Reading Notes: King Arthur, Part B

Here's a list of major Arthurian knights and characters connected to Arthur. As I worked through this reading, it was a little harder to keep track of the influences on the stories and relationships between characters. The notes are taken both from Wikipedia and information I already know about the characters.

King Arthur provides a framing device: the legendary king so noble and lawful good that he attracts the land's most talented and morally upstanding nights--but not more morally upstanding than him. Arthur is best known as a character and pseudo-historical figure in tales where he is an Excalibur-wielding king of Britain. According to most stories, he is born via the rape of a noblewoman by Uther Pendragon, and dies at the hand of his sometimes-nephew, sometimes-accidentally-concieved-by-incest son Mordred. Stories involving King Arthur tend to focus less on the king himself and more on the knights.

Guinevere is Arthur's wife, who usually has an adulterous relationship with chief knight Lancelot on the side, but in earlier works tends to be forgiven for it. Arthur's round table was a gift from her father, King Leodegrance. She has been portrayed as "everything from a weak and opportunistic traitor to a fatally flawed but noble and virtuous gentlewoman." Sometimes she is intelligent, friendly, and graceful; other times, she's a vindictive and weak-minded opportunist.

Mordred is Arthur's would-be usurper, sometimes Arthur's illegitimate son with his half-sister Morgause, sometimes with Morgan le Fay. In some literature, he's instead the son of King Lot, brother to Gawain, Agravain, and Gareth, two of whom are Arthurian knights with their own stories. He and Arthur kill each other in combat.

Now the knights:

Lancelot is Arthur's favorite knight, known to be the best earthly knight on earth. His legendarily adulterous love for Guinevere characterizes him as fatally flawed, but in many works, this love is what gives him so much strength. It also makes him a very bitter person.

Gawain is the James Bond of the round table, as he always stops for a lady in need. However, this happens to be because he once killed a lady by accident when dueling with her husband. As a result, he is honor-bound to always help a lady who is in distress.

Galahad is Lancelot's son, and considered the purest and most noble knight there is. He's one of three knights who achieves the Grail.

Percival is a younger and more naive knight, a welshman who learned to be a knight despite growing up in the woods with only his mother. His tale in Chretien de Troyes' Arthurian romance is the origin of the Grail quest.

Tristan has roots as a character before Arthurian myth, but his main story is his love for Isolde, who his uncle marries. That relationship is sometimes used as a parallel to the Arthur-Guinevere-Lancelot love triangle, but Tristan's story is more one-sided because his love with Isolde is considered more justified. His uncle is also a huge jerk who marries Isolde partially just to make Tristan miserable.

Yvain or Ywain is a lesser-known knight whose quest involves killing a lady's husband, falling in love with her, marrying her, breaking a promise to her and then becoming a hermit and going crazy as a result. He gets better, and also finds highly symbolic companionship in a wild lion.

Kay is Arthur's adopted brother and seneschal, and very antagonistic towards the other knights. To my knowledge, he has no tales of his own, but has adventures in other knights' stories. He's great because nobody really likes him all that much, and sometimes knights like Yvain end up taking on big adventures just to avoid being taunted constantly by Kay.

Sources:
King Arthur: Tales of the Round Table by Andrew Lang
Wikipedia: King Arthur
Wikipedia: Guinevere
Wikipedia: Mordred

Image:
How Mordred Was Slain by Arthur via Wikimedia Commons