#the wedding of the sir gawain and dame ragnelle

[queer-ragnelle]

i’m new to arthuriana but love your posts nonetheless

i am just curious about the many references to gawain sleeping with so many people when, to my understanding, in sir gawain and the green knight he specifically breaks this promiscuous behaviour and makes sure he doesn’t sleep with the wife of the duke

(i apologize if this is a stupid question!)

hello anon!

welcome to arthuriana and thank you so much for the kind words. this is not a stupid question at all! the truth is gawain is nothing if not inconsistent between texts haha. he's different from other knights such as lancelot who pines solely for guinevere across text after text, in that it seems every author wanted to create their own special gal for gawain. he therefore has numerous women attached to him, and when readers try to reconcile those many texts into a single story thread, it gives the impression our mans gawain gets around! (and he does!) i have several examples here to illustrate this so i'll put it below a cut.

for all the textual variance, sir gawain and the green knight is the exception that proves the rule—meaning that it's perhaps the only text in which gawain is abstinent. we know this because one of the five virtues attributed to the five points of his pentacle crest on his shield is chastity.

furthermore, on the wife's second seduction attempt, gawain pleas his own inexperience with "love" (ie: women).

whether or not that's true is up for debate, but it's worth mentioning, as it's a departure from other texts where his virile prowess is well-known, and in the knight of the two swords, he openly boasts about his own attractiveness and popularity. (humble guy, that gawain!)

there are several examples of gawain's reputation with the ladies preceding him and actually benefitting his odds of getting laid. one of my favorites is from lancelot part II in the vulgate. gawain had just cured his brother agravaine of an illness and agravaine's amie basically wingwoman's her sister.

goated of her. so gawain pencils it in on his calendar. later, he locates the castle, sneaks in, and succeeds in bedding the maiden. she's not named here, although malory later refers to her as "the lady of lys," and accredits her as the mother of gawain's three sons, (although the couple never formally wed).

among the strangest of examples is the middle english text the carle of carlisle, in which the carle brings gawain to the bedchamber and orders him to make out with his wife. but things quickly heat up...

so the carle stops gawain from outright cuckholding him, then leads gawain to his daughter's chambers, gives them his blessing, and locks them inside. at the end of the text, gawain marries her.

now i would be remiss not to mention my beloved the wedding of sir gawain and dame ragnelle. i think it's notable that ragnelle specifically asks for gawain by name, much like the lady of lys did (according to her sister and her warm reception of him).

now the conclusion of this poem brings us to another theme of gawain's which ties into his many partners, and that is his consistent subservience to ladies. he breaks the curse on ragnelle by granting her "sovereignty" in the relationship. this seems to be another aspect of character which sets gawain apart from other knights, as this is not a chaste expression of courtly love, but a precursor to fornication, and draws the attention of strong-willed ladies, such as ragnelle, with whom he is "a coward," or according to the translation notes, "submissive."

then again in roman van walewein, he's already famous by the time he meets his ladylove, ysabele, and whilst tied up in her father's prison, he leaves the decision of his own life in her hands.

which then results in their coming together because this is a gawain story and he always gets the girl.

even in the post vulgate, which we can all agree portrays every single character at their absolute worst (and is therefore invalid<3), gawain's choice of words consistently upholds the lady's desires above his own. at first, gawain intended wingman for pelleas by pretending he, pelleas, was dead to begrieve arcade. he discovers instead that she's elated by pelleas's supposed passing, so she and gawain fall in love. but even after admitting his feelings, he still takes great pains to frame the final crossing of that line as her choice, and only relents when she makes her intentions plain.

he might also just like it when women boss him around if his treatment from orgeluse in parzival by wolfram von eschenbach is any indication.

similarly to the knight of two swords, in parzival, gawain is aware of his fame, fosters it, and then employs his orgeluse brain worms as a motivation for sparing lives instead of like...morality.

i think what's particularly interesting about gawain's relationship history is that many of his partners are named, whereas it's pretty common for damsels and maidens in medieval texts to exist without identities of their own. there are so, so many named, interesting, fully developed women linked to gawain, it's actually pretty awesome! here are a few more:

lunette in yvain: knight of the lion by chrétien de troyes...

amurfina in the crown by heinrich von dem türlin...

bloiesine in the 4th perceval continuation by gerbert de montreuil...

marjorie in gawain and marjorie by oscar fay adams (if we extend our search through the 20th century!)...

and on and on forever! so in conclusion, gawain has been pulling bitches for many hundreds of slutty, slutty years, and from what modern retellings i've read, authors have no intention of interrupting this trend. i hope that helps clear things up somewhat. thanks for the ask!

[the-winters-prince]

okay which arthuriana book are we reading next

[arthurian-aita]

AITA for guilt-tripping one of my knights into marrying a hag?

My (1545M) nephew, who we’ll call Wayne (1538M), would do anything for me. We were hunting with my other knights when I spotted a gorgeous deer through the trees and set out after it. A knight I didn’t know cornered me in a thicket and accused me of giving his lands to another knight when I restructured the kingdom. I managed to bargain for my life by offering him whatever he wanted in exchange. Cryptically, he said not to tell anyone and to return in a year and tell him “wahte women love best in feld and town.” But he let me go, which was good because I was unarmored, and that would’ve been an embarrassing way to die.

I went back to Wayne and explained the situation. He suggested we ride in opposite directions and ask around to poll the populace to crowdsource the answer to the riddle. When we reunited, we compared notes, but I felt like there had to be more, so I rode out again and found possibly the ugliest woman (creature?), “Rachel” (1533F?), in the world. I mean, her nose was snotty, her mouth wide with yellow teeth, and her neck thick. Ungodly. The weirder thing was she said she knew about my deal with the knight and that I would be dead without her help. All she wanted in return? To marry Wayne. 

I said no guarantees, but I’d do my best. It felt wrong to ask Wayne to marry such an ugly woman; I knew he’d say yes to save my life. 

And I told him, and, sure enough, he was like, “I shall wed her and wed her agayn, thowghe she were a fend; thowghe she were foul as Belsabub,” because he’s extremely loyal. Still, I can’t help feeling like I guilt-tripped him into it. 

I returned to the hag, and she gave me the answer to the riddle, which I then brought back to the knight I met in the woods, who told me the hag was actually his sister. Sure. Why not? The knight left, thwarted, and Rachel and Wayne were married. 

She made a big fuss about the wedding being a public affair, even when asked if she’d consider a private wedding to avoid embarassing Wayne, who, to his credit, selflessly went along with her demands. He technically agreed, but his reputation is permanently sullied on my behalf.

So. AITA for guilt-tripping my one of my knights/my nephew into marrying a hag to save my life?

EDIT: It turns out she was cursed to be a hag? And she needed a man to give her agency to break the curse? She’s actually a fayre damosel, and she and Wayne are very happy together. Best wife a knight could ask for. Who knew. Does that make this better or worse?

[who-do-i-know-this-man]

⚠️Vote for whomever YOU DO NOT KNOW⚠️��️

[gawrkin]

So basically, a demon goddess waifu

Her brother's name is apparently "Summer Day Guy" in English, btw.

[lupusfloslunae]

AU where Ragnelle survives after Gawain’s death.

[ravensandsongbirds]

so was anyone gonna tell me that the wedding of sir gawain and dame ragnelle was gonna permanently alter my brain chemistry or ???

[talesfromtheenchantedforest]

reading middle english makes it painfully clear why this bastard gremlin language is such a fucking mess, I present to you:

1. 5 different spellings of “Arthur”: ARTURE [line 7], ARTHOWRE [line 14], ARTHOUR [line 54], ARTHURE [line 110], and then we kind of fall in line behind ARTHOURE [line 456 on], but STILL

2. “Fern”: FERNE [line 25] or FERON [line 44]

3. “Foul”: FOWLNESSE [line 244], FOULLE [line 301], FOWLYST [line 370], FOULE [line 523], FOWLLE [line 524]

4. and, I cannot emphasize this enough, INOWGHE as “enough”

[joemerl]

I finally got around to reading "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight." One detail that I hadn't heard about before was the ugly old woman. She's deliberately contrasted with Lady Bertilak, and while we never hear her speak, Gawain apparently spends the days talking to both of them and finds them both to be enjoyable company.

I knew it wasn't going to be right, but a weird idea I had was that it was Ragnelle. And you know, I feel like combining these stories wouldn't be too hard. There's Gawain, having his virtue tested by a beautiful but supposedly wanton woman, but instead winds up with her supposedly ugly but virtuous companion. Both stories even use the setup of "knight has to come back and die because HONOR," and "The Marriage of Sir Gawain" even keeps the Christmas setting. If nothing else this could be a prequel, where Ragnelle decides "yeah, that's the knight I want" and arranges to marry him later.

Instead the old lady was apparently Morgan le Fay. Which doesn't make a ton of sense, but honestly, nothing about her in this story does.

[wuuthering]

ok so perhaps I’m hallucinating or something but the name ‘gromer somer jour’ in the wedding of sir gawain and dame ragnell, and especially the last part ‘somer jour’, sounds really close to the french ‘sans mesure’ right? and I was basically wondering if there were any connection at all? seems suspicious to me

[firsttraintovictoriaville]

someone please force me to write one (1) sentence before i leave for my nighttime soirees. i want to write so bad but all i’m doing is refreshing tumblr, watching s2 of BBC Merlin, and thinking about making a coffee whilst being too lazy to go downstairs and make myself a cup of coffee. 

[queer-ragnelle]

i can be silent no longer

[liridi]

Heyy, I'm starting to get interested in reading the Arthurian Legend/Story/Mith (?), and I was just wondering if you have any reccomendations on where to start with what books? I hope you have a nice day, Take care!

Oh thanks for the ask. I can only half answer this? I'm much better with my Greek myths. I've read a fair number of arthuriana texts but there are so many arthuriana blogs on here that faaar outmatch me with regards to the texts they've read.

I would personally start with Gawain and the Green Knight, I think it's a great entry point and one of the strongest texts in arthuriana. If you enjoy that one I think you're pretty much green lit to continue on.

Then it's a bit of a question what you want to do?

If you want an oversight of the "plot" of Arthuriana (ie. the rise and downfall of Camelot, from Arthur's conception to his death) you either want to start with the Vulgate Cycle (long but well written, the translation by Norris Lacy is recommended) or Le Morte D'Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory (based on the Vulgate Cycle, it's shorter but still long, and worse written, but definitely the basis for later/modern arthuriana). These are inaccesible bricks of reading material, I'm still slogging through Le Morte, two years later. But they're pretty much the bedrocks at the bottom of our modern arthuriana "canon" (no such thing but you know what I mean) so :///

If you want more readable later adaptations that cemented our modern arthuriana "canon", you either want Alfred Lord Tennyson's Idylls of the King or The Once and Future King by TH White.

If you want to keep reading short stories set in the Arthuriana world I recommend by personal favorite, the Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle. I've also been highly recommended The Knight of the Cart by Chretien de Troyes, the introduction of Lancelot and his affair with Guinevere. Courtly love!!!

But here I defer to @queer-ragnelle they can definitely give you a better answer.

Good luck!

[gringolet]

hi not to be a menace but. what texts do you recommend starting on for delving into the arthurian lore bc i’ve read sgatgk and the mabinogion and listened to the heather dale songs and have no idea where to go from here

Okay I have a bunch in my pinned post but in summary: It depends on what you are interested in! If you are interested in characters like Lancelot, Guinevere, Yvain, Gawain, Percival etc, I would recommend reading Chretien de Troyes romances, specifically Knight of the Lion, Knight of the Cart, and Story of the Grail, which are his best and more relevant to later texts. If you are more interested in the overall story, the rise of arthur and fall of camelot, the classic choice is Thomas Malory's le morte d'arthur. there are a lot of translations and shortened versions that are quite readable if ur not into middle english.

there are lots of fun and fairly findable epigonal romances (french romances written after chretien de troyes) and middle english verse works (sgatgk is the most famous of these, but sir gawain and the turk, the alliterative morte d'arthur, the stanzaic morte d'arthur, and the wedding of sir gawain and dame ragnelle are all fun). great epigonal romances include the perilous cemetery, the mule without a bridle, and the knight with two swords.

the dutch corpus of arthuriana is also great, you cant go wrong with morien, and i also recommend lancelot and the hart with the white foot and the roman van walewein. i have links to scans of most of everything i've mentioned here so if you can't find something let me know and i'll see if i can find it scanned by me or one of my friends.

i hope this brain dump was helpful! but yeah basically there are lots and lots of fun text options for you so just check out what sounds interesting! theres a ton of works i didnt name here so if none of these sound interesting then let me know and i can offer other suggestions. if u want some stuff more like the heather dale stuff, you might like victorian arthuriana! i have links to my favourite arthurian revival works in my pinned post. good luck!!

[lupusfloslunae]

A year ago, i started making fan art of Gawain with my Oc, and his master, Elizabeth.

I wanted to do it for fun and giggles, but i ended up building a deeper world around them.

Fate/Reminiscent: Two Intertwined Souls will be an hard project to make and finish (cause as usually happens to us writers, we know how it begins, how it end and some cool stuff in the middle, but we are having an hard time connecting it), but it's making me proud already.

Maybe it won't be good, just some shitty fanfiction on the internet, but it will be there, for other people to cringe and laugh about it .

I will probably look at this in few years and ask what was wrong with me, but that's okay. This is how we grow.

So ye, happy 1st Anniversary, Gawain and Elizabeth.

Fate/Reminiscent will start soon.