A Copy Of The Tale Of Balen By Algernon Charles Swinburne

Funny story. Due to a very strange series of events, a number of people are now convinced that I'm the reincarnation of Sir Kay. This is not a joke. I'm not really sure what do with that or how to explain the strange stuff which happened. So, yeah. I can imagine it.

Reincarnation aus are funny to me because like. Imagine finding out that you’re the reincarnation of a medieval knight, brought back to save mankind in its darkest hour etc etc. But then you find out that you’re fucking like. Sir Gaheris. Absolutely mid-tier ass knight. Like what do you do with that.

I'm a big fan of Madoc ap Uther, although I haven't written much about him yet. Here are some of my thoughts on him, not all of which are characterization-related but hopefully will be helpful:

He's described as "protector of happiness" (in "Madawc Drut", Marged Haycock's translation), which I find really interesting, as well as "a citadel of prowess/through feat and jest". Protector of happiness could be referring to his humor entertaining people, to his martial prowess keeping them safe, or both. (The same goes for the title itself: "drut" could mean bravery or foolhardiness but could be related to "drúth", Old Irish for jester).

Either way, it sounds like a sort of a duty, like this is something he feels obligated to do, which is obvious if he's a warrior but says a lot about his personality if he feels obligated to make jokes and keep others happy. Maybe there are some citadel walls around his inner nature and emotions; that might be a stretch in terms of literary interpretation, but potentially interesting in terms of characterization.

He seems to be very well-liked and seen as a merry fellow, but he definitely has a serious side: "before {he} was slain / he pledged himself by his hand", which is rather cryptic and suggests a sense of duty as well as a dire circumstance.

He was the son of Uther but didn't become king, so he could be Arthur's older brother who was killed before Uther died or a younger brother who didn't succeed Uther because Arthur was the eldest son (which would suggest that Arthur was raised by his biological parents). He could also be a younger brother who was the heir but was killed before Uther died (if Arthur was raised by Ector/Cynyr), but he is Eliwlod's father, so he was old enough to have children at the time of his death, which makes the last option seem less likely.

Skene's translation of "Marwnad Madawg"/"Madawc Drut" is much longer and says that he was killed by "Erof", but Haycock claims that that's the result of multiple poetic fragments which were on the same page being mashed together and that that bit is actually part of a lost poem about King Erof, AKA Herod, being dragged down to Hell. I think her translation is generally considered more reliable (and seriously doubt that Madoc was killed by King Herod, though that would be interesting).

He might be referred to as "{t}ransgressing" and "a famous leader" in a poem along with other heroes like Bran, Arthur, and Alexander the Great, but Madawg/Madog/Madoc is not a rare name. There are at least two different Madawgs mentioned in the Black Book of Carmarthen (ap Maredudd and ap Gwyn) who definitely aren't him and one who might be him but might not. As it is, the only pretty-certain references to him are "Madawc Drut" and a brief mention in Arthur's dialogue with the eagle. This is just about all the information we have to go off of, so my fondness for him comes entirely from "Madawc Drut", which is, unsurprisingly, from The Book of Taliesin.

Do we have any Madoc ap Uther/Madawg ap Uther fans out there? I'm trying to combine him with the more "continental" legends bc I think it'd be interesting but I'm wondering if anyone's written him before or has some characterization thoughts?

Arthuriana has so many major aspec characters, and it’s fabulous

Here are a few characters who I interpret as aspec:

Dinadan!!! He is an absolute aroace icon. In a source whose name has slipped my mind, Isolde comments on how he ought to be in a relationship and his reaction is something along the lines of, “Yeah, hard pass. How’s that working out for you, by the way?” (Read it with sarcasm).

Galahad, Bors, and the Grail Heroine all seem quite happy about the eternal chastity thing. None of them have any close calls with demon ladies, unlike poor Percival, the one allo person in the friend group. (Yes, Bors has a son, but a cursed ring was involved there, which is why as much as I do not stand Bors’ Morte misogyny, I will always pity him).

Kay is very rarely ascribed romantic relationships, and in one Welsh source, his father prophesies that Kay’s heart will be “eternally cold”, which could be interpreted as never enflamed by love.

Any others who come to mind?

The Grail Heroine leading Galahad to the ship, where Percival and Bors wait

Stained glass by Veronica Whall for King Arthur’s Great Halls at Tintagel

Crop-Eared Dog makes the overzealous descriptions in the Vulgate look tame

This is a quote about the villain, the Knight of the Lantern, who should consider getting a job at Vogue if being his brother’s seneschal doesn’t work out:

“And when they were in a pleasant state, drinking and pleasuring, the king arose standing, and he looks to the four broad-bordered quarters on each side of him all around ; and he saw one young champion, armed, accoutred, and equipped, approaching him; and a tunic of fine silk around his white skin; a wonderful gold-threaded mantle above his fair tunic; and a firm, close, well-woven breastplate about his slender, brightly beautiful, well-curved body; a handsome gold-hemmed scapular above that breastplate; and a goldenhilted, ingenious, broad-grooved sword on his left thigh. A beautiful, very firm, jewelled diadem of manifold art about his head; a shapely, studded, flesh-coloured shield on the ridge of his back, and lines of golden letters in the edges of that royal shield, to announce and proclaim that there was not at the back of shield or sword in the world a warrior or champion better than that mighty soldier. Two angled spears in his white right hand; he had a long, narrow, radiant face, and a grey, clear-glorious, fresh, brilliant, joyous eye in his head ; and he had a slender, shapely, handsome mouth, a smoothslow, quiet, kingly raising in his eyelids, springs of love in each of his royal cheeks; and the people of the world were inferior to him. And in this wise was he; a glistening, full-lighted lantern was in his left hand, and the king was watching him till he came to his presence; and King Arthur asks news of him.”

I mean, really. Describing Lancelot’s eyebrows is weird enough, but glowing descriptions of eyelid raising are on another level.

You mean to tell me that you don't?

A lot of the time when I see people talk about aromanticism they bring up the way a lot of us tend to think that romance is just exaggerated in fiction and are surprised that people feel that way in real life and not just in the movies and that's honestly kind of funny, imagine just going about your life and one day finding out that most people's high school years were actually like disney channel and you're the exception

you seem like the right person to ask about jewish knights and judaism in general in arthurian legend

Hello! Apologies for how long it has taken me to respond to this! Throughout the Middle Ages and the early modern period, there were a number of Arthurian texts written by and for Jewish people in Jewish languages. The one I specialize in is an Old Yiddish text called Vidvilt, which is part of the Fair Unknown tradition and based off an earlier German text called Wigalois. This text was super popular in the Yiddish-speaking world for about three centuries or so and was reworked and reprinted a number of times. I already discussed some of those adaptations a while ago in response to this ask.

Predating Vidvilt, there was a Hebrew Arthurian text written in the 13th century which is now commonly known as Melekh Artus. This was based on Old French sources and tells the story of Arthur's birth and Lancelot's affair with Guinevere before breaking off unfinished. The most common edition of the text used today is the one by Curt Leviant, though I just read a fascinating article in the latest issue of the Journal of the International Arthurian Society calling into question some of his transcription choices and the conclusions he draws in his analysis of the text.

I also recently read that a fragment of an Arthurian text in Judeo-Catalan was recently discovered, but I'm afraid I don't know much about it as yet other than that it's apparently a late medieval adaptation of Jaufre.

Chivalric romances of both Christian and Jewish origin were extremely popular among medieval and early modern Jews in general. There were a number of non-Arthurian knight stories that were very popular as well; for example, the most famous and influential work of early Yiddish literature was a chivalric epic called Bovo d'Antona, and a survey I read of the literature in Jewish households in early modern Italy shows that the most popular non-religious work among Jews at that time was Orlando Furioso.

It is worth noting that, even though some of these texts were written by and for Jews, that doesn't necessarily mean that the characters in them were Jewish. Jewish writers generally tended to modify their Christian source materials by gliding over or obscuring references to religion, rather than depicting Judaism directly (the reasons for this are complex and could constitute a whole paper, so I won't get into it here). That being said, medieval Jewish knights did exist in real life, too! There are a few medieval historians who do research into exactly when, where, and under what circumstances Jews were allowed to bear arms, but it definitely wasn't exclusively a literary thing.

They could have snuck parts of Jaufre into Monty Python and the Holy Grail and no one would have noticed a stylistic difference.

--A wicked knight describing to Jaufre (Griflet) what a knight who touches his lance can do to obtain his mercy as an alternative to being killed after a fight

Tag game: tag nine people you’d like to know better.

Tagged by: @oneshoulderangel (Thank you for tagging me!)

Last song: At the moment, I have "Losing Your Memory" by Alan Star stuck in my head, which I suppose makes it my current song, not my last song. Hm. I get songs stuck in my head very easily, but the last one I had there for a significant amount of time was a mashup of different language versions of "Les Rois du Monde" for about a week. "Lehetsz Király", the Magyar version, is probably my favorite of them. It's worth a listen.

Currently watching: Normally, the answer would be "random mostly terrible old movies/shows" or "nothing much", but I currently have a hyperfixation on the musical Roméo et Juliette and have been watching it in multiple languages. (Thus, the song).

Three ships: This is hard. Maybe as a result of being on the ace and aro spectrums, I'm more likely to care about which characters are interacting than whether it's romantic or platonic. Here goes:

Kedivere/Bedikay. It can be romantic, platonic, or queerplatonic, but whichever way, I'm here for it. I probably spend too much time thinking about how in Cullwch and Olwen, when Cai gets mad at Arthur and marches out, Bedwyr stays behind, keeps acting like nothing's happened, and isn't the one to avenge Cai's death. The feeling of betrayal on both sides has a lot of unexplored potential. And the version where Bedivere dies and Kay fights to bring his body back safely while mortally wounded himself... And the version where Bedivere survives Camlann and Kay isn't said to fight in it, so they might be left together after their world has fallen apart...

Platonically or queerplatonically, Galahad and the Grail Heroine. I really like the tragic Grail Quest friendships, but I like theirs most, maybe because there's something weird and otherworldly about them both. I like it when characters are strange and endearing and doomed by the narrative.

Ever since reading John Matthews' retelling, which I read before the original, I've had a soft spot for Caradoc and Guinier. The Story of Caradoc is very disturbing, and I have some major qualms with Caradoc over a detail Matthews cut out, but all the same, there's a reason these two have the best track record with magical fidelity tests. Each of them would go to the ends of the earth for the other, and together, they're stronger than any curse.

Favorite Color: Blue, particularly royal blue and some teals.

Currently consuming: Black licorice with chocolate.

First ship: This is a hard one, since through elementary and most of middle school, I tended to go along with whatever I thought the author's intentions were and was more likely to unship something. The first non-endgame ship I got invested in was Sonya/Nikolai in War and Peace. I didn't like Nikolai, but Sonya did, and she was my favorite character, so I wanted her to be happy. The first non-canon couple I thought was meant to be together was also in War and Peace: Marya Bolkonskaya and Julie Karagina. My eighth grade self did not think their letters could be interpreted platonically. I still don't.

Last movie: If the musical doesn't count, the last movie I watched was Quest for Camelot, which was awful. Though not Robot Monster-level bad, Robot Monster has an elegance to its simplicity which Quest for Camelot lacks.

Currently working on: Various fics, most of them Arthuriana or CotRK-related (I am woefully behind on the Badfic Bingo), and (theoretically) an epic-style poem, though I haven't gotten much of it written for quite a while now.

Tagging: @gawrkin, @emperorcandy, @wildbasil, @gorewound, @knightsofsomethingorother, @ladyminaofcamelot, @tasosotaso, @amashelle, @gingersnaptaff (I have no idea who's been tagged so far, apart from the people on @oneshoulderangel's post, so I apologize for any multi-tags)

Starting a how-Lysander-was-able-to-kill-Grimwald theory list:

He was able to kill Lord Grimwald because curse had a time limit and expired. The Grimwalds aren’t aware of this, so they keep killing each other because they don’t know that they don’t have to. (See “The Annals of the North” on Ao3)

He was able to kill Lord Grimwald because the curse is conditional. The father and son are capable of dying in other ways, but if they aren’t dead yet, it will come to pass.

He was able to kill Lord Grimwald because he’s so powerful, the laws of nature couldn’t stop him.

He wasn’t. Lord Grimwald was trapped in the Sea Globe. (See “The Curse of the Endless” on Ao3)

I am a truther for a lot of things, but my biggest truth is that Dagbert is agender. Why? If Lord Grimwald had no first son, then Lysander could kill him all day every day no problem. He/They Dagbert who doesn't identify as a man or son or boy but actually just doesn't care