osprey_archer | Book Review: Exiled from Camelot

skygiants’ reviews are always great, and her review of Cherith Baldry’s Exiled from Camelot is one of the most hilarious of many amazing reviews.

ARTHUR: I want to officially make Loholt my heir. Kay, draw up the legal papers. I know you don't like him --
KAY: Yes, well, he did try to kill me that one time, for no reason.
ARTHUR: -- but otherwise he's a good kid and I love him more than I love you and you need to get over it.
KAY: :(

(Arthur in this fic, by the way, will be playing the role of The Asshole Who Doesn't Love Kay The Way He Deserves And Must Be Proven Wrong Through Kay's Absence And Extensive Suffering.)

Well, I finally read the book, and I am DELIGHTED to inform you that it is exactly the kind of OTT tragic woobie fic that the review led me to expect, only somehow even moreso. I strongly suspect that Baldry read Phyllis Ann Karr’s The Idylls of the Queen and said “what if exactly like this but also WAY more focus on how Kay is UNDERAPPRECIATED and MISTREATED” (also a much softer focus on Kay’s own flaws).

This suspicion is fostered by the fact that Baldry seems to have borrowed Kay’s crush on Guenevere wholesale from Karr, right down to their habit of playing chess together (unless that’s just a general Kay & Guenevere thing?). Also, Baldry thanks Karr in the acknowledgements.

Our hero is Kay, King Arthur’s Tragically Underappreciated Seneschal, a top notch organizer in a culture that values military prowess highly and organizational ability not at all. Arthur himself is the Underappreciater-in-Chief. Although they grew up as foster brothers, Arthur has come to take Kay for granted - so much for granted that when Arthur’s newly-discovered illegitimate son Loholt tries to kill Kay, Arthur doesn’t care. In fact, the whole court, including Kay’s BFF Gawain, seem to be on Team “Haven’t you gotten over Loholt’s attempt to murder you yet, Kay?”

After a battle goes south, Arthur orders Kay to escort Loholt to safety through the lines. Loholt takes advantage of this opportunity to kidnap and torture Kay. When Kay escapes, he accidentally kills Loholt, then makes his battered, bleeding, traumatized way back to Arthur’s temporary court at Carlisle. Concerned that Arthur won’t believe that his beloved son Loholt is a kidnapper and a torturer (or, worse, that he just won’t care, any more than he cared about the whole attempted murder thing), Kay only tells Arthur that Loholt is dead. Enraged, Arthur orders Kay out of his sight, and Kay faints at his feet.

Kay accepts all of this with the adoring misery of an unloved puppy. He loves Arthur so much! And Arthur has long since ceased to love him at all. “I don’t think he holds me in his heart,” Kay whispers to Gawain, who is tenderly bathing Kay’s wounds in his rooms.

But worse is in store! A prioress shows up at court, holding a box that can only be opened by the knight who murdered the man whose head lies inside. The head is, of course, Loholt’s, and Kay’s touch opens the box, at which point Kay is… EXILED FROM CAMELOT!

Etc. etc., if you want the summary of the rest of the book you can read

skygiants review. SUFFICE IT TO SAY that Kay suffers a GREAT DEAL MORE, not least when a foul enchantress mocks him with an illusion of Arthur saying, “Kay, I need you!” Meanwhile Arthur’s court, deprived of its seneschal, is at sixes and sevens, and Kay’s fanclub (chiefly Gawain and his little brother Gareth) often meet to wistfully discuss how much they miss Kay. At one point Gareth claims that working for a year in Kay’s kitchen taught him more about knighthood than all of Lancelot’s lessons.

After nearly dying yet again, Kay heroically saves them all, faints at Arthur’s feet for a second time, and wakes up in Arthur’s room, where Arthur tells Kay that everything that has happened was Arthur’s fault for failing to appreciate Kay, but now Arthur has realized how much he loves and needs Kay. Would Kay please come back to fill the position of seneschal, as the kingdom is falling apart without him?

Only a stone could remain unmoved by such a thorough grovel. Kay, deeply moved, agrees. Kay and Arthur reconcile, and Kay plans a feast. Happy end!

***

After I finished Exiled from Camelot,

littlerhymes let slip that Cherith Baldry is one of the ghostwriters behind the Warrior Cats series, which are about rival clans of feral cats who war ceaselessly over territory!

So, basically, Arthuriana where the knights are feral cats. This finally tipped me over the edge into trying Warrior Cats, which I have long meant to do, but alas the vast cast of warrior cats defeated me: I’m just too old to make that kind of upfront investment in the lore. However, I feel that “feral cat Arthuriana” is exactly where Cherith Baldry wanted and deserved to end up, and I hope she got to write wounded woobie cat h/c to her heart’s content.