes to Gaul to fight for Rome, and in the process, gets involved with a woman named Mathild. He is then believed to have been killed in battle, and his own men believe him dead, but some women realize the king is still breathing so they bring him to Morgaine, who cares for him but then also drugs him so he stays with her. Arthur has no desire to leave her anyway because just before his battle, he had heard in a letter from his uncle Ambrosius that Gwenhyyfar had died. He doesn’t know that Gwenhwyfar recovered from her illness, so his spirit is broken and he has no desire to return to Britain to reclaim his throne. Everyone in Britain assumes he has died and Ambrosius rules the country now.

Meanwhile, Mathild, whom Arthur had an affair with, returns to Britain and immediately marries Arthur’s son, Cerdic. She soon after has a child named Cynric, whom it is believed is really Arthur’s, not Cerdic’s. When Cerdic’s mother, Winifred, accuses Mathild of the child being Arthur’s and not Cerdic’s, Mathild reveals that Arthur is not dead. This news spreads to Gwenhwyfar, who travels to Gaul to find her husband and try to understand why he has never returned to Britain. She, in the meanwhile, has taken Bedwyr as her lover because she has believed Arthur to be dead.

This section of the story where Arthur doesn’t return home and they search for him drags on for a couple of hundred pages, and although it is revealed Morgaine is drugging Arthur, I still found it hard to understand why he has no desire to return home. Of course, once Arthur and Gwenhwyfar meet, he decides to return to Britain and being king, taking his son Medraut with him.

What interested me from this point was how everything would turn out and whether Arthur’s children would outlive and succeed him. Cerdic has by this time turned against Arthur and they end up waging war against each other. Meanwhile, Archfedd taunts Medraut that he will never be king, and even when he marries, he doesn’t have any children. Archfedd marries a man named Natanlius, by whom she has first a son named Constantine and then other children. While the text doesn’t state so at the end, obviously Constantine is the successor taken from most endings of the story although his role is never stated to be significant in this novel.

Meanwhile, Cynric also grows up and has three bastard daughters as well as a wife who gets pregnant. He and Cerdic have a falling out in regards to waging war on Arthur, but nevertheless, it is obvious that Hollick intends them to be depictions of the historical Cerdic and Cynric, founders of the royal house of Wessex.

Hollick ends the novel with a Battle of Camlann. While she changes around some things, in the end, Arthur dies and his descendants do live on. (I have left out a lot of the story details here so as not to give it all away but simply to discuss how Hollick treats Arthur’s children.)

Significantly, this novel makes Arthur’s descendants the future royalty of England. The royal family of England has, at least since the twelfth century, tried to claim descent from King Arthur (I have an entire chapter about these claims in my book King Arthur’s Children). Geoffrey Ashe proposed more than a quarter century ago that Cerdic might be the son of Arthur-Riothamus (a contender for the historical King Arthur). Cerdic’s Celtic rather than Saxon name has been a reason for such suggestions. Cerdic doesn’t appear in the early versions of the legend, but he is of the correct historical period so such suggestions are plausible. Hollick is the first novelist to take these suggestions and apply them to her fiction.

Because King Arthur’s descendants become the established royal family of Britain, I think Hollick’s trilogy is significant for that reason. In addition, while I didn’t care for the writing style, the characters are quite interesting and well-developed. Hollick’s versions of Winifred and Cerdic are two of the strongest villains I have encountered in Arthurian literature, and while Arthur is not very likeable—really Gwenhwyfar was the only character in all the books I did like—she creates some very interesting characters and twists upon traditional characters. It probably isn’t a series I would read again, but it is worth reading.

For more information about Helen Hollick and her Arthurian novels, visit www.HelenHollick.net

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Tyler R. Tichelaar, Ph.D. is the author of King Arthur’s Children: A Study in Fiction and Tradition, available at www.ChildrenofArthur.com

Pendragon’s Banner: Book Two of The Pendragon’s Banner Trilogy by Helen Hollick

(published by Sourcebooks Landmark 2009; ISBN 978-1402218897)

In this second volume of The Pendragon’s Banner Trilogy, Helen Hollick continues her historical portrayal of the Arthurian legend. Arthur is now firmly established as King of Britain, although he has plenty of opposition, including his ex-wife Winifred, who seeks what is best for her son by him, Cerdic, as well as his own people who oppose his making peace with various of the Saxon peoples.

But in my interest in how modern fiction writers treat King Arthur’s children, I think the results here are fairly predictable for his children based on Welsh tradition, all of whom are Arthur’s children by Gwenhywfar in this novel, namely Gwydre, Amr, and Llacheu. Hollick, following their traditional stories, more or less, has each of them die before Arthur.

In legend, Amr usually dies in battle with Arthur—he is believed to have been the original version of Mordred, but Hollick has other plans for Mordred, named “Medraut” in her story, she can’t allow Amr to have the same ending as Medraut so she has him fall into the river and drown when he’s about two years old (p. 98-102). Amr’s death causes hostility between Arthur and Gwenhwyfar, who blames Arthur for not watching him closely.

During Arthur and Gwenhwyfar’s time fighting following Amr’s death, Arthur ends up bedding his cousin, Elen, the daughter of one of Uthr’s sisters. She is demanding and manipulative and claims she is pregnant with Arthur’s child. She also wants more from him than just a fling on the side. When they have a disagreement, Elen pulls a knife on Arthur, resulting in his kicking her in the stomach in defense. It’s unclear whether he’s caused her to miscarry their child, and if so whether intentionally, but it does not matter since she becomes despondent and soon after slips off a cliff. However, as I said in my earlier blog about The Kingmaking, Hollick’s Arthur has few if any qualities that make him likeable.

Arthur and Gwenhwyfar soon after reconcile, but then she loses a son of Arthur’s in childbirth.

The fate of Arthur and Gwenhwyfar’s sons continues to be ill. When Hueil of Alclud, a lover to Morgause, accuses Gwenhwyfar and Bedwyr of adultery, Arthur does battle with Hueil, and in the battle, Llacheu is accidentally stabbed by Hueil. He manages to recover, but soon after eight-year old Gwydre is gored to death during a boar hunt, leaving only Llacheu alive of Arthur and Gwenhwyfar’s children.

When Llacheu becomes deathly ill, Arthur seeks out the Lady of the Lake, Morgaine, desperate not to lose his and Gwenhwyfar’s last son. Morgaine uses her skills to keep the child alive, but Arthur has no idea she is Morgause’s daughter, or that Morgause has ordered her to hurt Arthur. Neither Morgaine nor Arthur know she is also Uthr’s daughter, and therefore, Arthur’s half-sister. Morgaine tells Arthur her mother orders her to sleep with him, although Arthur interprets what she says to mean the Mother Goddess. They sleep together and Morgaine soon after gives birth to Medraut.

Despite Arthur’s bargain with Morgaine, Llacheu ends up being killed in battle when Morgause is involved in a plot to overthrow Arthur. The novel ends with all of Arthur and Gwenhwyfar’s children dead, but Gwenhwyfar pregnant.

Arthur is left with two living sons, Cerdic, by his first wife, Winifred, and Medraut, by his half-sister Morgaine.

Doubtless, Medraut will be a key player, and perhaps the traditional villain in the final book of the trilogy Shadow of the King, but what about Cerdic? My guess is he’ll end up ruling the kingdom when all is said and done and being ancestor to the Wessex royalty that will eventually rule all of England, but I’ll have to read the third book to find out how it all actually turns out.

For more information about Helen Hollick and her Arthurian novels, visit www.HelenHollick.net

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Tyler R. Tichelaar, Ph.D. is the author of King Arthur’s Children: A Study in Fiction and Tradition, available at www.ChildrenofArthur.com

Debra Kemp took the idea of King Arthur’s daughter to new lengths by beginning her The House of Pendragon series. So far, two of the three novels of the series have been published, The Firebrand (2003) and The Recruit (2007).

            While Vera Chapman’s King Arthur’s Daughter first covered this territory, Kemp is far more detailed in her imagining of a daughter for Arthur. Some of the first novel’s suspense is lost because we know from the back cover, and the frame of the novel, that Lin is King Arthur’s daughter, although she does not know this herself. Lin was kidnapped at an early age by Arthur’s sister, Morgause, and it was believed the boat she was on, enroute to the Orkney Isles, had sunk and she had died. Actually, Morgause had taken her to Orkney and made her a slave. Lin grows up believing she is the daughter of a slave woman, and except for the kindness of her foster-brother David and a few of the other slaves, she knows a life of relentless hardship. When Prince Modred decides specifically to torture her and make her his plaything, her life becomes nearly unbearable, yet Lin is of iron nature, so she refuses to give up until finally she learns the truth of her heritage.

            Debra Kemp continues the story of Princess Lin in The Recruit. Here Lin comes to Camelot to find she is expected by her mother, Guinevere, to act like the perfect lady, learning to sew, and to prepare herself for a dynastic marriage that will provide stability to the kingdom. Lin will have none of it. After some initial struggles with her mother, Lin convinces her father, King Arthur, to let her join the army. She becomes “the recruit” and proves herself capable of serving as well as any man in the army. From barroom brawls to guard duty, Lin continually proves herself as worthy of her sire.

            What I actually find most interesting about these two novels is the frame that surrounds them. Kemp begins the first novel with Lin speaking just after the Battle of Camlann and the death of Arthur and Modred. There is no prophecy here that Arthur will come again, but rather Lin pretends Arthur will return to keep up the hope of the people. Then the book shifts forward a number of years; Lin is married to Gaheris and has been raising her family, not revealing to her own children that they are the Pendragon’s grandchildren. She has journeyed back to Camelot now and is considering taking back reign over the kingdom. It is then that she tells her story to her oldest son, technically named Arthur, but called Bear by the family. She tells her son of her days as a slave in Orkney and how she found out she is King Arthur’s daughter. The frame also makes it clear that Lin will become a great warrior.

            Kemp is currently working on the third and final volume of the series. I am curious whether, besides depicting the events that lead up to the fall of Camelot and the Battle of Camlann, Kemp will show Lin’s life in more detail after the Battle of Camlann—will Lin establish a united kingdom again? Will the story of Camelot have a new ending?

For more about Debra Kemp and The House of Pendragon series, visit her on Facebook and her website at:
http://www.telltalepress.com/debrakemp.html

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________________________

Tyler R. Tichelaar, Ph.D. is the author of King Arthur’s Children: A Study in Fiction and Tradition, available at www.ChildrenofArthur.com

http://insidescooplive.com/author-pages/Tichelaar-Tyler_King_Arthurs_Children.html

After earning a Ph.D. in British literature, Tyler R. Tichelaar began writing and publishing a series of historical novels including “The Marquette Trilogy” and “Narrow Lives,” which won the Reader Views Literary Choice award for best historical fiction for 2008. These novels are family saga type pioneer stories about the growth of America and specifically the town of Marquette, Michigan. Tyler’s interest in genealogy has inspired his novels and his study into the Arthurian legend. He first fell in love with the legend when he was fourteen and read “The Boy’s King Arthur” by Sidney Lanier with N.C. Wyeth’s marvelous illustrations. His reading of Marion Zimmer Bradley’s “The Mists of Avalon” made him begin to see the fictional possibilities in the story beyond simply retelling it and inspired him to write his own fiction about King Arthur.

Tyler’s newest book “King Arthur’s Children: A Study in Fiction and Tradition” is a scholarly work that explores treatments of King Arthur’s children from the Middle Ages to twenty-first century novels, including claims by several families to be King Arthur’s descendants, a claim that if true, Tyler can claim for himself. He is currently working on a novel about King Arthur.

Somehow in writing King Arthur’s Children, I overlooked Helen Hollick’s The Pendragon’s Banner Trilogy. I would like to remedy that by discussing each of the books in the trilogy in separate blogs, beginning here with the first book The Kingmaking.

Modern Arthurian novels can be divided up between those that seek to be truly historical and those that are vaguely historical with fantasy elements. Hollick’s retelling is purely historical. There is no Merlin and no magic in this book, and the same is true of the succeeding two books.

The Kingmaking begins with Vortigern ruling Britain and Uthr Pendragon seeking to overthrow him. When Uthr is killed, Arthur eventually takes his place and the rest of the story will ultimately lead to the event of the book’s title. Anyone who reads an Arthurian novel basically knows what’s going to happen since there is a general structure to the legend that influences all modern fiction writers of Arthurian lore, but the legend has room to stretch and Hollick does her fair share of stretching within the legend’s boundaries while retaining her historical focus on what may have been likely to happen, much of it based in historical research and theories by Arthurian scholars.

One interesting change Hollick makes centers around Morgause’s role in the novel. Uthr is married to Morgause’s sister Igraine, but Morgause is Uthr’s mistress on the side. Morgause has had many daughters by Uthr but she has always exposed them to die. Morgause despises Arthur, not realizing until Uthr has died that he is Uthr’s son, but thinking he is only Uthr’s bastard-born nephew. Morgause’s hatred for Arthur causes her later to attack him sexually. The result is not quite what readers might expect, but it deeply shapes Arthur’s future character.

Arthur later admits that his disgust over what Morgause did to him has resulted in how he mistreats women. He is not a gentle man, but rather one who takes women whenever he chooses, determined not to let them exert any feminine power over him. He impregnates a slave girl (p. 160), and he later says he knows he has many bastard daughters (p. 220). Arthur ends up marrying Vortigern’s daughter, Winifred, as a political alliance, and by her he has a sickly daughter who dies soon after birth (p.313). Arthur, however, hates Winifred and is in love with Gwenhwyfar throughout the book.

Eventually, Vortigern dies and his son Vortimer assumes the kingship, but Arthur is on the road to gaining it for himself. During this time, he abandons Winifred and marries Gwenhwyfar. Both women then have sons by him. Gwenhwyfar’s son Llacheu is born first (but in what we would call a bigamist marriage today) while Winifred’s son Cerdic is born a few weeks later. Both women want to see their own sons acknowledged as Arthur’s heir. Winifred threatens to complain to the Pope to make sure Cerdic is acknowledged, but Winifred is half-Saex (Vortigern’s wife Rowena had been the daughter of the Saex leader Hengest) while Llacheu is fully British born. Arthur is disgusted at the thought of having a partially Saex child and lets Winifred know the British people will rally around Llacheu when the time comes.

That Arthur should have sons is unusual but not a new idea as I’ve shown throughout King Arthur’s Children. Llacheu is a traditional son of Arthur in the early Welsh legends and is usually attributed to being Gwenhwyfar’s son as well. More surprising is that Cerdic is credited as Arthur’s son. Hollick, in her “Author’s Note,” states that she is not the first to suggest Cerdic (who is a historical King of the Saxons) was Arthur’s son, but I believe she is the first novelist to do so. The idea was originally suggested by Arthurian scholar Geoffrey Ashe in The Discovery of King Arthur (1985). [see the family tree for Ashe’s theory at
http://www.childrenofarthur.com/
. Finally, years after Morgause sexually forced herself upon Arthur, she is revealed to have had a daughter named Morgaine. Hollick does not reveal whether the daughter is Uthr or Arthur’s, but it’s a good bet it is Arthur’s daughter considering she exposed her other daughters. While Morgaine is a girl and not likely to inherit the throne, no doubt Morgause has kept her alive to serve as a way to hurt Arthur down the road. (Having not yet read the second book in the series, at this point I am pondering whether Morgaine is really a he and the future Mordred while Morgause is hiding the child’s sex while biding her time. My discussion of the next two books will reveal the details.)

While I was a bit put off by Hollick’s writing style, primarily the way she uses verbs in her sentences, I did find The Kingmaking to be entertaining reading, both for its depictions of Arthur’s children as well as the rather brutal and rough Arthur. I did not find Arthur likeable, but I did like Gwenhwyfar, and I am curious to see how the story will turn out. In her “Author’s Note,” Hollick states that because Lancelot and Merlin were the creations of later twelfth century Norman romancers, readers will not find them in her books since she wants to provide a historical portrait of what could have actually happened. While Merlin was actually established in Welsh tradition so I don’t understand this reasoning (other than perhaps Hollick saw no use for Merlin in a historical rather than fantasy novel), if there is to be no Lancelot, then I am curious to see how Camelot’s fall will be brought about. Will Gwenhwyfar find herself another lover, or will Morgause’s plotting be sufficient to bring about Arthur’s downfall? It’s on to reading Book II: Pendragon’s Banner to find out.

For more information about Helen Hollick and her Arthurian novels, visit www.HelenHollick.net

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Tyler R. Tichelaar, Ph.D. is the author of King Arthur’s Children: A Study in Fiction and Tradition, available at www.ChildrenofArthur.com

King Arthur’s Children.

These first two charts show possible claims by families to be descendants of King Arthur. The first is scholar Geoffrey Ashe’s theory for how the English royal family might be descended from King Arthur. The other is an obscure claim by the Scottish Clan Campbell for descent from King Arthur. These are two of a few claims by living people to be of Arthurian descent. Both are questionable of course. Other claims have been made by numerous people. While Ashe’s claim for English royalty’s descent goes back through the House of Wessex, later claims for the English royal family go back to the Tudors, who claimed descent not through their own royal blood that could be traced back to King Edward III, but to Owen Tudor, himself a Welshman, just as King Arthur was himself Welsh.

Most Arthurian genealogies, if not all, are fabricated for political reasons–royal houses trying to make legitimate their claims to rule over Britain–or simply the creative fancy of authors. Numerous authors have tried to trace ancestors and descendants for King Arthur, perhaps most notably the late Laurence Gardner, in books like Bloodline of the Holy Grail. Gardner’s books are great entertaining reading as he traces royal lineages from ancient times through the Middle Ages, although he rarely cites his sources in detail so that they can be verified–or believed. Whatever legitimacy his sources may have had are unlikely to be known now since he died in 2010. They make a great source of ideas for novelists, however–including Dan Brown apparently having been influenced by Gardner’s theories when he wrote The Da Vinci Code.

Gardner’s own theories were probably inspired more by imagination than research, but they spring from medieval traditions concerning King Arthur and his ancestors. Medieval writers were obsessed with Christianity, and they created traditions about many of the saints and apostles. One notable such legend is that Joseph of Arimathea was a relative (possibly uncle to Jesus Christ) and settled in Glastonbury, England. Medieval Arthurian writers depicted Joseph of Arimathea as an ancestor of the Grail Kings (see Gardner’s Genesis of the Grail Kings and Realm of the Ring Lords for more elaborate discussion); the Holy Grail being a significant part of the Arthurian legend, King Arthur was of course then a relative to the Grail family. In Gardner’s Bloodline of the Holy Grail elaborate charts show Arthur’s descent on both his maternal and paternal sides from St. Joseph of Arimathea.

Medieval traditions also cited Magnus Maximus, a Roman Emperor, among Arthur’s ancestors, and Roman blood ultimately allowed them to trace him back to Aeneas, founder of Rome. Arthur often makes a bid for being Roman Emperor in versions of the legend, a title he feels is his by right, based on Magnus Maximus being among his ancestors, and Welsh tradition often claims Magnus Maximus as the founder of several Welsh houses. Geoffrey of Monmouth drew on these Welsh legends in writing History of the Kings of Britain, a work that chronicled the various kings of Britain–some legendary, others possibly historical. The work highly influenced later romancers and chroniclers who expanded upon and kept creating more relatives, descendants, and ancestors for Arthur.

Who really were King Arthur’s ancestors and descendants? Since no amount of scholarship has yet been able to pinpoint whether King Arthur was a historical person, probably we will never know, but the more theories we spin, the more fascinating versions of the Arthurian legend are created–a story that we never seem to tire of hearing and recreating.

Check out the two genealogy charts at www.ChildrenofArthur.com. More are to come, including Arthur’s ancestors, as well as my own possible descent from King Arthur, and Arthurian family trees as represented in various modern novels.

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Tyler R. Tichelaar, Ph.D. is the author of King Arthur’s Children: A Study in Fiction and Tradition, available at www.ChildrenofArthur.com

King Arthur's Children: A Study in Fiction and Tradition

Below is the Introduction to King Arthur’s Children:

Introduction

            The subject of King Arthur’s children is not widely known even to the legend’s most avid readers. Mention of these children may make readers pause for a moment, say to themselves, “What children?” and then add, “Well, of course there’s Mordred, but sometimes he is King Arthur’s nephew rather than his son.”

My reaction was similar when I first found mention of King Arthur having any children other than Mordred. The fact is, however, that King Arthur has traditionally had children almost since the legends were first told. Over the centuries, these children were lost amid the continually increasing number of new stories, many springing up without any source in the tradition, only to be added to the legend, while the original Celtic stories were largely forgotten. Occasionally, when scholars came across obscure references to one of Arthur’s children in the earlier sources, they were unsure what to make of this curiosity. As Arthurian studies have progressed, particularly over the last century, however, efforts have been made to understand the historical time period in which King Arthur lived, around the fifth to early sixth centuries; this research has resulted in many discoveries and even more theories, some of which will now allow us to make more accurate statements about King Arthur’s forgotten children.

With the continual increase of interest in the Arthurian legends, it is time that a study finally be made of King Arthur’s children. If we wish to discover who the historical King Arthur was, perhaps we might find out something about him by studying his children. The need to study King Arthur’s children is almost as important as the study of King Arthur himself because King Arthur’s children, as we will see, are what help connect us to King Arthur’s time period. The concept of King Arthur and the golden age he established fulfills a psychological yearning for many people. Comfort and satisfaction can be derived from believing in King Arthur’s ethical code. People have a need to believe in a golden age as we saw during John F. Kennedy’s presidency when attempts were made to compare Kennedy and the United States to King Arthur and Camelot. By discovering Arthur’s children and descendants, we find a link between the age of Arthur and our own time.

At the end of The Discovery of King Arthur, Geoffrey Ashe asks why the spell of King Arthur continues to excite us and capture our imaginations (189). Ashe suggests King Arthur’s popularity in the United States may be based in Americans’ tendency to speak about their “roots.” But then he comments, “I doubt if this is the whole answer, since most Americans are not British descended” (189).

Actually, estimates of Americans of British (English, Irish, Scottish, and Welsh) descent run from 50-80% depending on the study. The number of studies and results on the Internet of how many Americans have British ancestry is too many to detail, but they can easily be found. Even people who identify themselves as African American often have Caucasian blood—and those descended from slaves with white blood will generally find that the Southern white slave owner in the family tree was of British descent. If we consider that King Arthur likely lived about the year 500 A.D. and we then consider how many descendants he had and how they migrated across the globe over fifteen hundred years, it is not much of a stretch to suggest that nearly everyone on earth can potentially be a descendant of King Arthur—provided he lived and did have children. DNA analysis recently has proven that everyone of European descent alive today can claim descent from anyone who lived in Europe prior to the year 1200 A.D. In fact, as Steve Olson demonstrates in Mapping Human History: Discovering the Past Through Our Genes, if we go back just ten generations, we each would have 1024 ancestors, so thirty generations ago that number would be 1024 x 1024 x 1024, which equals over one billion. Since that many people did not live in the world thirty generations ago—estimates for the year 1400 were 375 million—many of our ancestors repeat, meaning our ancestors married distant cousins and shared similar ancestors. In any case, we can probably all claim descent from such famous ancient people as Confucius, Queen Nefertiti, and Julius Caesar (Olson 46-47). Furthermore, even people today of predominantly Asian or African descent could be descended from King Arthur. African-American poet Elizabeth Alexander, for example, is a descendant of King John of England (reigned 1199-1216 A.D.), as recently revealed on the PBS show Faces of America with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. broadcast in 2010. As Steve Olsen notes, “suppose an emissary from Ethiopia married a woman in the court of Henry II and had children. Today, all Europeans are descended from that Ethiopian” (46).

Anyone interested in genealogy knows that “race” does not really exist. In researching my own ancestry, I have found myself descended not only from people in every country in Europe but even China, India, and Persia. The human race is itself a melting pot. With these statistics, based in fact, not merely fancy, if King Arthur were a historical person, he is very likely ancestor to all of us. Our descent from King Arthur is obviously through his children, so we should learn more about them.

My own interest in King Arthur began when I first read The Boy’s King Arthur at the age of fourteen. At twenty-one, I also began to take an interest in genealogy and traced my family back to King Edward III of England, among whose ancestors, of course, was Cerdic, King of Wessex, credited with being one of Arthur’s greatest enemies. Imagine my surprise and interest when I read Geoffrey Ashe’s suggestion that Cerdic was a possible son of King Arthur (199). If this relationship were true, then I would be a direct descendant of King Arthur! Something of a boyish pride swelled up in my heart, something that perhaps non-genealogists or non-lovers of Arthurian literature would not understand, but who would not like to claim descent from King Arthur? Later, I will discuss whether or not Cerdic is a possible son of King Arthur, but Geoffrey Ashe’s suggestion was enough to spark my interest, especially when I learned King Arthur also had other children. The descendants of these other children must have multiplied so that by the 1600s, when Americans’ British ancestors began journeying to the New World, several of them may have been carrying Arthurian blood over the seas with them. Not only I, but thousands if not millions of other Americans, would therefore be descendants of King Arthur!

If there were a King Arthur, then his descendants are probably more numerous than can ever be thoroughly traced. We may never know whether Arthur’s descendants are living among us (or are us), as we may never know whether Arthur was a real person. However, both are pleasant thoughts, and I personally believe both may be more than just possibilities.

Even if it is not through blood, then through culture Americans are the descendants of Arthur and his times. The popularity of Arthurian literature can quickly transport anyone who reads a book or watches a film back to the Arthurian age. The ideals with which we credit Arthurian times, whether the period received those ideals from our time, or our time from the past, still serve to connect us.

Arthur’s children are of interest to us, whether it is through genealogy or by cultural heritage. In King Arthur’s Daughter, Vera Chapman makes this point nicely when she writes about the growth of Arthur’s descendants:

“Not by a royal dynasty but by the spreading unknown and unnoticed, along the distaff line—mother to daughter, father to daughter, mother to son. Names and titles shall be lost, but the story and the spirit of Arthur shall not be lost. For Arthur is a spirit and Arthur is the land of Britain.” (144)

Anyone who would be a descendant of King Arthur need not have a fifteen hundred-year-old pedigree to prove it; we need to tell the tales about Arthur, and when people hear these stories, he will then live on in their hearts and his line and descendants will continue to grow.

In the following pages, I will attempt to explore all the figures said to be descended from King Arthur, from the legend’s earliest versions to the most modern novels. Often these modern novels are based on earlier traditions, or they are making their own interpretations of what could have happened. Arthurian studies always leave us the problem of trying to separate what is fact from fiction, and even the most respected Arthurian stories of the Middle Ages often become as suspect as the modern novels, and the modern novels today often try to be more authentic than their medieval counterparts; therefore, we must consider all interpretations and possibilities considering Arthur’s children, whether they appear believable or not. In many cases, we will discover that what might have happened if Arthur were a historical person is not as important as how people have chosen to interpret or even rewrite Arthurian literature.

This book represents the first time King Arthur’s children will all be assembled together, along with the various tales about them, as the subject of study. After looking more closely at the children of King Arthur, we will come to a better understanding of the purpose Arthurian literature has served over the centuries and perhaps we will even become more closely connected to King Arthur and his times.

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Tyler R. Tichelaar, Ph.D. is the author of King Arthur’s Children: A Study in Fiction and Tradition, available at www.ChildrenofArthur.com

This blog will contain excerpts from my books, both scholarly and novels, about King Arthur as well as offer information on all things Arthurian from Arthurian sites to Arthurian literature, King Arthur in popular culture (movies, TV, games) and explore how the spirit of King Arthur and interest in him are alive and well today in the 21st Century.

For starters, I am pleased to announce the publication of my book King Arthur’s Children: A Study in Fiction and Tradition, which explores the little known but important traditions of King Arthur’s children. Trust me, there is far more to know about Arthur’s children than simply Mordred, and this is the first time all this information has been collected in one volume. Below is the book’s description taken from the back cover. The kindle version of the book is currently available and printed copies will be available in late January. For more information, visit www.ChildrenofArthur.com

"King Arthur's Children: A Study in Fiction and Tradition"

King Arthur’s Children: A Study in Fiction and Tradition

Did you know King Arthur had many other children besides Mordred? Depending on which version of the legend you read, he had both sons and daughters, some of whom even survived him. From the ancient tale of Gwydre, the son who was gored to death by a boar, to Scottish traditions of Mordred as a beloved king, Tyler R. Tichelaar has studied all the references to King Arthur’s children to show how they shed light upon a legend that has intrigued us for fifteen centuries.

King Arthur’s Children: A Study in Fiction and Tradition is the first full-length analysis of every known treatment of King Arthur’s children, from Welsh legends and French romances, to Scottish genealogies and modern novels by such authors as Parke Godwin, Stephen Lawhead, Debra Kemp, and Elizabeth Wein. King Arthur’s Children explores an often overlooked theme in Arthurian literature and reveals King Arthur’s bloodline may still exist today.

“Tyler R. Tichelaar’s in-depth knowledge of the King Arthur legend throughout centuries of literature validates his extensive analysis into the continuing controversy surrounding the feasibility of there being children and descendants of King Arthur. He further affirms the significance the legend holds for people today.” — Cheryl Carpinello, author of Guinevere: On the Eve of Legend

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Tyler R. Tichelaar, Ph.D. is the author of King Arthur’s Children: A Study in Fiction and Tradition, available at www.ChildrenofArthur.com