If We Go Down,

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

for the ask game, 💚💛😤🗡️ !!!

I started writing this and realized that my quest/story arc answer could also work for the sibling dynamic one and vice versa, so the first two are both for both.

I’m very fond of The Story of the Crop-Eared Dog—which is to Arthurian lit what Lilly Onakuramara is to the Barden Bellas, only less important—and its weird anticlimax in which the sidekick shows up and reveals that he’s achieved their key goals by killing a vast number of people, including all of the naked monks on the Island of Naked Monks, then defeating but sparing the main antagonist. (The antagonist—the Knight of the Lantern, henceforth known as Lanny—is Alastrann’s—the sidekick’s—younger half-brother. Alastrann’s earlier speeches concerning Lanny can be briefly summarized as, “My baby brother is sooo talented and amazing, but he destroys everything he touches, so I’m going to kill all his friends and steal his stuff and hope that solves the issue.” Somehow, this works). There’s a lot more to unpack there, but it’s a complicated mess. A charming complicated mess.

Arthur’s sudden ascent to greatness, and the barriers that likely creates between the (formerly unwitting) foster brothers, has its own sort of pathos, but their dynamic in Cullwch and Olwen is heartbreaking and seems to get overlooked. (They aren’t referred to as brothers or foster brothers there, but I’ll count it anyway). They have a falling out over an extemporaneous song with which Arthur ridicules Cai’s tactics on a specific killing errand. It might be meant as a joke, but it angers Cai so much that he leaves, never to return or aid Arthur again. The twist is this: it’s already been said that when Cai is killed, Arthur avenges him by killing not only his killer but also his killer’s brothers. Arthur’s vengeance is brutal and unfair and a mark of extreme grief; clearly, he never stopped caring about his friend/brother, even though he was never able to make up with him in life. 

Your Most Specific Nitpick About Your Fave (anything from "Gareth would not have a beard" to "this is basically a different guy"):

One of my faves is Dinadan, and an adaptational/fandom nitpick of mine is when he gets shipped with random people. I personally headcanon him as aroace. There are some texts where I can understand reading him as being gay and having feelings for Tristan, but writing about, say, him and Mordred makes no sense to me and I find it aggravating. Aroaces (and aspec people in general) have such little representation as it is.

Who Are You Betting On In This Month's Tournament?

Assuming that Lanny is out of town, I’ll place a small bet on Dinadan. He doesn’t win often, so I could get great odds for him, and when he does win, it’s very funny. I also really like Dinadan.

The Poet's Corner Window at Westminster Abbey, designed by Graham Jones, with diamonds for Alexander Pope, Oscar Wilde, Christopher Marlowe, Elizabeth Gaskell, Robert Herrick, A.E. Housman, and Frances Burney (descending, left then right)

Arthuriana ask game!!

bc why not

♘ Favourite Knight/King

🫅Favorite Lady/Damsol/Queen

💚 Favorite Quest/Story Arc

✒A Medieval Text You Like

📚A Retelling/Modern Work You Like

📽Recommend a book/movie/tv show etc

💛A Sibling Group/Dynamic That IS NOT The Orkneys

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿Okay Now You Can Talk About Orkneys

😤Your Most Specific Nitpick About Your Fave (anything from "Gareth would not have a beard" to "this is basically a different guy")

🥰An Arthuriana Headcanon

😏Gawain?

🥖Favorite French/du lac (Lancelot, Hector de Maris, Bors, Lionel, Galahad, ect)

👨‍👦Favorite Parent

🗡️Who Are You Betting On In This Month's Tournament?

🙏Pick A Grail Knight

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿Pick A Pelli Spawn (Percival, Aglovale, Tor, Lamorak, Aylane, Dindrane, Donar, ect)

💏Crack Ship (s)

🫂Platonic Ship(s)

okay sorry thinking about false guinevere again and I think I get it now. like if you were raised alongside your beautiful sister, the beautiful daughter of the king, and she gets everything and everyone loves her and she marries the guy who pulls the sword out of the stone and she’s the queen now and everyone’s looking to her and knights are dying for her and you look exactly like her and you have her same face, your father’s face, but the man who raised you isn’t him because no one can talk about what the king did to your mom and everyone pretends it’s normal but actually they all know you were born from violence and you were never supposed to be born and there she is, your sister, with your same name, your same face, the most desired woman alive, and she is everything you’re not. i might also do something evil tbh

Agreed. This is fantastic. The mention of Camlann rather than Badon was a bad oversight. I’m confused about the sequence of alluded-to events in The Dream of Rhonabwy. On a reread, it seems like the Battle of Camlann happened well before Badon and like both Arthur and Mordred survived it, but this too could be a misinterpretation.

There was no Eliwlod reference intended, but Arthur’s nephew who turns into an eagle would certainly fit in the list.

The source for Arthur being a Red Ravager who makes it so that plants won’t grow where he’s walked for seven years is a quotation from Bromwich’s Trioedd Ynys Prydein.

The part about Merlin and Taliesin is a reference to the Vita Merlini, which I haven’t read, only read references to, and I made a notable omission. Along with them in the woods are Merlin’s sister Gwenddydd and his friend Maeldinus.

A few things which are “canon” somewhere for people who are worried they’re stretching it too far

Arthur was killed by a giant cat. 

Arthur killed the cat.

Arthur didn’t fight the cat. Kay did.

Kay and Bedivere use salmon as taxis. 

Lucan is half giant, half lion. (This Lucan, Lucano in the original Italian, is evil and not related to Bedivere). 

King Arthur raided the land of the dead.

The human knight Caradoc Briefbras has three half siblings: a dog, a horse, and a pig.

A large portion of Arthur’s troops was killed a while before Camlann by his nephew’s attack ravens in self-defense. Arthur and said nephew were playing chess at the time and neither did much to stop it.

Merlin retired peacefully and went to live in the countryside with Taliesin.

Wherever Arthur walks, plants die. They don’t grow back for years.

Arthur had a spunky (half?) brother who died in battle after making a mysterious oath.

Dagonet is more or less able to run the kingdom when Arthur is gone. His biggest error is overspending on mercenaries.

Guinevere has an evil almost identical twin half-sister.

Hector beat up all the best knights except for Galahad while possessed by a demon.

Gawain plays tennis.

Gawain has used a chessboard as a weapon.

Near the start of his reign, Arthur left Lot in charge of the kingdom and went on a quest with a sassy parrot.

Gawain or Galahad succeeded Arthur as king. 

Does anyone know any songs which relate well to Gaheris? He is one of a few gaping holes on my Alarmingly Vast Arthurian Themesong List.

@usedtobeaduchess Triad 20 is where Arthur as Terror of the Sod comes from.

Arthur has superpowers too (Sort of)

From The Welsh Triads

From Layamon's Brut

From Don Quixote. (Too bad its Post-Camlann...)

Extra Points:

Griflet-centric Reincarnation AU following Mort Artu canon

Griflet remembers bits and pieces of his past life, mostly from Camlann, so he starts doing surface-level research on Arthuriana. Since he's the one to throw the sword in the lake in Mort Artu but Bedivere is best known for it, he becomes convinced that he's the reincarnation of Sir Bedivere.

There are two outcomes which immediately come to mind. One is that he runs into other Arthurian reincarnations. In this case, he might vastly confuse everyone, particularly if Bedivere shows up too. They might even think he's an imposter. However, they might remember who he actually was and have a laugh about the whole thing.

The other is that he never tells anyone, or only tells the people he's closest to, because he doesn't think anyone will believe him. He goes about the rest of his life secretly thinking he's Bedivere. It impacts nothing substantial, though from time to time he makes references which confuse the people around him and he's always kind of worried something will happen to his hand.

Veronica Whall’s stained glass depiction of Galahad ascending, with Bors, the Grail Maiden, and eight angels, from King Arthur’s Great Halls at Tintagel