It's hard to describe what this project is sometimes because it's difficult to figure out the point it's trying to make until it's finished.
Plus, the fact that it's not wholly one thing or another. It's not completely mythical or completely historical, but it takes cues from both.
While it's rooted in pre-Galfridian Arthuriana, it's not a direct retelling of any one source; it instead sort of takes those elements, synthesizes them, and tilts them at an oblique angle to fit a low fantasy/psych horror setting.
For example, the cynbyn (dog-heads) are interpreted as Wodenic-cult wolf berserkers. They can be both human and monstrous, the Saxon as Other and the kind of beastly foe Arthur regularly grapples with:
MEDRAWT: "Be grateful they've employed discourse before other means. Some use evil magic to wile men away from their bodies. Once they become beasts, they cannot be controlled."
ARTHUR: "Put down the flask. Look me in the eye."
MEDRAWT: "I've seen the ritual for myself. They cripple themselves to induce blood and pain, and with them, herald battle-madness. Gifts of the gods, they say. Garwlwyd inflicted them on Bedwyr in the cave."
There's nothing in the literature to say the dog-heads are berserkers; you can say "you're making stuff up" and you'd be right. But it's also not like there's enough to say it couldn't be a possibility either, however faint.
Not exactly trying to contradict what is there. Just... You know. Examining it from an angle.
[codex entry]
Gwrgi Garwlwyd
('Man-Dog Rough-Grey')
"Leader of the cynbyn, or dog-heads.
Berserkers who wear hideous wolf masks.
Garwlwyd's followers engaged us on the shores of Tryfrwyd [Tribuit] in Din Eidyn [Edinburgh].
Bedwyr pursued Rough Grey to a dark cove.
There, he said, Garwlwyd transformed into a beast
that fought half with sword, half with claw.
Because Bedwyr had emerged without
his right hand, I thought his tale a fever dream."
One advantage of psych horror is that ambiguity is part and parcel of the genre, leaving room to accommodate a spectrum of explanations.
Bedwyr can't change the physical reality that he lost a hand to Garwlwyd; but because Arthur wasn't there to see it, he isn't sure whether to chalk up the rest to a fever dream. Is it magic? Madness? Both? Neither? Whichever you want it to be.
Arthur thinks he's reached the end of his life when really, he's been dropped into a survival horror. He must learn some humility and empathy for his own spiritual and emotional survival.
Although post-Camlan narratives aren't new, I can't really think of many that continue the story via Arthur's perspective without resurrecting him or yeeting him into the future.
In addition, they kind of carry this tone of inertia that I'm not too keen about, just in general (as that was one of my problems with the pacing in The Bright Sword, preventing my full enjoyment of some of the character studies).
On an emotional level, I understand why Camlan and its aftermath need to carry an elegiac tone, to make us feel the loss. In a sense, it is Arthur's Ragnarok, where all the gods and good men lay dead.
It's just that, tonally, even with promises of Avalon and the once and future king, the way Camlan is often treated in fiction seems to align more with the sense of finality evoked in the Anglo-Saxon rune poem's last stanza, the "Earth" rune:
Ear byþ egle eorla gehwylcun,
ðonn[e] fæstlice flæsc onginneþ,
hraw colian, hrusan ceosan
blac to gebeddan; bleda gedreosaþ,
wynna gewitaþ, wera geswicaþ
The grave is frightful to every warrior, when the flesh begins inexorably – the corpse – to cool, to embrace the earth, the dark as its companion. Fruits fall away, joys pass away, promises fail.
...than the more cyclical and recursive nature suggested in Taliesin's verse:
I have been a blue salmon,
I have been a dog, a stag, a roebuck on the mountain,
A stock, a spade, an axe in the hand,
A stallion, a bull, a buck, A grain which grew on a hill,
I was reaped, and placed in an oven;
I fell to the ground when I was being roasted
And a hen swallowed me.
For nine nights was I in her crop.
I have been dead, I have been alive.
I am Taliesin.
I guess I want to explore other possibilities of transformation and transmutation, however strange or dim or counterintuitive they might seem. It's just that this one is facilitated by disseminating him and seeing what remains when all else has been taken away.
Arthur enters a nadir and comes out the other side fundamentally changed. What that change means depends on the player's choices. But perhaps that doesn't necessarily need to connotate irreversible loss so much as the reworking of the ore of him into something finer than it was before. His ego needs to be "killed" in order for him to become the protector Prydain needs.
I wanted to write a plot that seemed like it might be a natural extension of Arthur's previous excursions while also being the same flavor of fantastic.
"Once upon a time, the son of Arthur's enemy drowned his brother on the eve of his kingmaking, and the Saxon moon god granted him resurrection powers. Then he decided to make it Arthur's problem. And he went Red Ravager on their asses."
The guy is not exactly sane because Camlan happened just three days ago and he was unconscious for two. Now this weird bastard son of Cerdic's who he's never heard of, who looks just like Medrawt, shows up all of a sudden like "Eala Arthur, I want you to behead my brother." Excuse you? Can't even say "please"? Rude.
Mostly it endeavors to weave some psychological tendon between ligaments. To take a version of Arthur who comes from a fragmented source and ask him what his deal is. What he's going to do going to do now that almost everything he loves is gone.
(Although tbh I tend to feel like his characterization in pre-Galfridian sources is more psychologically consistent than maybe he's given credit for; at least, his generosity, his hubris, and his temper seem to stem from a place of excess, of giving away so much because of his assumption he has that much to give, if that makes sense.)
While I'm usually hesitant to call the Matter of Britain "fanfic" because fanfiction implies a fixed canon, the best way I can describe it is post-canon fic. Instead of getting to rest after Camlan, Arthur gets put through the psychological meat grinder.
The king in him dies to make room for the ravager. He has to grapple with the darkest parts of himself before he's finally able to reclaim them. The beatings will continue until his behavior improves, dammit.
In a sense, it's kind of like that translation of Beowulf where "Hwaet!" becomes "Bro!" It's jarring, but sometimes the audience needs to be jarred a little in order to bridge the gap between emotional and intellectual understanding. Between knowing the experience and feeling the experience.
Arthur's lack of high register is itself a tool of characterization, one I probably wouldn't have used in a traditional novel, but which becomes necessary in order to differentiate it from Creoda's reticent kenning-speak and make Arthur seem more approachable by comparison. If both men spoke in high register, there wouldn't be any texture for the reader to grasp. He also needs to have an immediate, intimate voice so that we have someone to anchor us against the Weird Stuff(tm). If he's all like "what is this absolute bullshit I see before my green orbs," then it invites us to do the same.
A visual novel's interactivity gives me more tools to work with, such as character codices whose descriptions change at the press of a button, reflecting his fluctuating thoughts.
It seemed more honest to the character's hubris to be like "You've heard of me" as a sort of meta-nod to the audience, than to make him give a formal introduction. Likewise, his sarcasm and loquaciousness are sort of the difference between knowing he's a "frivolous [irreverent] bard" and seeing it play out in a new context.
It also works on another level, of Arthur narrating the story to Creoda and in tandem with Creoda, where "I" and "you" enact on each other.
Creoda is just a more human-shaped version of the monsters he's used to grappling with. And in a way, that disturbs Arthur all the more because he's finally encountering something that doesn't obey his usual methods. Here's a problem he can't hack and slash his way out of. In fact, hacking and slashing will only incur severe emotional and spiritual consequences. He who fucks around must be made to find out.
He has to resort to magical means he'd otherwise scoff at, having staked so much of his pride on his physical might being sufficient to overcome all threats, supernatural or otherwise.
It's not that his skepticism about Creoda's curse is rooted in scientific doubt as much as hubris: Everything dies to something, and he's going to find the silver bullet even if it means he has to get his hands dirty. It's like he hopes he can bury Camlan if he can also bury Creoda.
