#and yet--for example--the major Arthurian works are all retellings of each other and it's THROUGH those direct links and interplay

[queer-ragnelle]

Hi there, you don't have to post this on the blog, but I wanted to thank you for your earlier post with regard to different interpretations and iterations of Arthuriana. I really admire your work in/thoughts on all things Arthurian, and seeing you say "Each iteration is it's own self-contained world and anything is possible within that framework" was such a freeing thing. I'm currently writing an Arthurian thing where Lancelot falls for/ends up with someone who isn't Guinevere, and I often wrestle with the doubt of "if he isn't in love with Guinevere, am I really being true to the stories and the canon?" But each iteration is its own self-contained world, and I can honor the stories in other ways while still doing my own thing in this particular story/world. Anyway, all this to say, I'm sure it wasn't your intention, but I appreciate your insight and the encouragement it brings. Take care!

Hi there! Sorry for the delay in responding, but I wanted to think about this a bit beforehand. In writing my own Arthurian series, as well as reading and watching absolutely everything I can get ahold of, historical, medieval, and modern, I’ve developed a whole philosophy about it. So my reply got long hehe. Here’s what I think…

In the ask you referenced, I talked about how Arthurian legend lacks a true "canon," and how the stories all build off each other. The inconsistency from text to text and even chapter to chapter within the same story affords us endless opportunities for creative reinterpretation. I can basically be sold on any concept. I’ve read a lot of retellings at this point and I’m not married to any specific “canon.” If the writer can convince me that, in this version of the story, things played out differently, then I’m happy to get invested. For example, in Exiled From Camelot by Cherith Baldry, she develops Lyonors, Gareth’s wife, and makes her into a likable character the reader can easily ship with Gareth. On the other hand, I definitely see why people prefer Lynette with Gareth, as Tennyson did, and the majority of other retellings follow suit. Even so, I think Lynette and Gaheris made an adorable pair in Squire’s Tales #3, and it was a satisfying reveal in Squire’s Tales #7 that the pov character was their daughter, Lunette. It’s indicated through context clues who her parents are when they arrive at the end referring to each other by pet names. In the same vein, while I favor Ragnelle, Gawain can have any number of partners so long as the author writes the chemistry well. And while I still firmly believe Agravaine is gay in essentially every retelling, I do love Sarah Zettel’s romance Camelot’s Blood that she wrote between him and Laurel. I’m an Orkney Wives fan first and an Orkney Bros fan second haha!

That being said, Orkney Bros have always been inconsistent, so changing their love interests isn’t actually that drastic. In the case of Lancelot and Guinevere, severing their romantic connection is a huge departure from the norm. Undoubtedly, some people won’t “get it” or say it’s out of character. But the thing to remember is, there is no singular source for Arthuriana, so how can they ever be out of character? Let’s get into it.

Firstly, you don’t need to rationalize your narrative choices. To anybody. So long as you’re writing something for the sake of authenticity and good storytelling (rather than simply to be contrarian or edgy or quirky etc) it will resonate with your audience. That said, there’s medieval precedence for your concept. In Alliterative Morte Arthure, Lancelot is listed many times as one of Arthur’s knights. He’s there. Yet it is Mordred who adulterously marries Guinevere. In the romance retelling Lancelot by Gwen Rowley, Guinevere is not the love interest, but Elaine. Another similar angle is explored in Port Eternity by CJ Cherryh, which takes place entirely from Elaine’s point of view. Guinevere isn’t even truly in it and her stand in doesn’t fulfill the same role. In The Adventures of Sir Lancelot (1956), Lancelot definitely has A Thing with both the King and Queen, but a potential affair is not explored or even hinted at. He’s their bestie, their confidant, their most trusted person apart from each other. The key here is Lancelot still loves Guinevere (or her stand in), however that manifests. There’s no active dislike or hatred between them. In that circumstance, I don’t think the character would feel like Lancelot anymore. But changing the nature of his love for Guinevere from romantic to something else does not diminish its narrative value, as the above examples prove. Their friendship is the core of their relationship, as the Vulgate proves, and maintaining that is important.

It’s not so much about asking yourself, “Is [narrative choice] true to the ‘canon?’” as asking, “How do I tell a good story containing [narrative choice]?” There are examples of this done poorly, in my opinion. I’ve elaborated many many many times about David Lowery’s fumbling of The Green Knight (2021) and how that particular iteration falls short of a true adaptation (which I don’t think he set out to do anyway, to be fair) but also proved an unsuccessful reimagining of the poem due to mismanaged references and motifs. I didn’t like Once & Future by Cori McCarthy and Amy Rose Capetta or The Winter Knight by Jes Battis for the same reasons—both books felt like shallow, meandering stories lacking narrative integrity with a veneer of Arthuriana over it. Reincarnation AUs are not an excuse to flanderaize characters. Battis writes Wayne (Gawain) acknowledging how drastically he differs from his medieval counterpart, but awareness of it doesn’t negate the facts: the story suffers for it. On the contrary, Camelot 3000 gives an entire character arc surrounding this premise to Tristan, who has reincarnated AFAB and struggles with his gender identity and with accepting Isolde’s love for him, changed though he is. First Knight (1995) really screws up by making Lancelot a misogynistic creeper who relentlessly pursues Guinevere and even forces a kiss on her. King Arthur: Legend of The Sword (2017) is insultingly bad by showcasing just how stupid it thinks its audience is, brutalizing and killing women left and right, giving unnecessary screen time to obnoxious OCs, and bastardizing every aspect of the legend it drew from. Meanwhile the Fate Grand Order anime cuts out Guinevere entirely. Her role exists as a void. It makes no sense, then, that Lancelot and Agravaine clash as “fellow traitors,” because the woman at the center of the conflict is literally never present. Seven Deadly Sins anime has finally gotten around to Lancelot and Guinevere meeting, and she’s a clingy girl Lancelot is disinterested in, trying to flip the script on their roles, and only exacerbating the misogyny problem in shounen in the process.

Fear not! Loving Arthurian legend automatically enshrines anything you create in a glittering anti-garbage shield! So many versions exist that draw on the elements just because they can with no respect for the material nor their audience. You literally can’t do worse than what’s already out there and there are no original ideas! Published retellings love crackships, they love mixing it up, changing the expected, surprising us! So long as Guinevere isn’t made worse to make Lancelot’s alternative love interest better, and Lancelot himself isn’t turned inside out until he’s unrecognizable, you’re golden. Follow your gut and write something you would enjoy, develop it well within your own universe, and there will be an audience for it. I’m certainly among them!

Thanks for the ask. Have a lovely day! :^)

[daisyachain]

I hate talking about the nature of franchises because they’re such a frustrating and contradictory invention of 20thC mass media. Fundamentally, franchise fiction exists as a moneymaking device where a single property is successful enough that anything with the same brand name will break even at worst. It’s a risk mitigation method by producers/studios/publishers/rightsholders in a world where making mass artwork depends on precarious funding. You may have a great idea for great art but if doesn’t have mass appeal/have some way to make profit, execution is going to be limited.

Public arts funding closes some of the gap but is limited in the opposite direction, where it is awarding based on subjective ‘merit’ and tends to focus more on High, Important Art. Fair enough, if it’s publicly funded you may as well give it to work that will be win awards and be taught in classes.

Looking back on storytelling traditions, though, there’s a running theme of canon. English-language works constantly reference Greco-Roman stories/The Classics. Folklore worldwide consists of the same few stories, told and retold and reinterpreted and re-explored. From the primal soup of ‘why did Jercophanes die in that freak thunderstorm?’ occurring across the Greek islands you get Zeus, god of thunder. A million stories later told by people who had unfaithful husbands/bad dads/etc. later, you develop the archetype of Zeus, all-powerful philanderer. Then the Iliad, made by entertainers from a dozen half-remembered historical events, talks about its events in the context of which gods support who. The preexisting miasma of religious tales is used to explain and inform a popular story. The Iliad is then referenced endlessly in every story published since, Dante names Hector as one of the virtuous pagans, we still call our weaknesses ‘Achilles’ Heel’

All that is to say that stories are by nature intertextual and early storytelling traditions rely on mixing/melding/extrapolating existing stories. That continues today, every story in some way references a dozen others. English-language fantasy either references Tolkien or deliberately avoids him. Shakespeare is constantly rehashed. Classical and Biblical allusions are widespread even with the Anglosphere moving away from religious Christianity. But, the nature of copyright means there’s a limited amount of engagement with contemporary classics. You can reference, but the extent of exploration is limited because it’s not a collaborative project, it’s an academic response.

For the most part the approach of writers is rightfully distant from previous work. You can’t just stable a few pages from completely unrelated folios together, add a few sentences and sell it on. This isn’t saying that a mid-18thC knockoff heavily edited version of Hamlet where Ophelia lives and Claudius is actually Hamlet’s real father is good, only that the borderless blending of stories seems more natural than strict delineation.

Meaning, the modern day phenomenon closest to the development of folklore are franchises. The argument has been made a lot that fanfic is actually this manifestation, but it’s not. Fanfic is typically character-driven, plot-lite, designed to release some tension in the story for the satisfaction of the reader. It’s rarely about expanding the world or writing a new, complementary story. Franchise fiction, though, has the license and mandate to create new stories in the same universe as the old. Star Trek comics, Star Wars novels, spin-offs, etc. retell and expand on the stories that define English-speaking pop culture in a mutually reinforcing way. And because they are not just allowed but encouraged to use our modern myths as a starting point, you can get hugely complex, wacky, interconnected webs of story that each feed into the other in a way that’s financially difficult with indie media. This isn’t to say that you can’t do it with indie media, only that the clashing and interplay of multiple authors telling the same story is most direct within that umbrella.

So, franchises are simultaneously editorial-controlled cash cows designed to suck every ounce of independent storytelling out of the market, and the only place where modern myths can be directly incorporated into the same shifting amorphous blob that characterizes (at least Anglo) story tradition