#according to my records we have been gawaincelot since 2017. keep up the good work.

[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