#T.H. White

[gawrkin]

Following up on what I said about how Post-Vulgate Gawain should utterly despise Arthur - having absolutely no reason to like him - there is an additional context from the Post-Vulgate itself that I forgot to mention in the last post and should be considered:

Gawain will kill you even if you're his kin

(Also, Agravain, as his usual self, will gleefully join in the crimes if he can)

So yes, Blood Relation will not matter to a murderous Gawain, especially if the slight was done when he was a young impressionable kid (King Lot's death was when Gawain was eleven, if you recall). By Post-Vulgate's own logic, Gawain should itching for an opportunity to kill Arthur himself.

Coincidently, this cements another reason why T. H. White's The Once and Future King's Villainization of Morgause (and Morgause being evil in general) is a very BAD idea: it removes the last vestiges of any reasonable justification as to why Gawain is even a Knight of the Round Table - or even a hero! - in the first place.

In the Medieval Narratives, the reason why Gawain and his brothers are part of Arthur's Court in the first place is because of Morgause' insistence, in defiance of her husband. Morgause is a supporter of her brother, not another one of his enemies.

Without Morgause putting in a good word for her brother and actually scheming to destroy him, Gawain and his brothers will be right there working with their mother all the way.

Ironic, as one reason why many modern writers love to villainize Morgause is so that they can reframe Mordred's incestuous birth as some sort of evil scheme to usurp the throne. In reality, that's a really, really impractical, nonsensical and completely redundant rationale - Gawain, Agravaine, Gaheris and Gareth ARE Arthur's closest male relatives and therefore, legally in the best position to take the crown. And all without the taint of incest, an abominable act that would disqualify Mordred from inheritence if made known.

[thefirstwormonyourcorpse]

i fear bbc merlin forever ruined my vision of the arthurian legends. i started reading t. h. white's the once and future king, and it's so good.

but then i'm like: where's young sassy merlin? where's the bromance?

but tbf i think t.h. white's merlin would've loved bbc merlin. they're like the same person in different universes.

[aroomfullofbees]

"All women, indeed, are sisters under The Goddess."

-Morgaine, from The Mists of Avalon, by Marion Zimmer Bradley

[haveyoureadthisbook-poll]

[thoughtfulfangirling]

“Morals,” said Lionel, “are a form of insanity. Give me a moral man who insists on doing the right thing all the time, and I will show you a tangle which an angel couldn’t get out of.”

—The Once and Future King by T.H. White

[abookfairy]

“The best thing for being sad,” replied Merlyn, beginning to puff and blow, “is to learn something”

The Once and Future King, T.H. White

[specificpollsaboutbooks]

Favorite Rewritings

Round 1

Rilla of Ingleside is a retelling of WWI, "one of the only contemporaneously written books about life on the Canadian homefront during WWI"

The Once and Future King is a rewriting of the Arthurian legend

[yesterdays-xkcd]

I mean, the black-and-white stuff was running backward, but it hardly mattered to the story.

Merlin [Explained]

Transcript Under the Cut

[Cueball and Megan standing by a train on a platform.] Megan: I'm bad at goodbyes. At some level I never think they're for real. Cueball: They make me think of T. H. White's Merlin.

[They are still standing at the edge of the platform, but the train is no longer in the frame.] Megan: Oh? Cueball: He lived backwards, remembering the future and not the past. To him, final goodbyes meant nothing, while first hellos were tearful and bittersweet.

[Zooming out, the rail closest to the platform becomes visible.] Megan: Huh - so over the years he'd forget all his friends. Megan: Must've been lonely. Cueball: Yeah. He ended up just sitting around at home watching DVDs all day. The best was the time he rented 'Memento'...

[Merlin with pointy hat and long white beard is sitting in a couch with the remote, watching TV which emits light and is clearly hooked up to a device (a DVD player).] Merlin: Well, that was straightforward.

[kynaree]

Getting down and dirty with my hot new man, Neville Jason 😎 honestly didn’t expect to catch feelings this quickly

but T.H. White has never sounded so good

[bookcoversonly]

Title: The Goshawk | Author: T.H. White | Publisher: NYRB (2007)

[apesoformythoughts]

“Perhaps we all give the best of our hearts uncritically—to those who hardly think about us in return.”

— The Queen of Air and Darkness

[book2disney]

The Sword in the Stone (1963)

The Sword in the Stone by T. H. White (1938)

[thoughtfulfangirling]

Now that she was dead, he had become her grave. She existed in him like the vampire. When he moved, when he blew his nose, he did it with her movement. When he acted, he became as unreal as she had been, pretending to be a virgin for the unicorn.

—The Once and Future King by T.H. White

[darthjess-book-reviews]

REVIEW: The Once and Future King by T.H. White

SUMMARY (Provided by Goodreads)

T. H. White’s masterful retelling of the saga of King Arthur is a fantasy classic as legendary as the sword Excalibur and city of Camelot that are found within its pages. This magical epic takes Arthur from the glorious lyrical phase of his youth, through the disillusioning early years of his reign, to maturity when his vision of the Round Table develops into the search for the Holy Grail, and finally to his weary old age. With memorable characters like Merlin and Owl and Guinevere, beasts who talk and men who fly, wizardry and war, The Once and Future King has become the fantasy masterpiece against which all others are judged, a poignant story of adventure, romance, and magic that has enchanted readers for generations.

MY REVIEW: 5/5 Stars

I spent the last 15 minutes reading this book crying, not necessarily because it was sad (it was more bittersweet) but more because I didn't want it to end.

Before reading this, I had heard almost nothing about it. I read articles claiming that this book was a fantasy classic, a book to which all other fantasy stories should be compared. I will admit, I was a little skeptical.

The first part of the book chronicles Arthur's childhood, and I'll be honest, I had no idea where it was going. It was a little wacky, but I loved it. There were parts where I literally laughed out loud! I loved Merlin's character throughout the book, and I loved his weird quirks. Later on, the book becomes much more serious, and it turns into a beautiful epic. I don't know how accurate this story is to the actual tales of King Arthur, but to me, this will always feel like the truest version of the myths.

This story is about far more than King Arthur, his knights, and the Round Table. It is about a man who struggles his entire life with the question of "might vs. right." Everything he does (from founding the Round Table, to ignoring that his best friend and wife are lovers) is in service of making England a place where "might" (the strong) is used in service of "right" (the good), instead of a place where strength is the ultimate good.

In the end, Arthur is an old man who is weary after long years of struggling to make England not just great, but Good. Ultimately, he fails, but he fails trying to do the right thing instead of succeeding in doing the wrong.

This story is one of my favorite books I have ever read, and I hope to read it again someday.

[diaryoftruequotes]

The bravest people are the ones who don’t mind looking like cowards. T.H. White, The Once and Future King

[pitch-and-moan]

The Once and Future Chronicler

A period piece set in January of 1964 just a few weeks after the release of Disney's The Sword and the Stone, about T. H. White and his four book series The Once and Future King. The film is more or less biography as White writes his books, and sees various other entities jockey to adapt them into plays, musicals, films, and in the case of Disney, an animated musical film. White dies the next day.