Le Morte d’Arthur, book III

[osprey_archer]

Bopping along in Le Morte d’Arthur! In book 3, we have Arthur and Guenever’s wedding… which is instantly interrupted when a hart is chased through the hall by a brachet, who is chased by a lady, who is kidnapped by a knight!

So Arthur pauses his wedding feast to send out three knights to follow three quests: the quest of the hart, the quest of the brachet, and the quest of the lady who has been kidnapped by a knight. The rest of the book is more or less about these quests, because Malory is basically not interested in women and couldn’t care less a) how Guenever feels about marrying Arthur, b) how Sir Tor’s mother the milkmaid feels about being raped by King Pellinore all those years ago (“half by force he had my maidenhead,” she notes, and everyone’s just like mmm yes that explains why your oldest son is so knightly…blood always tells), or c) why a lady might scream when kidnapped by some random knight. “When she was gone the king was glad, for she made such a noise,” Malory notes.

(By the way, the lady turns out to be Nimue, the new Lady of the Lake, as Balin beheaded the original Lady of the Lake in book 2. By the end of book 3, Nimue has imprisoned Merlin in a tree, because he just will not stop pestering her to have sex with him.)

I can see why this book spawned so many feminist retellings. There is simply a LOT to be picked over here.

The other continuing theme is Malory’s hateboner for Gawain, who kicks off the book yearning to murder King Pellinore in a blood feud, never mind the fact that it will ruin King Arthur’s wedding feast. (His brother Gaheris restrains him by pouting that if Gawain kills Pellinore now, before Gaheris is knighted, Gaheris won’t get to help!) On the quest of the hart, he cruelly refuses to grant a knight mercy after a knight yields to him, then accidentally cuts off a lady’s head when she dives in front of her lord to protect him with her body. Then he takes the beheaded lady back to Camelot and everyone scolds him for being the worst knight ever and Guenever tasks him to be the knight assigned to look after ladies forever more.

Comments

[rachelmanija]

Rapist Sir Pellinore is very surreal when your first exposure to him is The Once and Future King.

[osprey_archer]

RIGHT? Malory's Sir Pellinore is kind of a jerk overall - the first time we meet him, he steals Arthur's horse! - fascinating how White turned this man into a bumbling dodderer endlessly drifting after a Questing Beast.

[rachelmanija]

An incredibly likable bumbling dodderer!

[sovay]

An incredibly likable bumbling dodderer!

I think he picked up a lot from Lewis Carroll's White Knight.

[troisoiseaux]

...hoo boy. Just, all of this. HOO BOY.

[osprey_archer]

I knew that Malory would be A Lot but somehow I didn't expect it to be This Much.

[troisoiseaux]

Separate from Everything Else, I am amused/confused that the brachet and the hart count as different quests when, presumably, the one is chasing the other? I like to imagine whatever two knights are assigned to those respective quests have the classic "you've already said goodbye and it turns out you're heading in the same direction" awkward moment.

[asakiyume]

Hahahaha, so true. Conservation of Quests really would indicate that one quest here would have been enough.

[sholio]

“When she was gone the king was glad, for she made such a noise,” Malory notes.

.... yes, definitely the worst part of an abduction, all that screaming. So inconsiderate to bystanders!

[osprey_archer]

It's Arthur's wedding, HIS special day, and here is this lady making it ALL ABOUT HER and how SHE is being abducted. So inconsiderate!

[the_future_modernes]

*blink* *blink* *blinkblink*

where do we even start?

[osprey_archer]

There's a LOT going on here, okay. People have written full novels based on this one book of Malory!

[skygiants]

I can't believe you forgot to mention that Malory makes a point of how much Gawain loves his dogs though!

[osprey_archer]

It's TRUE. But given that he follows it up with "Gawain refuses to grant mercy to a guy who killed one of Gawain's dogs," I'm not sure Malory wants us to see it as a good thing. "Loves his dogs but unable to love PEOPLE" may be what he's going for here.

[asakiyume]

So, curious: is the wedding feast happening outdoors, or do these interlopers just happen to run through a castle hall?

Then he takes the beheaded lady back to Camelot and everyone scolds him for being the worst knight ever and Guenever tasks him to be the knight assigned to look after ladies forever more. --When someone's Knightly Improvement is more important than the welfare of everyone around them.

[osprey_archer]

Malory is often not big on descriptions but I believe they're in the castle hall when all the interlopers run through. Lax security at the castle gates, clearly!

[asakiyume]

Kidnapper's thought balloon: "I KNOW, I will gallop through this castle hall w/this lady I've just grabbed, so everyone can see what a badass I am--this will definitely not backfire on me at all."

Lady: "Help! Help! Help! I'm being kidnapped! Help! Help! Rescue me, pleeese! Help!"

Arthur: OMG would you just. SHUT UP. Fine, I'll dispatch a quest to rescue you but couldn't you just tone it down?

[osprey_archer]

The kidnapper hasn't even kidnapped her yet when he goes into the hall! She's standing there yelling about her brachet, and he's like, "I think I'm gonna kidnap her, right here in front of every single one of the knights of the Round Table." BUDDY. Surely you knew that this would end in someone riding out in quest against you!

[littlerhymes]

Put all of them in trees tbh LOL

[osprey_archer]

I'm sure there are days when Nimue has considered it.

[asakiyume]

Seriously. The Oprah car gif, only with trees. "You get a tree, and you get a tree, and you get a tree. Trees for everyone!"

[littlerhymes]

Trees for everyone! I see no downsides!