Arthur, King of Time and Space’s False Guenevere, part five, to a sad end
(Part four has been erroneously lableled part three all this time but today I noticed and fixed it.)
The False Guenevere is one of the episodes from Malory’s sources that he left out or didn’t get to, so it’s not one general audiences are familiar with. My source for these stories is The Lancelot-Grail Reader ed. Lacy, an abridgment of the latest English translation of the French Vulgate romance cycle from the turn of the first millennium, which translation, unabridged, runs five volumes. Five expensive, expensive volumes. The AKOTAS version of the character figures in all three primary timezone arcs. Some of the strips in this installment are framed in red instead of green because they originally appeared out of sequence as a flashforward by means of some characters time-traveling. This installment covers the end of the False Guenevere’s reign in all arcs (also the end of Tristram and Isolde’s). There’s one more installment after this.
And when they were at the water side, even fast by the bank hoved a little barge with many fair ladies in it, and among them all was a queen, and all they had black hoods, and all they wept and shrieked when they saw King Arthur. Now put me into the barge, said the king. And so he did softly; and there received him three queens with great mourning; and so they set them down, and in one of their laps King Arthur laid his head. And then that queen said: Ah, dear brother, why have ye tarried so long from me? alas, this wound on your head hath caught over-much cold. And so then they rowed from the land, and Sir Bedivere beheld all those ladies go from him.
@ragnell, if you haven’t read Arthur, King of Time and Space, I think you would appreciate it. @heroofthreefaces follows the Arthurian saga through three major parallel timelines and a whole bunch of minor ones and one-offs, plays with the differences between the different “canonical” versions, and talks at length about Arthurian scholarship/fandom in the footnotes.
Reading AKOTAS (and its footnotes) is what finally got me to stop being snotty about fanfic (yes, I used to be THAT GUY).
“So what’s the canon?” The short version: the first attempt to compile all the King Arthur legends into one book in English was Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur
in the late fifteenth century. His primary source was the twelfth
century French Vulgate cycle. His printer Willam Caxton edited it quite a
bit and since the original manuscript was discovered and published in
the twentieth century they’re pretty much treated as separate volumes. Le Morte d’Arthur is what almost all modern King Arthur stories are retelling or deconstructing.
King Arthur is based on a historical figure from the fifth century about
whom little is known and much as embellished.
“But was Mordred Arthur’s son in the original legend?” Mordred (Medraut) is first mentioned in the Annales Cambriae (Welsh Annals), a hisotrical document from around the turn of the first millennium, which says about him only that he and Arthur died at Camlann in 537. It doesn’t even say whether they were allies or enemies. Everything else about Mordred is invention.
“Yes but what’s the original book?” Define “original”.
The contemporary histories from the fifth or sixth centuries that don’t
mention Arthur but mention other historical figures who appear with him
in later legends?
The first history that mentions Arthur? The first history of Arthur that conflates his stories with the stories of Merlin? The Welsh triads? The first written legends? The first written work that also mentioned Guenevere? The French romance that invented Lancelot? The Old French Vulgate romance cycle? Malory? Tennyson? T.H. White? Camelot the musical? Bradley? One of the revivals of
Anushka Shetty as Dame Ragnelle, wife of Gawain; meets and marries him in the form of an unruly old woman in exchange for saving his uncle’s life, ultimately revealing herself–after he’s proven he can respect her self-sovereignty.
Nayanthara as Lady Lynette, wife of Gaheris and general gadfly who reluctantly escorts Gareth to rescue her imprisoned sister Lyonesse while insulting him all the way
Kajal Aggrawal as Lady Lyonesse, sister of Lynette eventual wife of Gareth, your standard issue damsel-in-distress (in legend at least; in fanon, I doubt anyone related to Lynette could be a shrinking violet and survive)
Trisha as Morgan le Fay, half-sister of Arthur and sister to Morgause, morally ambiguous enchantress
Shobana as Morgause, mother of the Orkney brothers; Queen of Air and Darkness, arguably one of the greatest titles ever created.
Arthurian Legends 