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Rosemary Sutcliff’s Arthuriana
Jan. 2nd, 2023 08:47 amGenerally speaking, courtly love makes me roll my eyes, so I’m not a big fan of Tristan and Iseult. However, Rosemary Sutcliff’s Tristan & Iseult is so beautifully told that she actually won me over. In particular, it really worked for me that she got rid of the traditional love potion: here, Tristan and Iseult fall in love off their own bat, and try to resist it because they both love King Mark (“King Mark is a good guy actually!” is also not the standard characterization, but it’s very Sutcliff), but their feelings are too strong for them, and honestly I found that more sympathetic than the usual special pleading of “King Mark sucks and ALSO magic made them do it.”
However, even Rosemary Sutcliff couldn’t make me forgive Tristan for marrying a different Iseult, Iseult of the White Hands, while still in love with Iseult of Cornwall. (Yes, yes, Iseult of Cornwall is also married, but she had no choice in the matter, whereas Tristan could have easily said no!) The fact that he had been sundered from his own true love is no excuse to make another woman miserable!
Spiteful though it was, I have every sympathy for Iseult of the White Hand’s decision to tell the wounded Tristan that the sails on Iseult of Cornwall’s ship were black (meaning that she hadn’t come to nurse his wounds). Tristan forced Iseult of the White Hands to live for years in the miserable certainty that her husband whom she loved didn’t love her, so it’s only poetic justice that he should die in the miserable certainty that the woman he loved didn’t love him. I hope Iseult of the White Hands remarried and danced on Tristan’s grave at the wedding.
***
Speaking of Arthurian legends I struggle with, I also read Rosemary Sutcliff’s The Light Beyond the Forest: The Quest for the Holy Grail, and oh my. This is the second book of Sutcliff’s Arthurian Trilogy, in which she retells Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur largely without putting her own stamp on it, so there is really nothing to dilute the pure Galahad and his Grail Quest of it all.
(The one thing Sutcliff just can’t stand is the bit where Bors refuses to fight his brother Lionel, who wants to kill him, and sits back priggishly and watches while Lionel kills a hermit and a knight who are trying to stop Lionel from killing Bors. In her telling, Lionel whacks Bors on the head, which leaves Bors too dazed to do anything but stare in horror as Lionel murders the hermit and the knight.)
The problem with Galahad is that whoever created him loved him with the unholy love of a fanfic writer whose OC is better at everything than every single character in the original story. Galahad is the son of Lancelot, but a WAY better knight than Lancelot, and about half of the narrative focuses on showing that Lancelot is No Longer the Best Knight in the World and also scolding him for having been proud of being the best knight in the world. The original Grail knight Percival is reduced to Galahad’s adoring follower (Sutcliff loves an adoring follower, so Percival comes across well, but it is a demotion from his earlier role), whereas Gawain is portrayed as a brutish man unworthy even to attempt the Grail quest.
Also there’s a subplot where Percival’s sister gives all her blood to cure a leper lady, and dies beautifully, and then it turns out the leper lady had been bleeding maidens to death left and right until she found one pure enough to cure her. WHY. I’m sure the answer is “medieval Christianity.” But nonetheless WHY. WHY. WHY IS THIS EVEN HAPPENING.
However, even Rosemary Sutcliff couldn’t make me forgive Tristan for marrying a different Iseult, Iseult of the White Hands, while still in love with Iseult of Cornwall. (Yes, yes, Iseult of Cornwall is also married, but she had no choice in the matter, whereas Tristan could have easily said no!) The fact that he had been sundered from his own true love is no excuse to make another woman miserable!
Spiteful though it was, I have every sympathy for Iseult of the White Hand’s decision to tell the wounded Tristan that the sails on Iseult of Cornwall’s ship were black (meaning that she hadn’t come to nurse his wounds). Tristan forced Iseult of the White Hands to live for years in the miserable certainty that her husband whom she loved didn’t love her, so it’s only poetic justice that he should die in the miserable certainty that the woman he loved didn’t love him. I hope Iseult of the White Hands remarried and danced on Tristan’s grave at the wedding.
***
Speaking of Arthurian legends I struggle with, I also read Rosemary Sutcliff’s The Light Beyond the Forest: The Quest for the Holy Grail, and oh my. This is the second book of Sutcliff’s Arthurian Trilogy, in which she retells Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur largely without putting her own stamp on it, so there is really nothing to dilute the pure Galahad and his Grail Quest of it all.
(The one thing Sutcliff just can’t stand is the bit where Bors refuses to fight his brother Lionel, who wants to kill him, and sits back priggishly and watches while Lionel kills a hermit and a knight who are trying to stop Lionel from killing Bors. In her telling, Lionel whacks Bors on the head, which leaves Bors too dazed to do anything but stare in horror as Lionel murders the hermit and the knight.)
The problem with Galahad is that whoever created him loved him with the unholy love of a fanfic writer whose OC is better at everything than every single character in the original story. Galahad is the son of Lancelot, but a WAY better knight than Lancelot, and about half of the narrative focuses on showing that Lancelot is No Longer the Best Knight in the World and also scolding him for having been proud of being the best knight in the world. The original Grail knight Percival is reduced to Galahad’s adoring follower (Sutcliff loves an adoring follower, so Percival comes across well, but it is a demotion from his earlier role), whereas Gawain is portrayed as a brutish man unworthy even to attempt the Grail quest.
Also there’s a subplot where Percival’s sister gives all her blood to cure a leper lady, and dies beautifully, and then it turns out the leper lady had been bleeding maidens to death left and right until she found one pure enough to cure her. WHY. I’m sure the answer is “medieval Christianity.” But nonetheless WHY. WHY. WHY IS THIS EVEN HAPPENING.
