The Mort

The Myth:  King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Camelot! Jousting! Allegory! Romance! Adventure!
The Book: Le Morte d'Arthur
The Author: Sir Thomas Malory
This text: etext of a 1903 edition, edited by A. W. Pollard from Caxton (1485) by way of Wynkyn de Worde.
Price: nothin' (Kindle Free Library)

I started reading Le Morte d'Arthur (or, the Mort, as I took to calling it) shortly after my daughter was born, thinking that it would be nice and comfortable and familiar. It's King Arthur, right? It's like our second-most well-known culture hero. Besides, I'd read it as a kid.

It turned out that I'd not read far as a kid; I hadn't read much past King Pellinore and the Questing Beast, which is half way through book one of eight. There were dozens of knights I'd never even heard of, starting with Sir Balin of the Two Swords. Sir Balin, who we first meet in Camelot's dungeon, is named the best knight of Arthur's court, just before he steals a sword and decapitates the Lady of the Lake.  Of course, the person doing the naming is the Sword Damosel, whose motives and nature are highly suspect, since she's in Camelot with a magical kinslaying sword trying to find someone to murder her brother. If there's one thing that's true in the Mort, it's that damosels is trouble.

"Only a just and true knight can pull this sword from my scabbard, if you know what I mean."
"Lo, I, Sir Balin, have drawn the sword."
"Nice going, champ. Now give it back before you hurt someone."
"What? Perfectly good sword like this? Pff."
"That was a prophecy, you dick. Give it back or you'll regret it."
"Who's going to make me?"
"I should have gone to France."

So, yeah, there's a lot of the Arthurian mythos that was new to me, like the bit where Arthur goes off and conquers Rome before returning to Camelot which is, after all, where the action is.

And I didn't really know much about Sir Tristram, the second greatest knight in Christendom, whose adventures make up a good chunk of the narrative. Sir Tristram, I have to say, brings his troubles on himself.

"Farewell, La Beale Isoud, love you forever! Why, Sir Segwarides' wife, hello!"

Sir Tristram is a Cornish knight, the nephew of King Mark. King Mark's life sucks. His nephew's in love with his wife, and is also the second greatest knight in Christendom, and hence completely insufferable. Most of his knights are crap, and the ones that aren't are more loyal to Tristram than to himself. And every time he goes about incognito, he comes across a knight from Camelot who'll say something like:

 "You sound Cornish! Man, I wouldn't be Cornish for anything. You guys have the crappest king! Everyone knows how crap King Mark is. And your knights are pretty crap too. Except Tristram. He's awesome! Say, why are you stomping and snarling? Man, Cornish knights are  weird."

There's other differences, stuff that doesn't make the modern iterations of the Arthurian cycle.  You don't, for example, hear a lot of Sir Lamorak, son of King Pellinore, lover of Morgawse of Orkney. Come to that, you don't hear a lot of Sir Gareth, the white sheep of Morgawse's Orkney brood. Or how shifty Gawaine (also of Orkney) is in the Mort compared to, say, the Green Knight story.

And these days, Launcelot is often portrayed as a loner and outsider and a foreigner, when in the Mort he's related to half the Round Table. And he is very much the hero-and-champion of Camelot, in humility and courtesy as well as at arms.

So it sucks to be Launcelot on the grail quest. By the time the grail quest comes round, Launcelot has been set up as everyone's favourite knight, a real hero. But on the grail quest, suddenly he's being judged by a completely different set of standards - standards he knows he can't meet, because of his secret sin. And he's constantly reminded of it, getting absolutely pasted several times by allegorical knights, where he's used to wiping the floor with real ones.

"Questing was more fun when it was more jousting and less allegory."

Still, Launcelot does better than Gawaine.

"Monk! Advise me on my quest!"
"Mate, you just totally murdered three allegorical knights. You will not get the grail today."

Launcelot doesn't achieve the grail, but he makes it to the end of the quest and returns home chastened, in divinely-inspired humility. Which lasts about a day and a half once he gets back to court, and Guenever. Of all the knightly qualities displayed in abundance by Sir Launcelot, the most thunderously impressive is his chutzpah.

"I am innocent of all wrongdoing and so is the Queen! And I shall fight anyone who says otherwise!"
"Dude, you are right now naked in the Queen's chambers!"
"You can't prove a thing!"

Jokes aside, the Fall of Camelot sequence in the Mort is really very powerful. There's a pervasive sense of misery and heartbreak as everything just falls apart. Arthur's regret and Launcelot's sorrow and Guenever's heartbreak are palpable, and Gawaine's grief and rage at the death of his brothers just resonates off the page.

Gawaine's deathbed repentance brought a tear to my eye.

So, yeah, that's the Mort. There's violence, there's romance, there's adventure, there's allegory, there's death. It's a lot of fun. There's a surprising depth of human emotion, especially with Launcelot on the grail quest, and with everyone who's still around during the Fall sequence.

Tristram remains a bit of jerk throughout, though.

"Sir Kehydius, how could you try to seduce La Beale Isoud, my beloved? After all I've done for you! I saved your father's kingdom, I saved your life, I married your sister..."
"Dude."
"...who I swear is technically still a virgin..."