The Once and Future Sorcerer
Sep. 10th, 2015 07:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dhampyresaAlright everybody settle down, it's story time! I'm going to talk to you about the Arthurian legend as I know it in the hope of making you see how wrong on the internet you are.
But first, some context: my first memory of anything Arthuriana related is being wee (let's say six years old or so) and reading a book. I'm pretty sure the book was La Forêt aux 100 sortilèges or at the very least another from that line of illustrated choose-your-own-adventure books. I was reading the book and I stopped. I carried the book all the way to where my mother was, taking care not to lose my place.
The book was wrong.
On the double-page spread, one I can still see in my mind, the choice you had to make was how to save an emprisonned knight of the round table. So far, so good, right? No, because Morgane had put him there and that simply couldn't be right. I mean, water is wet, fire burns, Morgane is good, everyone knows that.
So I asked what was wrong with the book, why was Morgane evil in it? "Sometimes, in books, Morgane is evil."
That was the moment I started paying attention to Arthurian legend(s).
What's interesting to me, though, is that I have absolutely no recollection of ever learning about Morgane, Viviane and Merlin before this incident -- it was just of those immutable facts of the universe that you just know. Because of this, there are moments in what I'm going to retell where I could tell you who told me (my uncle, my grandma, my great-uncle, that one dude from [town on the other side of Brittany where they get the story wrong]...), but mostly I can't, so you'll just have to take my word for it that that's how the story goes.
(I don't know if you've ever tried to build a narrative out of oral tradition, but it's hard and I'm no Elias Lönnrot. Also, I translating from French and breton French at that, so cut me some slack. Seams are gonna show.)
So!
Our story starts a long, long time ago, in the Monts d'Arrée, right in the heart of Brittany. In the marshes of Yeun Elez was a gate to Hell. It's quiet hard to see now, because they built a nuclear power plant on it, but it's still there.
The Devil came walking out of Hell and set about the roads of Brittany.
(Here, I should point out that I'm using "Devil" as a short-hand. He's not the Devil in all the versions I know -- and the breton Devil is pretty far from pop-culture Satan to begin with -- because sometimes he's a forest spirit or an ancient god or all of the above. Sometimes he's even a mortal man.)
Long story short: the Devil fathers Merlin. There's at least one version of the story I know in which he does this explicitly to create an Antechrist. (There's also one version where Merlin ages backwards, btw.)
Until the age of seven, Merlin is brought by his mother and this dude named Blaise who is either the village priest and/or part-man, part-wolf. The fact that he's a werewolf (Bleiz means wolf in breton) has absolutely zero bearing on his actions, not now, not after when he's chronicling Merlin's life. He's just, randomly, a werewolf.
Meanwhile, elsewhere, King Vortigern is being a douchebag, as is his wont. (Okay, y'all are supposed to scream in fear -- "waaah!" -- when I say his name, because fuck the neighbours.)
Vortigern"waaah!" is trying to build the biggest, greatest, bestest tower the world has ever seen, but it keeps crashing down, so he goes to see the druids. The druids grab a raven -- a white one, none of those crappy black ones everyone's got -- and tell Vortigern that he needs to mix the blood of a seven year old child born without a father to the mortar so the tower can stand.
When Vortigern asks where he can find such a child, the druids grab another raven -- because druids just have ravens on hand for sacrifice 24/7, obvs -- and tell him. Vortigern sends some men to the place.
On the way, Vortigern's men meet this kid who's like "'Sup? You, like, the folks Vortigern sent for the fatherless child for, like, sacrifice? Totes awesome, I'm, like, he.". Off they go back to Vortigern.
Once there, Merlin staves off his impending sacrifice by telling Vortigern to dig a hole in the ground in which they find two dragons, one red, one white, who fight to the death.Merlin does a little speech on how this symbolises the coming fight between Vortigern and Uther Pendragon, in which they will both die and omg shut up Merlin, nobody likes a show-off.
This is where the timeline goes wonky as all get out, because Vortigern is also Uther's grandfather and the fight between the two happens within the week and yet Uther manages to father Arthur and have him be born before he dies and basically I'm not entirely sure I can make this part of the timeline make sense.
Anyway, Uther goes to rest at Tintagel, where he falls madly in lust with Ygraine, convinces Merlin (who is no longer seven years old, because see above re: timeline not making sense) to disguise him as Ygraine's husband so he can sleep with her before she learns her husband died in the battle against Vortigern, because Uther Pendragon is a stand-up dude! And so's Merlin.
(This is the part where I point out that Ygraine is potentially Merlin's daughter, if the above wasn't creepy enough for you. MERLIN'S A++ PARENTING, everybody.)
Then Merlin magically prevents Ygraine from killing herself while she's pregnant with Arthur, but doesn't stop her once the baby's born. Her daughter, Morgane, is there when Ygraine throws herself the battlements of Tintagel. It's for this reason that I tend to be of the Viviane taught Morgane magic school of thought, instead of the Merlin taught Morgane magic school of thought.
Viviane, by the way, is the Lady of the Lake and busy raising Lancelot, son of Ban of Benoïc, from a baby to age eighteen. Long story. (Am I the only one who wants to read about the adventures and shenanigans of wee!Lancelot and wee!Morgane?) She's also distributing swords like that's any basis for a system of government.
(Short addendum to the above on DW and on LJ.)
There's a lot of different versions of the relationship between Merlin and Viviane -- that they're lovers, that she's Ygraine's mother, that they don't know each other, that he taught her magic, that she taught him magic, etc...
I'm going to skip right over everything involving Arthur, because quite frankly nobody in my family have the singlest fuck to give about Arthur, and land us back in this tale right after the death of Arthur.
Arthur's dead, Gwenevere reigns supreme. The King is dead, long live the Queen!
Morgane carries Arthur's utterly dead body to Avalon, so he can be buried with all the honours due to a king of his stature.
Viviane gets her sword back in the following way: While Arthur is dying, he gives the sword to one of his knights and tell him to throw it in the lake. The knight can bear to do it and tells Arthur he did. When Arthur asks what happens, the knight just says it went "plouf!", so Arthur sends him back to the lake. This time, the knight -- who still hasn't thrown the sword into the lake -- says it went "PLOUF!". Arthur sends him back again, the knight really does throw the sword and a hand shoots out of the lake to catch it before it goes plouf. The knight comes back to Arthur, tells him this and Arthur dies. In most of the versions I know, the knight in question is Mordred. (In one version, it's Mordred and a random knight having this conversation after Arthur's death.)
Then Viviane (or Morgane, or both) trap Merlin into the not-entirely-appropriately named Tombeau de Merlin (Grave of Merlin), because Merlin has basically engineered this entire war and Camlann thing, not to mention he's a stand-up dude. In some versions he's also been having uncontrollable rages too, because there is always, always, even in the stories that are most sympathetic to him, something fundamentally wrong about Merlin. (There are also versions of the story where he begs Viviane/asks Morgane to trap him in the rock, so that he'll stop being a danger to everyone.)
You can actually visit the Tombeau de Merlin in Brocéliande forest if you want and even leave a wish for him to grant when he wakes up, but I'd advise against it.
Because, see, in the breton version of the myth, it's not Arthur who comes back, it's bloody Merlin and I don't think that's a trade-up.
Okay, that should cover most of it, I think. (Also the Fisher King/le roi pecheur is Perceval's grandfather.)
But first, some context: my first memory of anything Arthuriana related is being wee (let's say six years old or so) and reading a book. I'm pretty sure the book was La Forêt aux 100 sortilèges or at the very least another from that line of illustrated choose-your-own-adventure books. I was reading the book and I stopped. I carried the book all the way to where my mother was, taking care not to lose my place.
The book was wrong.
On the double-page spread, one I can still see in my mind, the choice you had to make was how to save an emprisonned knight of the round table. So far, so good, right? No, because Morgane had put him there and that simply couldn't be right. I mean, water is wet, fire burns, Morgane is good, everyone knows that.
So I asked what was wrong with the book, why was Morgane evil in it? "Sometimes, in books, Morgane is evil."
That was the moment I started paying attention to Arthurian legend(s).
What's interesting to me, though, is that I have absolutely no recollection of ever learning about Morgane, Viviane and Merlin before this incident -- it was just of those immutable facts of the universe that you just know. Because of this, there are moments in what I'm going to retell where I could tell you who told me (my uncle, my grandma, my great-uncle, that one dude from [town on the other side of Brittany where they get the story wrong]...), but mostly I can't, so you'll just have to take my word for it that that's how the story goes.
(I don't know if you've ever tried to build a narrative out of oral tradition, but it's hard and I'm no Elias Lönnrot. Also, I translating from French and breton French at that, so cut me some slack. Seams are gonna show.)
So!
Our story starts a long, long time ago, in the Monts d'Arrée, right in the heart of Brittany. In the marshes of Yeun Elez was a gate to Hell. It's quiet hard to see now, because they built a nuclear power plant on it, but it's still there.
The Devil came walking out of Hell and set about the roads of Brittany.
(Here, I should point out that I'm using "Devil" as a short-hand. He's not the Devil in all the versions I know -- and the breton Devil is pretty far from pop-culture Satan to begin with -- because sometimes he's a forest spirit or an ancient god or all of the above. Sometimes he's even a mortal man.)
Long story short: the Devil fathers Merlin. There's at least one version of the story I know in which he does this explicitly to create an Antechrist. (There's also one version where Merlin ages backwards, btw.)
Until the age of seven, Merlin is brought by his mother and this dude named Blaise who is either the village priest and/or part-man, part-wolf. The fact that he's a werewolf (Bleiz means wolf in breton) has absolutely zero bearing on his actions, not now, not after when he's chronicling Merlin's life. He's just, randomly, a werewolf.
Meanwhile, elsewhere, King Vortigern is being a douchebag, as is his wont. (Okay, y'all are supposed to scream in fear -- "waaah!" -- when I say his name, because fuck the neighbours.)
Vortigern
When Vortigern asks where he can find such a child, the druids grab another raven -- because druids just have ravens on hand for sacrifice 24/7, obvs -- and tell him. Vortigern sends some men to the place.
On the way, Vortigern's men meet this kid who's like "'Sup? You, like, the folks Vortigern sent for the fatherless child for, like, sacrifice? Totes awesome, I'm, like, he.". Off they go back to Vortigern.
Once there, Merlin staves off his impending sacrifice by telling Vortigern to dig a hole in the ground in which they find two dragons, one red, one white, who fight to the death.Merlin does a little speech on how this symbolises the coming fight between Vortigern and Uther Pendragon, in which they will both die and omg shut up Merlin, nobody likes a show-off.
This is where the timeline goes wonky as all get out, because Vortigern is also Uther's grandfather and the fight between the two happens within the week and yet Uther manages to father Arthur and have him be born before he dies and basically I'm not entirely sure I can make this part of the timeline make sense.
Anyway, Uther goes to rest at Tintagel, where he falls madly in lust with Ygraine, convinces Merlin (who is no longer seven years old, because see above re: timeline not making sense) to disguise him as Ygraine's husband so he can sleep with her before she learns her husband died in the battle against Vortigern, because Uther Pendragon is a stand-up dude! And so's Merlin.
(This is the part where I point out that Ygraine is potentially Merlin's daughter, if the above wasn't creepy enough for you. MERLIN'S A++ PARENTING, everybody.)
Then Merlin magically prevents Ygraine from killing herself while she's pregnant with Arthur, but doesn't stop her once the baby's born. Her daughter, Morgane, is there when Ygraine throws herself the battlements of Tintagel. It's for this reason that I tend to be of the Viviane taught Morgane magic school of thought, instead of the Merlin taught Morgane magic school of thought.
Viviane, by the way, is the Lady of the Lake and busy raising Lancelot, son of Ban of Benoïc, from a baby to age eighteen. Long story. (Am I the only one who wants to read about the adventures and shenanigans of wee!Lancelot and wee!Morgane?) She's also distributing swords like that's any basis for a system of government.
(Short addendum to the above on DW and on LJ.)
There's a lot of different versions of the relationship between Merlin and Viviane -- that they're lovers, that she's Ygraine's mother, that they don't know each other, that he taught her magic, that she taught him magic, etc...
I'm going to skip right over everything involving Arthur, because quite frankly nobody in my family have the singlest fuck to give about Arthur, and land us back in this tale right after the death of Arthur.
Arthur's dead, Gwenevere reigns supreme. The King is dead, long live the Queen!
Morgane carries Arthur's utterly dead body to Avalon, so he can be buried with all the honours due to a king of his stature.
Viviane gets her sword back in the following way: While Arthur is dying, he gives the sword to one of his knights and tell him to throw it in the lake. The knight can bear to do it and tells Arthur he did. When Arthur asks what happens, the knight just says it went "plouf!", so Arthur sends him back to the lake. This time, the knight -- who still hasn't thrown the sword into the lake -- says it went "PLOUF!". Arthur sends him back again, the knight really does throw the sword and a hand shoots out of the lake to catch it before it goes plouf. The knight comes back to Arthur, tells him this and Arthur dies. In most of the versions I know, the knight in question is Mordred. (In one version, it's Mordred and a random knight having this conversation after Arthur's death.)
Then Viviane (or Morgane, or both) trap Merlin into the not-entirely-appropriately named Tombeau de Merlin (Grave of Merlin), because Merlin has basically engineered this entire war and Camlann thing, not to mention he's a stand-up dude. In some versions he's also been having uncontrollable rages too, because there is always, always, even in the stories that are most sympathetic to him, something fundamentally wrong about Merlin. (There are also versions of the story where he begs Viviane/asks Morgane to trap him in the rock, so that he'll stop being a danger to everyone.)
You can actually visit the Tombeau de Merlin in Brocéliande forest if you want and even leave a wish for him to grant when he wakes up, but I'd advise against it.
Because, see, in the breton version of the myth, it's not Arthur who comes back, it's bloody Merlin and I don't think that's a trade-up.
Okay, that should cover most of it, I think. (Also the Fisher King/le roi pecheur is Perceval's grandfather.)
(no subject)
Date: 2015-09-11 03:54 am (UTC)[/bookmarks] :)
(no subject)
Date: 2015-09-11 03:25 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-09-12 02:35 am (UTC)I will confess: part of the reason I like this tale so much is because it is so different from the "general Arthurian narrative" that I had originally known (which was a condensed/simplified take on Malory's version), also it does not have Lancelot (I can't STAND that guy), and I don't remember Merlin being in it either, and also it has the coolest take on Cei/Sir Kay/whatever that I have ever read. He has so much personality in this story, and it left such an impression on me, he's been my favourite Arthurian Dude ever since.
And also I am exhausted and haven't re-read it in a while, which should be remedied immediately, so I can't express efficiently just how awesome this story is, I'm sorry. ;p
tl;dr I like Welsh Arthurian stories. Yes. Even if I find a lot of the names... tricky.
(no subject)
Date: 2015-09-14 03:01 am (UTC)SAME HERE. Worst French export ever, and that's counting the Citroen C-Elysee.
If you have a liking for Cei/Kay but not Lancelot and want to try an Arthurian novel, you might enjoy The Idylls of the Queen by Phillys Ann Karr. It's an Arthurian whodunnit adapted from one of the tales, featuring a jaded Sir Kay solving a murder with Mordred at his side.
(no subject)
Date: 2015-09-14 03:06 am (UTC)Also... oh man, thank you for that rec, it sounds like something I must read immediately. The name sounds vaguely familiar, so I must have seen it mentioned somewhere, but I had no idea it was about that! (Sir Kay + crime plot = two of my favourite things, ahhhhhh)
(no subject)
Date: 2015-09-14 09:00 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-09-14 12:57 pm (UTC)The Idylls of the Queen sounds great (you had me at Mordred) and it's so far up yuuago's alley I suspect you're psychic.
(no subject)
Date: 2015-09-14 04:33 pm (UTC)I loved Mordred in Idylls, morose, cynical, despairing, yet also dependable when it counts. He and Kay going around scheming and solving crime was like a buddy cop flick about the most misanthropic, jaded cops ever. These two stick together at least in part--in large part, IMO--because no one else can stand their company. They do, however, manage to overcome their jadedness long enough to beat the snot out of each other at one point because of course.
Morgan is a grey-ish character in this. Her shenanigans from the standard British tellings are part of the timeline, but she puts up a "spirited defense" for her actions, to quote the words of one reviewer. You can judge for yourself how well that works, but it is an interesting take on her character and she plays a huge role in the story.
(no subject)
Date: 2015-09-15 01:00 pm (UTC)That sounds good to me! *adds to to-read list*
(no subject)
Date: 2015-09-14 12:44 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-09-14 02:00 pm (UTC)And then I went "fuck you, how about no".
Um.
This probably makes more sense if I state the path I took: Sword in the Stone (no Launcelot! Lots of Arthur and Kay!) -> The Mabinogion with special attention to Culhwch and Olwen (no Launcelot! Lots of Arthur and Kay! Peredur is also awesome!) -> Malory's Morte dArthur (Arthur is awesome, Kay is less awesome but still cool, and apparently Arthur went to war against Rome, wat - hold on, who is this Lancelot guy, why is he suddenly everywhere, ugh get away, can we talk about Bedivere or somebody else instead please)
Soooo there is that.
AND THEN there is the whole thing where Guinevere's story is tied up with Lancelot's. And I was like, I like Guinevere! I don't like this other guy! Can I have more Guinevere with less Lancelot please!
AND SO
That is how apathy and mild annoyance gradually stewed until it became a bit of a hateboner. Um.
(no subject)
Date: 2015-09-14 04:39 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-09-14 04:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-09-15 01:20 pm (UTC)I mean, he has literaly only ever met one person in his entire life (two, if we're talking about the versions where Morgane went to study with Viviane) so he has NO IDEA how to relate to people who are not terrifying sorceresses of awesome power.
(no subject)
Date: 2015-09-15 01:49 pm (UTC)wat
... Okay, yeah, I think I'd like Breton!Lancelot a lot more. When you put it that way.
(no subject)
Date: 2015-09-16 12:39 pm (UTC)However, in Walton's version of Britain, there is (essentially) complete gender equality, and it's told from the point of view of a woman who is the Arthur figure's war leader. Weirdly, it's as if she's the Lancelot figure, but without the love triangle stuff (in part because she's asexual). The series also emphasises the crucial importance of non-military work, particularly quartermasters, networks of messengers, and women who maintain castles and act as diplomats. Although there's a lot of supernatural stuff going on, it also celebrates the work of ordinary people who make the land safe for ordinary, day to day activities, and the more elevated political and military leaders who recognise the crucial importance of this work.
There is one spoiler in the first chapter that I'd probably want to warn you about if you did intend to read the series, so let me know if it sounds interesting to you and I'll explain what I mean.
(no subject)
Date: 2015-09-16 01:57 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-09-16 03:24 pm (UTC)The detail I mentioned is that there is a rape in the first chapter of the first book. I feel it's not gratuitous, and the actual details are not described (although it's clear that that's what's going on), but it's something I feel I should warn about. You can then make up your own mind about whether you want to read the series.
(I normally wouldn't list spoilers for a work of fiction, but this is something I think people need to know about going in.)
(no subject)
Date: 2015-09-16 03:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-09-17 03:28 pm (UTC)