#kelsey liveblogs le morte d’arthur

[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]

Further to that, TH White writing a romantic element into Lancelot’s mentorship of Gareth and then keeping all the Gawain lout activity AND Gawain’s close friendship with Lancelot. Choices were made

[daisyachain]

Le Morte D’Arthur is an English translation/retelling of different cycles of French stories which are retellings of earlier French cycles which are retellings of English chronicles which are written versions of originally Welsh stories which means that there are some aspects that shift more than others.

What that means is that the prominent character Gawain from the Welsh/English stories often features with the prominent character Lancelot in the French stories. They are somewhat the twin poles of the Round Table, Gawain recurring as Arthur’s relation while Lancelot is the French authors’ Very Special Boy. The two characters continue to be associated even as Gawain’s character shifts in the retelling to favour/foil Lancelot.

And so we end up with Morte Gawain, a bloodthirsty idiot, and Morte Lancelot, the most perfect man who ever lived until he has a kid, staying close friends (likely from earlier traditions) even as Gawain acts as a borderline villain for the story (likely a later development). Rather than the popular Those Two Knights just co-starring in stories because they have common goals, it becomes an intense and toxic friendship that haunts them the whole story and drives them to their deaths. There is no reason for Lancelot to tolerate Gawain’s behaviour, let alone for Gawain to be the friend he ‘most loves’. There is no reason for Gawain to show decency and loyalty toward Lancelot when he shows so little regard for literally any other non-blood relative. Gawain’s death and the manner of it is foretold, they know that their relationship is going to end badly and they follow it through to the end. Their devotion to each other in spite of Gawain’s violations of the bro code and in spite of Lancelot killing Gawain’s brothers, the only other characters he shows loyalty to, is all the more important for being inexplicable.