Less Than A Day Left. Wow, This Blew Up (by My Standards). I Guess A Lot Of People Have Opinions About

Stained glass by Heaton, Butler & Bayne, depicting the female knight Britomart from Spenser's The Faerie Queene, at Cheltenham Ladies' College.

That is very relatable because I did the exact same thing. Here's a partial list of my own awful ideas:

It started with Marianne Le Fay (I didn't like the name Morgan, so I renamed her) being so called because she was friends with fairies in the French Alps, then shifted to her being a changeling child who was raised by fey beings after Uther and the rest of his hunting party was killed while hunting a wild boar in Broceliande. No adequate explanation was given for why a three-year-old princess was taken along to hunt a wild boar.

Camelot was actually named Caramel-Not. Bors told people in the foreign countries he was in while he had amnesia that he was from a camel-lot and it stuck. (Also, Bors converted to Hinduism, regained his memory, and decided never to go back. All this was mentioned offhand--he hadn't lived in Camelot for years and never showed up in the story).

Prior to the start, Mordred somehow drove every human apart from him and Arthur, who he kept mostly unconscious, out of Camelot through wild goose chase quests, falsely tarnished names, and more creative but always nonlethal methods.

Mordred isekai'd Guinevere to a world made of clouds. The first part of the plot was just her trying to get back.

Mordred stuck Agravaine, Gareth, and Gaheris on a boat and set it adrift so that listening to Agravaine singing "The Ballad of the Pickled Cabbage" would eat away at the others' sanity.

Gawain and "Gallahad" were best friends. Gallahad was kind of a rustic himbo, in contrast to Percival, who was older and had found the Grail before he showed up (I actually like the last bit's angst potential).

Lancelot was really evil and in league with Anna (who was evil). Guinevere, Gawain, and Gallahad all hated him.

Mordred was a sorcerer and had a strix named Deluge who wanted to be named Norman as his familiar. (I know it makes no sense but I still have a soft spot for corny socially awkward evil wizard Mordred).

Arthur and Guinevere were going to get their marriage annulled, then eventually remarry, because the marriage was arranged and also because when they first married, Guinevere was under a curse.

The whole thing began with a seventh-grade assignment to write an alliterative paragraph, so a weird number of words in the prologue started with the letter G. Thus, we have Gawain grappling a ghastly green ghoul over a golden grail (not THE Grail, apparently, but that isn't clear until much later) at the very start.

Pendragons could turn into literal dragons. Mordred, as Uther's grandson, could turn into one despite lacking the Pendragon name, since it was genetic, but Guinevere could also turn into one because she was a Pendragon by marriage. (The lore was a bit spotty). The climax of the book was going to be an epic dragon battle between Mordred and Guinevere.

There's a bit more of that sort of thing, but I'll leave it there for now.

so a few years ago, before I realised that there was such a thing as an Arthuriana fandom on Tumblr that I could mine for resources, I decided, in my infinite wisdom, to start writing a novel.

now where this goes off the rails is the fact that I a) did no research and b) had some pretty unusual ideas about the characters I was going to be using. having since found out some actual, concrete information on these characters, I thought it would be fun to go through my old ideas and see how fucking wild they are in comparison to what I now know the characters are actually like.

Kea's list of awful ideas:

morgan le fay was going to be a werewolf

king arthur was going to be colourblind and have a peanut allergy as his only identifying traits

lancelot was going to murder his abusive merchant father by staging a cart crash in the middle of the woods, then stabbing him in the confusion. for plot reasons

Nimue/lady of the lake and Lancelot were going to be adoptive siblings who were raised by the wild hunt (still kinda fuck with the siblings idea tbh)

Kay was going to be Arthur's dog.

Guinevere x Lancelot? nah, Guinevere x Lancelot's sister (also still kinda fuck with this, give that woman some lesbianism she deserves it)

the main villain was going to be some random ass faerie assassin called the Shrike, so called because it skewered knights on trees (I used to listen to far too much hozier, if you couldn't guess)

Arthur, Lancelot and Merlin were going to be in a polyam relationship and Guinevere, Nimue and Morgan were going to be in a polyam relationship, which, if you consider the two pairs of siblings in that collection, means that the family tree of these characters is literally a circle.

the Fae were going to have big fuckass bird wings for no particular reason other than I thought it would be cool

I have so many more of these, if this breaches containment I'll make another

Shoutout to Howard Pyle for shooting down the Lancelot/Guinevere plot line in the funniest way possible.

This is slander. "Ymddiddan Gwyddno Garanhir a Gwyn ap Nudd" is interesting (and a little confusing, as a lot of the best poems are). Here is the best breakdown of it which I've found online.

Reading Jenny Rowland's Early Welsh Saga Poetry (largely due to my interest in the stories around Urien Rheged) and had a moment of "oh! @wildbasil come pick up your boy"

...followed very quickly by the author, uh, roasting Gwyn for his pedestrian poetry???

Give the man a break lmao

From Le Roman des Franceis (AKA Li Romanz des Franceis or Arflet) by André de Coutance, in which the poet is very concerned about the widespread(?) slanderous accusations that King Arthur was killed and replaced as king by a giant cat.

Wait a minute...

Edward the Third was an Arthuriana nerd who named his son after Sir Lionel, and...

...made up a title for him, which....

...had previously existed in Arthuriana and didn't refer to a place. Coincidence?

Probably.

Well, darn. That would've been very interesting. Then again, maybe the knowledge that Edward III was such a nerd he named his son after Sir Lionel is enough to ask.

Arthuriana never gets old, and there's always something new to be written and always something which you would not have guessed exists already.

That said, finding an Arthurian poem by Aleister Crowley where Palamedes gives birth to the Questing Beast after killing it, gets pelted with eyeballs, learns music skills equal to Orpheus', rides on an eagle, has a vision of Pan and hears the voice of Christ, becomes a hermit in Finland, and kills his own son out of necessity in the Welsh mountains was not on my bingo card for today.

✨🧡🌙SEND THIS TO OTHER BLOGGERS YOU THINK ARE WONDERFUL. KEEP THE GAME GOING ✨🧡

Thank you so much!

That is the start of William F. Skene's translation of "Cad Goddeu". Here are others for comparison (with a couple more lines because I like them):

I was in a multitude of forms before I was unfettered: I was a slender mottled sword made from the hand. I was a droplet in the air, I was the stellar radiance of the stars, I was a word in writing, I was a book in my prime. I was the light of a lantern For a year and a half…"

--Marged Haycock

I was in many a guise before I was disenchanted. I am a grey-cowled minstrel : I believe in illusion. I was for a time in the sky : I was observing the stars. I was a message in writing : I was a book to my priest. I was the light of the altar-horns, for a year and a half.

--John Gwenogvryn Evans (who translated the title as "The Battle of the Scrub" rather than "The Battle of the Trees")

I was woven  in so many forms before this one.  I was a sword drawn, high and long against sky, and I was its tear in the air, the dullest of stars.   I was the word among letters, the story’s breath within the book, the light of lanterns.   For a year and a half I was the continuing bridge...

--Órlaith on Wordpress

There are a number of others out there; these are just a few which struck me as being distinctive in an interesting way.

‘I have been a multitude of shapes, Before I assumed a consistent form. I have been a sword, narrow, variegated, I have been a tear in the air, I have been in the dullest of stars. I have been a word among letters, I have been a book in the origin.’ Taliesin .. c. 534 – c. 599

When you realize that Tristan, Iseult, Dinadan, Palamedes, and Mark are basically the stock cast of a sitcom…