The Once and Future King by TH White
I’ll start this by emphatically stating that I’ve never read Sir Thomas Malory’s version of the story, titled Le Morte d’Arthur. (I had always wondered why it had such a morbid title.) I felt like I was starting The Once and Future King without knowing anything of the source material — I don’t even know all that much about Arthurian legend. What I’ve always been sure was this: there was a king, his knights in their shining armour, the round table, and said knights were always haring about searching for the holy grail.
I got over that particular stumbling block, simply because you don’t really need to know much of Malory’s version to read this book.
Going in without knowing anything about Arthur, though, probably would be . . . really troublesome.
As a side note, I remember the only version that I had read from end to end was a hardcover book called King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table and it was probably targeted for a younger audience. Everyone was noble and slightly tragic in that book. I remember being captivated by the story of Merlin and Arthur going to the lake to retrieve Excalibur — which isn’t the same as the sword in the stone, if I recall correctly — and loving and hating the ending at the same time as Sir Bedivere threw Excalibur into the lake. I remember that Lancelot was true and honourable, and he had seen the queen pass by once in a parade or something similar, and she had dropped a single flower, and he had kept it as a corsage close to his heart until he had died.
Anyway. That wasn’t the book I just read. The one I just read is The Once and Future King. I liked it. I think a lot of other people might not. The book is split into four parts; or rather, this single volume is split into four novels: The Sword in the Stone, The Queen of Air and Darkness, The Ill-Made Knight and The Candle in the Wind. Let’s just split them up and let me try writing something that makes sense.
The Sword in the Stone
“Well, anyway,” he said, “suppose they did not let you stand against all the evil in the world?”
“I could ask,” said the Wart.
“You could ask,” repeated Merlyn.
He thrust the end of his beard into his mouth, stared tragically at the fire, and begun to munch it fiercely.
I took a long time finishing The Once and Future King. It was partly because it was really easy to pause between chapters while reading the first part, The Sword in the Stone. Simply put, this part is about Arthur — the Wart, as he is called at this point of time — and Merlyn and Kay, and Wart’s education under Merlyn’s tutelage. The Wart is a fish. The Wart is a bird. The Wart is an ant. The Wart goes on adventures with Robin Wood (yes, not Hood; an easy mistake to make) and his merry men.
Merlyn was trying to teach lessons here, and I read The Sword in the Stone with equal amounts of fondness and exasperation. It drags at certain points — too much information about the medieval times, and jousting, and wood lore, and the differences between England then and now (”now” being sometime around the 1930s until World War II, when the book was published/revised) — but when it doesn’t, it’s really delightful. The funny parts are funny; King Pellinore going “What, what?” and questing after the Questing Beast leaves me snorting with laughter. King Pellinore was the first knight I really liked, much like he was the first knight Arthur had ever met.
It’s easy to stop anywhere between the chapters, because while all of them are about the Wart, they are almost standalone (and sometimes I take too long a pause because I have my nose in another book). Be prepared for some rather mind-bending anachronisms since Merlyn lives backwards in time, and honestly, some of the references went over my head.
Yes, yes, the Disney movie with the same title. I love it to pieces myself, but it’s considerably different from the book. The basic story is the same — the Wart pulls out a sword from the stone, yeah — but the details vary. I liked Kay and Sir Ector in the book much, much better, but Archimedes the owl in the animated version will always have a special place in my heart. XD
The Queen of Air and Darkness
“. . . And then I shall make the oath of the order that Might is only to be used for Right. Do you follow? The knights in my order will ride all over the world, still dressed in steel and whacking away with their swords — that will give an outlet for wanting to whack, you understand, the outlet for what Merlyn calls the foxhunting spirit — but they will be bound to strike only on behalf what is good, to defend virgins against Sir Bruce, and to restore what has been done wrong in the past and to help the oppressed and so forth. Do you see the idea? . . .”
I am not sure whether shifting the focus off Arthur was a good or bad thing for me. I started The Queen of Air and Darkness feeling rather bemused, since it started with four brothers of the Orkney clan — Gawaine, Agravaine, Gaheris and Gareth — telling the story of their grandparents to each other. We learn more of the brothers throughout the book. To show how little I know of Arthurian legend: I only recognised Gawaine as one of the Knights of the Round Table. (All four of them would eventually become knights in King Arthur’s court.)
Also, I started cursing my inability to visualise family trees at this point because it took me forever to figure out what made Arthur the boys’ uncle. Uther Pendragon, Arthur’s father, married Igraine, the boys’ grandmother. The boys’ grandfather, who was killed by Uther, was the Earl of Cornwall. The boys’ mother is Morgause, daughter of Igraine by the Earl of Cornwall. . . . I need to draw diagrams, don’t I.
Well. Morgause is Arthur’s half-sister, that’s the most important thing anyway.
What this book basically does is set Arthur’s downfall. Arthur thinks a lot about “Might vs Right” here, and decides that he’ll win the battle that’s currently going on and establish an order of chivalry that uses Might for Right: instead of using Might because one could use it, it should be used as it ought to be used.
They talk about round tables and knights.
In the meantime, Sir Pellinore, Sir Palomides and Sir Grummore Grummursum have some pretty crazy adventures which involve the Questing Beast. Which made me laugh. Really.
Arthur wins the battle. Morgause seduces Arthur, and later she has a baby named Mordred, who will be the cause of Arthur’s downfall.
And I’m probably missing the point completely, but driving home the fact that it was because of incest that Arthur came to ruin makes me uncomfortable. I guess it’s not condemning the act of incest that makes me uncomfortable, it’s the way that Mordred seems to be immediately given up on that made me go, uh, what? Whatever it was, the child was innocent, however he was conceived. I think it ruffles my feathers because it seems to be insisting that, “Oh, it was adultery and incest, no good will come out of the child”, as if he was to blame, even before he was born, and there was nothing anyone could do about it. Of course, Mordred had an evil mother who wanted revenge and that’s probably why he became who he became, but. Argh. Never mind me.
. . . A good thing I never had to analyse any of this for English, I suppose. XD
Despite what Arthur will do later, I still can’t dislike him. He means well, in his slightly fumbling, bumbling way, and he’s bright-eyed with optimism, and a little too innocent and simple. He was brought up by Sir Ector, a kindly man, and his tutor, Merlyn, wanted him to believe in the decency of people. He couldn’t believe that people could really be evil, perhaps. Strange how it’s kindness that will bring him down.
The Ill-Made Knight
“I thought, in the night time, perhaps it was aiming too high. If people reach perfection they vanish, you know. It may mean the end of the Table. Supposing somebody were to find God?”
This is the story of Sir Lancelot, the greatest knight Camelot has ever known. No dashing knight in shining armour here — no one in the books is as ugly as Sir Lancelot. He decided, as a young boy, that he would serve Arthur and be the best knight the king ever had. He becomes Arthur’s best friend (“Lance”, as Arthur affectionately calls him, even when Lancelot was a young boy), and falls in love with Arthur’s wife, Guenever. There’s a fair bit about the quests Lancelot goes on, and a bit more about the quest for the holy grail, but this book centres mostly on the romance between Lancelot and Guenever.
Arthur’s kindness killed me in this book. He doesn’t see what his Gwen and Lance are doing, simply because he doesn’t want to. He could’ve known about their affair if he had wanted to, but he just didn’t. Arthur is so kind to his nephews (and Mordred) as he tries to right things that couldn’t possibly be righted.
Lancelot is a strange guy. He keeps thinking that there’s something wrong with him. He goes in search for god. He wants to perform miracles. His relationship his son, Galahad, and Galahad’s mother, Elaine, is as perfectly strange as well. He probably loves Arthur and Guenever equally, but he could never find the right moment to tell his king his secret.
The little things — Lancelot calling the queen “Jenny” and she calls him “Lance” (and how Arthur manages to turn a blind eye to these pet names makes me go, almost despairingly, “Oh, you poor man!”), like how absurdly naive Lancelot could be at times and how vindictive Guenever acts make the characters more real. They’re not just king and queen and knight, and I feel sorry for them, at how hard they try and how they overcome their trials. And also how, sometimes, they do not.
The Candle in the Wind
“And then,” said Lancelot cheerfully, “you were brought back to court when your father died, and pulled a magic sword out of a stone, which proved you were the rightful King born of all England and lived happily ever afterward, and that was the end of that. I don’t call it a bad story.”
“Unfortunately that was not the end.”
Mordred’s hatred for his father and Agravaine’s hatred for Lancelot brings the downfall of Camelot. Mordred’s determined to prove to Arthur Lancelot and Guenever’s affair, despite Gawaine’s warnings that they were to do no such thing. Mordred’s half-brother Agravaine is in with him in this plot, though Gaheris and Gareth are also unwilling to be part of their plans. They actually inform Arthur of their plot, and because of the code of justice he himself had introduced, Arthur could not say no.
Arthur tries to warn Guenever and Lancelot — and even Gareth, who practically hero-worships Lancelot, asks Lancelot to not visit the queen, but he is ignored by Lancelot — but unfortunately they don’t listen. Guenever and Lancelot are caught in the act, and Lancelot escapes, but the queen is to burn at the stake. Everyone knows that Lancelot will try to rescue her. Poor Arthur, at this point, has to be just, so he puts his best knights to guard Guenever’s sentencing, and when Lancelot comes, of course he manages to rescue her.
Lancelot slew a few of the knights in his rage, Gareth and Gaheris included. Agravaine died the night he and Mordred tried to catch Lancelot in the act, and Mordred is alive only because Arthur had asked Lancelot to spare him. I feel sorry for Mordred. He’s . . . well, mad would be a good word for it, and he could be as cunning as hell, and he’s so determined to get even with Arthur, even though the king had shown him nothing but kindness. (Morgause was one completely evil lady. She twisted her children, Mordred more than the others, and I’m surprised Gareth grew up gentle and, as little as we saw of him in the books, sane.)
Gawaine wants revenge; he has none of his brothers except Mordred left, and he was particularly fond of Gareth. Arthur could not say no, so they go off to fight Lancelot. Guenever is forgiven, thanks to some complexity that had to do with the church (sorry, I lost interest somewhere there) and Mordred is in charge. What else for him to do other than to take over all England? Yeah, so he does that, and Arthur comes back, ponders about a lot of things, and then, well, the book ends.
It wasn’t a bad ending, really.
There were parts in this book that I went back and re-read when I finished. Gawaine and Arthur watching Guenever’s recue. (I admit it, I cheered.) Arthur and Mordred together, or Arthur with Gawaine or any of his other nephews. Gawaine’s letter to Lancelot; Guenever and her maid, Agnes, talking while the king was away, and despite being a rather dark tale, some of the morbid humour shone through.
.
The Once and Future King is one of those strange books where I liked most of the characters, horribly flawed as they are. (I did not care much for Agravaine for some reason.) I even felt sympathetic towards Mordred — seriously, my reaction towards him in other books/media was always “Arrrgggggghhhhh! Evil!!!1!” It also painted Guenever as a more sympathetic figure (no “Argh! Whore!” reaction from me from this book, XD), and Arthur in a completely different light altogether — just a man trying to do the right thing.
This won’t make it into my favourites if only because some parts went on and on and on, and it was really hard trying to reach for a dictionary while I was reading the book. Too many words I didn’t know, oh noes, XD.
I’m done. Finally. Goodness, this is long. More plot rehashing than actual thoughts, but there you go.
