Book Review: The Winter Prince
Jul. 28th, 2022 07:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerI was warned for the even-more-than-Arthurian-typical levels of incest in Elizabeth Wein’s The Winter Prince, but I was not warned for the sheer balls-to-the-wall level of iddiness in this book, possibly because mere words cannot do justice to the level of whump, hurt-comfort, and deeply fucked-up longing. I rarely see this kind of idsplosion outside of fanfic (possibly publishers don’t usually have the guts for it) and I am HERE for it.
So. Our narrator is Medraut (Mordred), and the book is a letter that he is writing to his godmother Morgause, who is actually his mother, as readers familiar to Arthuriana will quickly guess. After years abroad traveling, followed by a two-year stay with his godmother that has left him with a crippled hand and screaming nightmares, Medraut goes to stay with his uncle/father and his cousins/half-siblings, the twins Lleu and Goewin.
Swiftly Medraut develops a love-hate relationship with the twins, especially Lleu, about whose ~dark, fragile beauty~ Medraut raves at the drop of a hat. He loves them more or less against his better judgment, because they are fun and funny and he enjoys spending time with them, and most of all because they love and trust him and he can’t help responding. And yet he hates them, too, and it comes out in vicious little ways that can yet be explained away, like drugging Lleu to sleep when he is sick and needs to sleep, but doesn’t want to be drugged. It’s for Lleu's own good… and yet it’s also a display of Medraut's power.
Medraut loves and hates Lleu, in particular: cannot help loving Lleu, constantly mentions Lleu’s ~dark, fragile beauty~, and takes great pains to use his healing knowledge to make Lleu strong. But he hates Lleu, too, because Lleu is the boy and therefore stands to inherit the throne, which could have been Mordred’s if he weren’t illegitimate and also the product of incest, which means that not only can he never be legitimated, but his true parentage can never be revealed at all.
Only one night, furious at Medraut, Lleu spills the beans in front of Medraut’s other set of cousins/half-brothers, Gawain (here, Gwalchmai) and the rest… who are particularly alarmed by this news, because Medraut was definitely sleeping with their mother during that two-year stint that left him screaming nightmares. Yes, there is mother-son incest to go with the brother-sister incest and the “we’re not actually going to commit incest, but we’re sure going to have some sexual tension” between Medraut and Lleu.
This culminates in Medraut kidnapping Lleu at the behest of Morgause, whom he also loves and hates, or perhaps it would be better to say hates but is still half-enthralled to. Mid-kidnapping, Lleu steals a bow and arrow and holds Medraut at his mercy! But they are in the trackless wastes and only Medraut knows where, so if Lleu actually escaped he would be hopelessly lost! So they have to continue traveling together, Lleu staying awake night after night in order not to be captured again, and of course getting more and more hopelessly punch-drunk.
This culminates in a scene where Medraut tries to steal Lleu’s knife! and Lleu slices Medraut’s hand open getting it away again! and Medraut, enraged, pins Lleu down and threatens to put out his eyes or box his ears so he can never hear again or choke him till the loss of oxygen causes brain damage, and then kisses him on the mouth!
And then Medraut collapses, and confesses (perhaps only now at long last realizes) that he loves Lleu. As his brother? As his king? As a lover he is PROBABLY not actually going to bang but who knows in Arthuriana, man? Perhaps all of the above.
He loves Lleu and will be loyal to Lleu henceforth; and that, he explains to Morgause (for, after all, this book has all been a letter to her - an explanation; a repudiation), is why he will never return to her.
So. Our narrator is Medraut (Mordred), and the book is a letter that he is writing to his godmother Morgause, who is actually his mother, as readers familiar to Arthuriana will quickly guess. After years abroad traveling, followed by a two-year stay with his godmother that has left him with a crippled hand and screaming nightmares, Medraut goes to stay with his uncle/father and his cousins/half-siblings, the twins Lleu and Goewin.
Swiftly Medraut develops a love-hate relationship with the twins, especially Lleu, about whose ~dark, fragile beauty~ Medraut raves at the drop of a hat. He loves them more or less against his better judgment, because they are fun and funny and he enjoys spending time with them, and most of all because they love and trust him and he can’t help responding. And yet he hates them, too, and it comes out in vicious little ways that can yet be explained away, like drugging Lleu to sleep when he is sick and needs to sleep, but doesn’t want to be drugged. It’s for Lleu's own good… and yet it’s also a display of Medraut's power.
Medraut loves and hates Lleu, in particular: cannot help loving Lleu, constantly mentions Lleu’s ~dark, fragile beauty~, and takes great pains to use his healing knowledge to make Lleu strong. But he hates Lleu, too, because Lleu is the boy and therefore stands to inherit the throne, which could have been Mordred’s if he weren’t illegitimate and also the product of incest, which means that not only can he never be legitimated, but his true parentage can never be revealed at all.
Only one night, furious at Medraut, Lleu spills the beans in front of Medraut’s other set of cousins/half-brothers, Gawain (here, Gwalchmai) and the rest… who are particularly alarmed by this news, because Medraut was definitely sleeping with their mother during that two-year stint that left him screaming nightmares. Yes, there is mother-son incest to go with the brother-sister incest and the “we’re not actually going to commit incest, but we’re sure going to have some sexual tension” between Medraut and Lleu.
This culminates in Medraut kidnapping Lleu at the behest of Morgause, whom he also loves and hates, or perhaps it would be better to say hates but is still half-enthralled to. Mid-kidnapping, Lleu steals a bow and arrow and holds Medraut at his mercy! But they are in the trackless wastes and only Medraut knows where, so if Lleu actually escaped he would be hopelessly lost! So they have to continue traveling together, Lleu staying awake night after night in order not to be captured again, and of course getting more and more hopelessly punch-drunk.
This culminates in a scene where Medraut tries to steal Lleu’s knife! and Lleu slices Medraut’s hand open getting it away again! and Medraut, enraged, pins Lleu down and threatens to put out his eyes or box his ears so he can never hear again or choke him till the loss of oxygen causes brain damage, and then kisses him on the mouth!
And then Medraut collapses, and confesses (perhaps only now at long last realizes) that he loves Lleu. As his brother? As his king? As a lover he is PROBABLY not actually going to bang but who knows in Arthuriana, man? Perhaps all of the above.
He loves Lleu and will be loyal to Lleu henceforth; and that, he explains to Morgause (for, after all, this book has all been a letter to her - an explanation; a repudiation), is why he will never return to her.
