"For from her, all good descends"

🇵🇭 An Arthurian Blog and other related topics (Fantasy, Celtic Myth, Medieval Culture and History, etc.)

[gawrkin]

On Queen Guinevere, by Sir Gawain

“Lady, in truth, she is so courteous, so beautiful, and so wise that God made no law and no language in whose spheres one would find such a graceful lady. Ever since God formed the first woman out of Adam’s rib, there has not been so renowned a lady. And she deserves to be called thus, for in the same manner as the wise masters educate the little children, my lady the queen educates and instructs the whole world. Of her springs all good: It flows from her and begins in her. No one could leave my lady and go away despondent. For she knows well what everybody wants and what she has to do to please every single one of them. No man can do good or win respect who has not learnt of my lady how to do so. Never was a man so out of sorts that he parted from my lady but not from his worries”

-Conte du Graal, Chretien de Troyes

[gawrkin]

Controversial opinion but it irks me whenever a modern King Arthur media includes a cameo of Thomas Malory, or at least a character named "Tom", who then goes to relay/preserve the legacy of King Arthur and the Ideals of Camelot (Yes, Im looking at you, OaFK)

And I'm like... No.

That doesn't work for me. That's the wrong person to be the literary torchbearer. (Especially if you take into account his most likely identity)

I would much rather believe Geoffrey of Monmouth, Chretien de Troyes or even Robert de Boron, have a greater hold to the Arthurian corpus than Thomas Malory.

[byjove]

Guinevere is an evil genius in a way Morgan is not. Guinevere is playing chess in Camelot and Morgan is playing checkers outside of the Cracker Barrel. They are not in the same league of plotting and scheming scorned women. And I love that. Morgan is seen as something wholly reproachable in medieval, a loose woman who wields magic. Guinevere has successfully carried on an affair for decades while appearing to be the goodly queen when she had Morgan banished from court immediately for the same activity AND Morgan got her own knight boyfriend killed immediately. Morgan’s plots are so unserious and Wile E. Coyote-esque but Guinevere keeps successfully smiting her enemies and getting others to fight her battles for her, as any intelligent queen would. Guinevere is a wolf in sheep’s clothing and Morgan is a particularly stubborn ewe in wolf’s clothing.

[byjove]

And they’re doing this toxic yuri friends to enemies to homoerotic enemies thing about it.

[byjove]

like the prom queen & head cheerleader at a high school who runs a crime ring and has successfully placed a hit on several people vs. the dumb stoner goth girl who has beef with her and wants to ruin her day a little

[grail-lifesupport]

bleoberis does this in like the vulgate somewhere, but even if she didn’t she would’ve

[kisseism]

Princess who's really possessive about her knight because she has never had anything she could call hers. Everything either belongs to the Crown or is for the Crown. But her dear knight who's so eager to follow her every whim? Who gladly kneels to her and does whatever she wants before she even says a word? His devotion belongs to her.

Knight who's a feral guard dog is more than happy to indulge his princess' every desire, even the ones she's oblivious to. The princess is to be a virgin on her wedding knight but he highly doubts that either of them will be satisfied with his tongue alone until that happens. It's a shame how greatly he cares about her reputation. They're always together, it would be catastrophic if the princess' first born had his face.

[damselay]

The Adventure of Melóra and Orlando translated by John R. Harris:

This is so funny to me. 'no, guys, you don't understand. he literally cannot eat without a little story'

[gawrkin]

VAGINA BEAMS

[dullyn]

All Arthurian ladies are unshaven everywhere and I need yall to remember that.

Like they got hair on their legs, pits, pubis. They are not smooth as a dolphin bro.

Hollywood makes us forget this with their portrayals of medieval era women with perfectly plucked eyebrows and hairless everythings.

[lefay-if]

Heck yeah

[bush-or-bald]

I hate to break this to you, but no. This is false.

Shaving body hair was not invented by modern cosmetics companies. It has gone in and out of style for centuries. In Roman times, shaving the body was considered a mark of civilized women vs barbarians. Given that Arthur is historically tied to the late Roman/sub-Roman period, there is a high likelihood that at least some of the more refined and Romanized ladies like Guinevere are, if not smooth as a dolphin, aspiring to dolphin smoothness.

If we're talking about medieval times, that's pretty broad, but if you mean the age of knights and chivalry, I have more bad news. Due to the cultural influence of Islam (which encourages men AND women to remove body hair), the High Middle Ages marked a resurgence of body hair removal for affluent European ladies that continued into the renaissance, not just through shaving but through some very nasty chemicals that should not be allowed anywhere near anyone's genitals.

Sources/further reading:

Female hair removal: a story as old as time. Adopt (or don't) the tips of beauty influencers of bygone times. Alternatively, turn to Venus.

To Get Rid of Body Hair, Renaissance Women Made Lotions of Arsenic, Cat Dung And Vinegar

"When the skin feels hot, wash quickly with hot water so the flesh doesn’t come off"

[gawrkin]

(Source: World's Finest Vol 1. # 162, by DC Comics)

King Arthur and his son Bohart, who steals Bedivere's superpowers. (Poor Bedi...)

"Bohart" is a variant of Borre le Cure Hardy a.k.a. Sir Loholt, the most famous non-Mordred son of Arthur

The comic these two feature in involve Superman and Batman travelling back in time to Camelot and fight aliens. The Knights of the Round Table are present with their own abilities, especially Kay who actually gets back some of his Welsh Myth powers (yay!).

[gawrkin]

The Mystical Foundations of the Knights Templar

There's a few things in this video that are rather enlightening. About Knights and the Church.

Imagine the glee of the cistercian monks when they got their hands on the Arthurian legends and finally get to vent all that frustration with secular knighthood. On Gawain.

[gawrkin]

I swear...

Someday, I'm gonna write a piece explaining how the characters of Guinevere and maybe Iseult are rooted in fairy tale archetypes.

In particular, I'm almost certain Gwen - judging from her Welsh portrayal as the daughter of a giant - is an artifact of what the Aaron-Thompson-Uther Index calls "The Magic Flight" or "The Girl Helps The Hero Flee", the story archetype that serves as the basis for stories like Nix Nought Nothing, Battle of the Birds, The Master Maid and, arguably, Arthuriana's very own Culhwch and Olwen.

The basics of this tale: Hero goes to the household of a giant and falls in love with giant's daughter -> Giant issues impossible tasks -> through magical aid (usually by the giant's daughter herself) the hero completes the tasks and angers the Giant -> Hero and the magical daughter flee and escape using magic items that create obstacles and barriers.

I could almost see something of a very heavily modified version this kind of story in Vulgate and its two versions of how Arthur acquired Guinevere as his wife, where Arthur goes to Carmelide incognito and win the favor of Leodegrance; it even seems like the "villainous giant father" is split into the sympathetic Leodegrance and the invader Ryon. And instead of magic items the couple drop to elude their pursuer, Arthur and Guinevere peacefully return home with a certain magic table...

[the-little-light-prince]

There's actually no use in Mordred and Loholt fighting for the throne because from what I can gleam his favorite person in the family is Gawain💀

[cesarescabinet]

Also based on my previous post of medieval animal symbolism, I looked up Gawain's signature animal out of curiosity and uh-

Short king Gawain keeps getting confirmed, y'all.

[lefresne]

Absolutely Obsessed with this one guy who painstakingly scratched out all the negative references to gawain in on MS of the prose Tristan & replaced him with agravain 

[lefresne]

DONT WORRY KING I GOT U!!!!

[a-book-of-creatures]

“He Would Not Do That” goes back a long way

[gawrkin]

(Source: Roman de Silence, Heldris de Cornualle)

Somehow... I think this might be a rather common consensus. asdfghjkl

[cesarescabinet]

Something I've found deeply fascinating with Lancelot lately is his association with leopards. It's primarily within the Vulgate, but there's nods to it in Malory as well;

Because why leopards in particular, out of all animals? It was specific enough that I was curious if I was missing some symbolism there. So, I went over to Medieval Bestiary as a starting point;

So, as it turns out, leopards have been traditionally associated with adultery. With the help of @wandrenowlereacts, I discovered that the association between adultery and leopards extends very far back indeed.

These are from De proprietatibus rerum ("On the Properties of Things") by Bartholomaeus Anglicus and Isidore of Seville’s Etymologiae. Both, in turn, refer to Pliny the Elder, who wrote the Naturalis historia (“Natural History”).

The Pliny segment in particular made me geek out a bit, because of the passage describing leopards and lions. It potentially reads as a reflection of the ending of the Arthurian romances! Why do I say there’s potential Arthurian foreshadowing in Pliny?

The lion’s fury obviously represents King Arthur, while the lioness washing herself can be associated to Queen Guinevere.

Particularly, the lioness washing herself could be taken as Queen Guinevere taking holy orders in order to be purified and redeemed from her past. This would be consistent within the deeply religious context of medieval times.

Now in the Vulgate, this is more of a practical decision on her part. But noticing this, and combining it with her associations with serpents and their symbolism, makes me wonder if it was an intentional nod.

Circling back to Sir Lancelot, it makes Galehaut’s comments a bit of a double-edged sword. The leopard is lauded, but is also an association of adultery that follows Lancelot throughout both the Vulgate (more explicitly) and Malory. The audiences would be aware of this. This also applies to the other animal associations presented (King Arthur as the lion, Queen Guinevere as the Crowned Serpent, etc). It adds an interesting level of context to these comparisons and, in particular, this dialogue.

[gawrkin]

(Source: Vulgate Cycle - Lancelot pt. II)

I swear... sometimes, I have this sneaking suspicion that Lancelot's clan - Bors, Lionel and Hector de Maris - exists to undercut Gawain and basically serve as Lancelot's own equivalent to the Orkney Bros. If I'm not mistaken, all three debuted in Vulgate cycle, where Lancelot's mythos is expanded into the pillar of the Arthurian narrative as we know it.

Here, we are shown Lionel defeating a mysterious lion, which heals his own mysterious lion-shaped birthmark, and gifts its pelt to Ywain. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that this is to vaguely imply that Lionel is somehow the underlying agent behind the "Knight of the Lion" title, essentially taking the credit without wholesale stealing it from Ywain.

While Ywain is not part of the Orkney siblings, he is still Gawain's cousin and is closely associated with his character.