#Kelsey liveblogs Arthuriana

[daisyachain]

The tension between Gawain portrayed in British texts (maiden’s knight, knight of courtesy) and Gawain in French texts (boor + lout) and the way that every other element of the text reads differently because Gawain is key to the whole apparatus (the presumed heir, the prince, the right hand man). Of course Arthur back him up as his heir, of course Lancelot hangs out with him because they’re the right and left hand and he’s training his brother. Of course Arthur and Lancelot are peerless and virtuous. Depending on the take then you’ve got the True King and the Best Knight backing a guy who murders his way out of every problem and gets put in the drunk tank weekly. This transforms Arthur from a flawed man doing his best to a weak-willed nepotist and Lancelot from well…a courtly knight to a man with some kind of deeper complex resulting from who even knows what

Arthur is the main sticking point. If he’s letting his heir hack n slash his way through half the lesser kings of Britain, it’s easy to see why everyone would want to kill him stone dead quite apart from the Lancelot Guinevere thing

[daisyachain]

The core Pendragon family dynamic in post-13th century stuff is. Well. Arthur averting his eyes to all of Gawain’s nonsense, Lancelot acting as the true right hand of the throne, Gawain taking on the mantle of heir while also not considering Arthur his father or even his boss, Guinevere and Gawain’s relationship being one of peers instead of aunt and nephew, Guinevere going for Lancelot over the maiden’s knight, Gawain enabling and encouraging Gaheris and Agravaine, Gareth being party to all of that while also hanging out with Lancelot over his brothers, Kay inheriting Gareth as his adoptive step-nephew whatever, Lancelot remaining Gawain’s staunch ally as his complete moral opposite, Arthur not knowing that Gawain’s brother is his son, Gawain and all his brothers not knowing that his youngest kid brother is Arthur’s son, Guinevere/Gawain/Lancelot (? Can’t remember) knowing about the whole massacre of the innocents thing while Mordred is just kind of there

[daisyachain]

entering my mind palace to refute my friend’s dumb fucking shit idiot father who thinks LoTR is a crusade allegory

[daisyachain]

The more Arthurian stuff I read, the more I appreciate White’s interpretation of Arthur-Guinevere-Lancelot as a fucked-up but complete love triangle