Personally, do you prefer Morgause and Morgan le Fay as separate characters or composited into Morgana?

Definitely ad separate characters! This is one of the things that annoy me the most, when suddenly Arthur has only one sister, or when Morgana and Morgause are merged (which rarely happens, I can think of Camelot Starz but mostly it’s Morgause disappearing and Morgana being the only sister).

What are you opinions on Morgana/Ginevere’s evolution through the years in the texts and films in relation to feminism and how they have been portrayed? :)

That’s a hard question! I am definitely not an expert in gender studies so I won’t be able to answer this question as well as other people would, but hopefully someone else will add a more correct analysis.
Also, I am not sure if you meant the relationship between Guinevere and Morgana or simply a ‘Morgana and Guinevere’, so I am going with the relationship!

I think novels and books managed to keep them apart more than together, even if in the Lancelot-Grail Morgana was one of the ladies at the castle and she interacted with Guinevere. So we actually start with texts that don’t see them interacting, but then we only have few interactions where Guinevere is just a collateral of Morgana trying to kill/dethrone Arthur, which is also in many modern novels. There’s also the problem of Morgana being picked as the main villain in media, which makes it hard for the narrative to let her have a positive relationship with Guinevere or even a neutral representation if the PoV of the book is on Arthur’s side or if the story simply the characters into good/bad.

In my opinion, I think that a good novel or media with good characters should not risk falling into the dichotomy trap.
Sometimes it’s quite disturbing to see Morgana and Gunevere in movies, as one is always extremely sexualized (leather outfit, lipstick, seductive) and the other is the opposite, or simply having Guinevere as the only positive character and all the other female characters (or the majority) end up being negative examples- I have a few books like that. Putting female characters one against the other, bashing them to be able to support one and not the other is basically one of the reasons why I didn’t like The Mists of Avalon, which I still recognize as the first important arthurian novel with female protagonists.

I still think the main problem is how female characters are cut and while we have all the knights and Arthur and Merlin, we often end up with just Guinevere and Morgana in media, as representation of the good and the bad, which makes it annoying because the other female characters are often rare.

SORRY. This answer was terribly long and confused.

women of king arthur & knights of the round table: Elaine

Find my sister, give her the Holy Grail. Only the cup can achieve the sword.

Elaine Fay Ambrose is Penn’s (clearly Arthur’s descendant) and Gunner’s cousin and a masseuse in a Bangkok’s massage place called “The Perilous Seat”. She takes care of the Grail, that she uses to recuperate her energies and survive, and she loves her family (mostly cousins, as she is alone and says that she is an only child). When Morgana visits “The Perilous Seat” to look for Excalibur, Elaine manages to escape with the cup, but Mordred finds her and wounds her to death. She reaches for her family’s dojo, where she manages to give Penn the Grail and ask him to go find her sister Krista, someone never knew existed. Krista later reveals them that Elaine, a descendant of Merlin like her, run away with the Grail, wanting to make money out of it, but at the end ended up protecting it.

arthurian women in tv/movies

feanoriel:

My edit: OTPs in Arthurian Legends [2/?]: Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle- The Maiden’s Knight and the Loathy Lady

The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle is an English poem written in the 15th century by an anonimous author (even if there’s the hypothesis that the author is Thomas Malory himself, because this poem was written in the same period of Le Mort d’Arthur). The poem begins with King Arthur threatened by a knight that he met in the magic forest of Inglewood. The knight, Gromer Somer Joure, said that he was going to kill King Arthur in a year, if he for that moment didn’t answer at his riddle, “What the women desire the most?”. King Arthur was in despar, until he met in a forest the ugliest woman that he ever saw, who said him that she had the answer at that riddle, but she was goingo to tell to him only at the condition that she would marry King Arthur’s nephew, sir Gawain. Arthur was reluctant, but Gawain accepted. So, the loathy lady, who was called dame Ragnelle, told him the answer: what women desired the most is sovereignty over themselves. When Gromer Somer Joure heard the answer from King Arthur, he became angry and cursed his sister Ragnelle. So, Arthur came to Camelot with Ragnelle, who wedded with Gawain, even if the court was unhappy for this marriage. But when came the moment of the wedding night, Gawain saw his wife transformed into a beautiful maiden, who said to him that she fell under a curse of her step-mother, but right now he could choose between having her beautiful in the night, but ugly in the day, or beautiful in the day, but ugly in the night. Gawain answered so:

“Alas!” said Gawain, “the choice is hard

Choosing the best is difficult.

I don’t know what to choose.

To have you beautiful

At night and no more,

That would grieve my heart.

And I would lose my reputation.

But if I choose to have you beautiful in the day,

Then at night I would have slim pickings.

Now, gladly would I choose the best,

But I don’t know what in the world to say.

Choose what you think best, happy lady.

The choice I put into your hand.

Do as you want, as you choose.

Untie me when you will, for I am bound.

I give the decision to you.

Body, possessions, heart and everything,

It is all yours, to buy and sell.

This I swear to God.” (translation by David Breeden)

So, Ragnelle said to him that he had broken the curse, because he had given to her what she wanted the most: the sovereignty upon herself. So they are happy, until she had to left him (the text didn’t say if she died or she was only gone away). But Gawain never loved another woman as he had loved dame Ragnelle.The poem has many interpretation, many seemed a connection with the trope of the loathy lady who appeared also in “Canterbury’s Tales”. This trope had also a connection with the Celtic mythology, where the “sovereignty of Ireland” appeared both with the appearence of a beautiful maiden and of an old ugly woman, as a trial that the hero had to face, for becaming king.

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