Im thinking about how ballsy/stupid Quintus is citing the story of Roger Maxson in the Mariposa Military Base to try to convince the elder of Yosemite to rebel against the Commonwealth, which led by his descendant knowing full well how revered the Maxson name is in the Brotherhood.
Obviously the religious end was a big swing and miss because she had made clear she wasn’t interested in that but using the founding of the Brotherhood like that was such an odd choice to me. Even if the religious angle worked, why would any of them be convinced by using the Maxson name to go against another Maxson?
It really makes me wonder what’s been going on with the East Coast Brotherhood since Fallout 4. Paladin Harkness made it sound like the situation there is pretty dire. But also everyone is afraid of the Commonwealth.
I dunno, I’m trying to make sense of this outside of Quintus being an idiot. So far that’s the winning theory for me.
So I’m listening to Roger Maxson’s holotapes in Fallout 76 and from what I’m understanding he wanted to collect technology and preserve it for future generations. Implying ALL can have it and use it. However, by the time the other Fallouts take place the BOS is very NO ONE SHOULD HAVE IT BUT US going as far as to start wars over it.
So how’d this viewpoint warp? It it simply because of the passage of time or did the Elders that came after simply not like Roger’s mindset?
Roger Maxson is the most important man in Fallout American History
So tonight, as we break bread together, let us forge together something new. Something strong. Something we can be proud of. Something we can build upon. We'll preserve what's best of what's come before and use it. And one day, we will reclaim what was lost. Let us forge a Brotherhood of Steel.
I love great man history. It is entirely inaccurate and a horrible way to represent trends, war, geo-political power, and the thousands of little pieces that all make up 'history.' Great Man History swipes that all away and instead makes history a Biography, where the steps made by an individual would reverberate for eons to come. In real life, the amount of people who could possibly defined as 'Great Men' is minuscule (by my count, its 5) and its usage in chronicling history is dubious if not non-existent
But for storytelling? Hot DOG that gets my blood pumping!
Roger Maxson was a man on the Brink. His commanding officer, Colonel Robert Spindel had just committed suicide, leaving Maxson in command of the entire military brigade established at Mariposa - 1,500-3,200 soldiers, all of whom had to deal with the fact that their government willingly committed horrors against not only humans, but also American citizens. He was able to gather the families of his men, probably doubling their population numbers, and then watched as a week and a day after assuming command, Roger Maxson watched as nuclear flame wiped clean the entire surface.
This was not like Ellen Santiago on the East Coast, a military leader looking for some hope, some direction. This was a man who had declared independence from his country, had the Rose colored glasses ripped from his eyes and watched as consumerism and imperialism consumed the entire world. Mariposa was a military base... and also a corporate research center. Maxson would have been well aware of the economic situation prior to the war and would most likely have come to the conclusion that America was responsible for its own death.
I brought up Great Man history so let me plug one of those Great Men - Charlemagne. If you were gonna be boring about (IE an actual historian), you would look at how the Franks had been rising in local power for decades, and that Charlemagne used the foundation made by his grandfather and the relationship with Rome that had been fostered since the Merovingians to make the largest military powerhouse seen in the West since the fall of Rome. But if you were gonna be BASED AS FUCK (a bad historian but a good storyteller) you would write about how Charlemagne's personal brilliance and skill won the day. And the latter is exactly what Charlemagne would want you to think - so he had his legends made. Codifed centuries later as Chanson de geste, Charlemagne spent the majority of his time as Holy Roman Emperor myth-making about himself. Establishing epics, wondrous stories, and poems. Becoming more than himself and instead being Pater Europae
Roger Maxson: We need to do something bold. We can't just stay the US Army. What's going to happen, and this is only a matter of time, is some general, or some goddamned politician is going to exit a Vault and start ordering us around. And worse they'll order some grunt to start the whole damned cycle again. Another wave of nuclear death. And if that's not enough they'll do it again. You know they will, Lizzy. It ends with us. We won't let them.
Elizabeth Taggerdy: I... I understand. But a Brotherhood? Knights? I'm supposed to call you, what, Elder?
Roger Maxson: Words have power, Lizzy. They build identity. They take on a meaning if you keep using them, even if it didn't exist to begin with. It was the Knights and Scribes after the fall of Rome that protected what was left of Western civilization. So we are the new Knights and our role is similar. But we'll need more than names. We'll need new traditions, our own, well, mythology. Something people can believe to their core.
Elizabeth Taggerdy: Is this necessary?
Roger Maxson: What else can I do? Declare myself President? Make you a Senator? Look around. Something's killing us more than the rads and freaks out there. Depression. People have lost everyone. Every goddam soul. Wives, kids, loved ones, heck even the mailman. We need to replace it with something otherwise people's souls will wither. We'll be little more than walking dead men.
This quick move paid dividents to the Brotherhood as a whole and the Maxson family as a rule. America was a corrupt, bloated institution that would lead to its own death and cannibalization - so Maxson changed it. A cult of personality, a subculture independent from what came before it, a pseudo-monarchical meritocratic collectivistic state. Bound by their tenets and their Leader
Roger Maxson was a visionary, a man who knew that he had to become more than a man, had to become a symbol. And in fact, so did his entire Brotherhood. That what saved them from the ennui of the Enclave and NCR - they're something new, with their God King looking down at them. And it is this same legend and mythology that will allow for their unification under Arthur Maxson as the new High Elder. Two centuries later, people are still willing to join, fight, and sacrifice for the ideals of the Brotherhood and for the Name of Maxson, and with the adaption of some of Lyon's (and honestly, Roger Maxson's) strategies of recruitment, Arthur has ensured that they will keep going too.
If Maxson had instead simply become "Colonel Maxson of the US Army Remnant" I can guarantee he would be forgotten. But Roger Maxson, first High Elder, will be a name that never dies
Or, Arthurian themes and allusions in the Brotherhood of Steel mythos as seen in Fallout 4. (But that’s a lot of words.)
Yep. We're doing this.
First, some obligatory caveats: there is no single Arthurian canon, just 1500 years of assorted fanfic based on the whims of whoever was writing at the time. For this extremely highbrow Tumblr meta, I have ignored most of it and drawn on my favorites. Also Wikipedia.
Also, I am not an expert in Arthurian literature (or Fallout lore, come to that), and I preemptively beg the pardon of anyone who is.
Finally, in no way am I claiming that all these parallels and thematic echoes are deliberate or even significant. In fact, I'd break it down into:
Clearly deliberate allusions, whether in or out of universe;
Probably coincidence, but could be someone deliberately capitalizing on a coincidental similarity;
Almost certainly coincidence, but fun to speculate about; annnnd
Blatant Monty Python references. (Because of course there are.)
I'll start with the big one.
Arthur Maxson, boy king and unifier
(source)
So across all the retellings and variations of King Arthur’s life story, there are a few consistent elements, particularly in his early life and rise to power. Some of these threads are echoed in the Fallout universe, specifically (and unsurprisingly) in the person of Arthur Maxson.
Both the legendary King Arthur and Arthur Maxson were born with a claim to power lying in their ancestry, both were fostered away from their families, and both proved themselves in combat at a young age.
King Arthur united the warring kingdoms of Britain into a single entity, making them stronger against outsiders and receiving general admiration and acclaim. Arthur Maxson united the divided factions of the BoS after the events of Fallout 3 and is held in similarly high regard by his men.
The name Prydwen is a reference to the ship of the original King Arthur. Presumably, Arthur Maxson (or someone in the BoS who anticipated his promotion) christened the airship in a deliberate homage to the Arthurian myth.
King Arthur is associated with his legendary sword. I think it’s notable that Maxson’s legend is associated with a bladed weapon, too. ("He killed a DEATHCLAW with a COMBAT KNIFE!”)
Probably coincidence, but fun: the historical emperor Magnus Maximus, who pops up a lot in early Arthurian legend, was known in Welsh as... Macsen. (⌐■_■)
Round Table, but make it dieselpunk
(Continued under the cut.)
Moving away from obvious allusions and into some looser parallels:
Like the Round Table, the Brotherhood is an exclusive knightly order with its leader being the one able to open it up to his chosen few.
Like the Round Table, the BoS sees itself as defending human civilization against forces of chaos. (I’ll touch on their tech-hoarding tendencies when I get to the Grail stuff.) This idea of civilization in the face of chaos goes back to the BoS’s founding, even though the level of isolationism we see in most of the Fallout franchise is not exactly what founder Roger Maxson had in mind: “Notably, Maxson's ultimate intention was to establish the Brotherhood as an organization that works closely with people outside of the Brotherhood, as guardians of civilizations, not its gatekeepers.” (source) In a lot of ways, Arthur Maxson represents a return to his ancestor’s original ideals.
Renegade knights? Internal politics? Traitors within? We gotchu.
In both the medieval legends and in all chapters of the BoS we’ve seen, there’s a big focus on bloodlines (ew). Ironically, it’s probably Arthur Maxson’s unquestionable ancestry that allows him to be more progressive than either of his East Coast predecessors when it comes to boosting Brotherhood numbers by recruitment (even though you can still see a clear division between “born Brotherhood” and recruited soldiers, but that’s a topic for another day). Maxson sees himself as an Elder who "cares for the people"—however misguided and patronizing that attitude might be—and whatever else you might say about the guy, you can't say he doesn't believe he has a duty. Which brings us to…
Know Your Enemy: Danse as Gawain
Before I start this section, an acknowledgement of authorial bias:
Gawain, as portrayed in the Middle English poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, is my very favorite of King Arthur’s knights. (Other stories aren't always as flattering, but like I said at the outset: I'm sticking to the ones I like.)
That poem is my very favorite piece of medieval Arthurian literature. In this section, I'll refer to the modern English translation by Simon Armitage.
...that’s it, I have no other biases to disclose.
What? 👀
(Art: Clive Hicks-Jenkins)
All right. So in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, you’ve got this himbo loyal knight of Arthur’s who finds himself caught up in... you know what, let me just paste in the Wikipedia summary. (The Toast, RIP, also did a pretty entertaining and more-or-less accurate recap.)
It describes how Sir Gawain, a knight of King Arthur's Round Table, accepts a challenge from a mysterious "Green Knight" who dares any knight to strike him with his axe if he will take a return blow in a year and a day. Gawain accepts and beheads him with his blow, at which the Green Knight stands up, picks up his head and reminds Gawain of the appointed time. In his struggles to keep his bargain, Gawain demonstrates chivalry and loyalty until his honour is called into question by a test involving the lord and the lady of the castle where he is a guest.
Don’t worry too much about the plot details, though; for this post, I’m more interested in the thematic parallels. The Green Knight story is full of contrasts: order vs. chaos, civilization vs. wilderness, mortal man vs. Other... but let’s start with Gawain himself.
Some stuff to know about Gawain:
He was "as good as the purest gold, devoid of vices but virtuous and loyal". Gawain took his principles more seriously even than the rest of Arthur’s knights, not out of pride but out of humility: "I would rather drop dead than default from duty," he says.
He’s faithful and honorable and never even tempted to betray an oath, even when offered every variety of seduction and riches, except for a single moment of weakness in a desperate desire not to be executed for random shit by powerful forces for reasons he doesn't understand.
Even though he doesn’t really understand why he needs to die, he sticks to his oath. Gawain's one weakness is a moment of desperate, private, human desire for survival. He'll submit to the headsman’s axe if he has to, but he'd still rather live.
Above all, Gawain is the ideal of a human man: he might be the bravest and loyal man there is, but he’s still fundamentally human.
You can probably see where I'm going with this.
A few more fun facts about Gawain that resonate with Paladin Danse’s story:
He’s got a bunch of really shitty brothers. (No comment.)
Gawain (SPOILERS!) doesn't actually end up beheaded, but he does willingly kneel for his execution and gets a cut on the throat as a reminder of his sin. And, uh, Danse can also get his throat cut! It doesn’t end as nicely but it’s, you know, a thing that can happen.
Gawain might be a really good guy, and he tries really hard to be one, but in the end he’s nothing more than that: there’s nothing supernatural about him, he has no special powers beyond his own principles and devotion. He’s just a dude doing his Best.
Wait, why not Danselot?
Oh, that guy? Here’s the thing.
Lancelot personifies the continental ideals of courtly love that became popular in the High Middle Ages. Central to his story is the prioritization of personal relationships and romantic feelings in a way that you don’t really see in Gawain's, at least in the Green Knight tale. (Later stories hook Gawain up with an extremely delightful lady, but even that is a different flavor of romance than Lancelot's and has more to do with Gawain honoring his word and his egalitarian treatment of women (hell yeah). In the poem, Gawain is impressed by Bertilak's wife but resists her temptation; in fact, the biggest risk is not that he'll yield to her advances but that he'll be discourteous to her, i.e., violate his principles and cause dishonor to his king and his host.)
Lancelot is driven by passions over principles in a way that Gawain never really is (at least in the stories I’m talking about; later writers have committed character assassination to various degrees). Yes, you could argue that both Gawain and Lancelot betray their oaths, but Lancelot’s betrayal is never, um, blind. He knows what he’s doing and makes a deliberate choice to prioritize his love for the queen over his love for the king. It doesn’t make him a bad guy—he too is an ideal knight with one fatal flaw—but his character isn’t as comparable to Paladin Danse.
Yeah, Gawain is (in most stories) a prince and a kinsman of Arthur’s, but he’s ultimately a native boy who doesn’t break the mold of a Knight of the Round Table. Likewise, Danse is portrayed as competent and valuable to the BoS, but not exceptional or breaking the mold of what a BoS soldier should be: he simply represents the ideal. Meanwhile, Lancelot is a foreign prince who was marked from childhood as special and fancy, and his storyline goes alllll over the place. (Much like this post.)
For example, Lancelot goes to absolutely absurd extremes to prove his devotion for no other reason than to prove it. (“I’ll do any useless humiliating thing you want. I’ll betray every oath except the one I made to you. That’s what love is!”) Gawain would never. Danse would never.
Ultimately, Gawain's tests are of his character and not of his love. And like Gawain, Danse’s devotion is to service and his principles, not to another person—even Arthur Maxson.
All that said, there are some similarities: both are beloved by Arthur, both are held up as the ideal of what a knight should be. And even if their fatal flaws are different, both make the point that no matter how good and brave and loyal they might be, no human being can be perfect.
(Except Galahad. Who is, as a result, very boring.)
I’ll conclude this section with a quote from someone else’s take on the Greek Knight poem:
I like Gawain. He’s not perfect, but he’s trying his best which is all any of us can do. He’s not like the other knights in the Arthurian legends who occasionally ‘accidentally’ kill women on their little adventures and then feel hard done by when they have to deal with the consequences of that. Gawain holds himself to a high standard – higher, it seems, than Arthur and his knights hold him to considering how hard they laugh when Gawain tells them how bad he feels about the whole thing.
I think Gawain is very relatable in this story. We all want to be better than we actually are.
And that, more than anything else, is Danse.
The Grail myth
What’s that? Lost relics of power? Better send some large armed men after ‘em!
The parallels to the BoS’s tech-hoarding ways are obvious enough that the games themselves lampshade them (albeit by way of Monty Python). But it also ties into the larger themes of “purity” versus “corruption” and the BoS’s self-image as a bastion between civilization and chaos. (See Maxson's line in response to the Sole Survivor’s quip about the Dark Ages: “Judging from the state of the world, it wouldn't be a stretch to say we're living in that era again.”)
But the ultimate futility of the Grail mission is also worthy of note. The BoS might want the power of prewar tech on their side, but they’re no more to be trusted with it than any other group of human beings. No matter how they try, the “corruption” of humanity can’t be overcome as long as they’re striving to harness power for their own ends. You can only achieve power by surrendering control of it.
The death of Arthur
The nature of gameplay being what it is, it's not guaranteed that the Arthur figure will be fatally betrayed, bringing Camelot down with him—but it's not unlikely, either.
Awkward.
Some final spitballing:
Outside the Brotherhood, there are some fun parallels of the Arthur myth with the rest of Fallout 4. Betrayal by one’s own son, for example.
The key difference between the BoS and the legendary Round Table: King Arthur’s knights, for all their flaws and human weaknesses, are usually presented as unambiguous Good Guys. The BoS is... a little more ambiguous...
...but damn if they don’t think they're the good guys.
One of the things I love about the window Fallout 76 gives into the early days of the Brotherhood of Steel is that it shows had much motive decay the Brotherhood has had over the centuries, from Roger Maxson’s original ideal.
He had an endgame, a goal, a vision.
The current Brotherhood are just neofeudal technocultist magpies.,
(Basically the whole idea behind this is that SoSu was romantically involved with Roger Maxson before the bombs fell and now they are faced with his only living descendant- Arthur Maxson.)
How could you have been so foolish?
Perhaps it was the last breath of hope you had fueling your actions, whatever shred of a dead past you could scramble to sink into. Of course, you knew damn well that your love didn't survive. There was no way that he could've. Against all odds, you knew deep within the pit of your stomach that Roger Maxson- the man you called your dearest, had burned to a heavily irradiated crisp. His acerbic wit couldn't have saved him, nothing could've.
Just like with everything else you knew, he was yet another piece of a world that was violently ripped away within the blink of your eyes.
Or..at least that is what you had thought.
When the truth of his survival reared its atrocious face, the sorrow you felt couldn't have been consoled even by sleep. No tears shed, yet all the hollowness of true melancholy sickeningly twisted your gut. Nothing could quite compare to this final blow. Roger Maxson, the man you adored, the man you had planned to make caramel apples with as a part of your Halloween festivities- not only survived the bombs, but didn't bother to even see if you had made it. Instead he courageously created this..this Brotherhood Of Steel.
Was there a greater pain than knowing you were purposefully abandoned? Sure, there was comfort in the musing of him leaving you within that icy prison for your own safety..but you didn't even know if that was a thought that ever crossed his mind.
So, again, How could you have been so damn foolish?
Joining the faction your former beloved created was a strange decision on your part. At least you were safe. Hell, the routine, the safety, and the ability to trust another person was probably the best thing to happen to you since you entered the wasteland. Alas, following the trend of your horrid life- this too was disrupted.
It was simple enough to board that vertibird with your new commanding officer, even friend, heavens know it wasn't the first time you flew in one. Roger was always able to weasel his way into being able to use military resources for anything but their intended purposes. It was actually quite liberating, being able to fly so high with the promise of meeting whatever unlucky bastard it was that assumed the position of the man that broke you.
That's when it all came crashing down.
The moment you entered the glorious metallic halls of the Prydwen, something told you to turn on your heels and leave it all behind. Something felt wrong deep down, and yet even your own intuition couldn't have prepared you for what met you next. The very second you locked eyes, you felt sick to your stomach.
Ice blue eyes. Those terrible, gorgeous eyes, blazing into you with some terrifying strike to your very soul. Yes, a plethora of people posses blue eyes- some even more beautiful than the pair that stared back at you with unamused confusion. However none could quite compare, for you knew these were the eyes of the man that haunted your dreams at night. Shadows of his loving kisses, passionate trysts, and even the sorrow those remarkable eyes held whenever the man behind them had to bid you fair well and leave you for months on end at your little home all alone.
Those were Roger's eyes. You knew it. You knew it the second he looked at you, you knew it and you hated it.
As though that wasn't enough, the Paladin at your side had confirmed this painful conclusion- proudly announcing that you now "stand in the presence of Elder Maxson, last of the revered Maxson line." That in itself was enough to make the floor lose its solidity, feeling as though instead of being stable- it was now swaying like an untamed sea beneath your feet.
The longer you gazed upon the esteemed boy in front of you, the more it hurt. The more you could spot similarities of Roger in another man, a man that descended from him.
It was all you could do to stomach speaking to him, your throat catching on every sentence as an unbearable throb in your chest began to resurface after months of laying dormant. That night hadn't been any easier- the realization that Roger not only abandoned you, but also had an entire family with another woman carving away at what was left of your fragile sanity. That was supposed to be you..you were his wife, not some other woman. What did you do to deserve this pain? All you could do was stare emptily at the ceiling above you, sleep not even once serving as an option.
Now you truly felt that your life had been shattered.
How were you going to tell your Elder that you couldn't look him in the eyes because he was nothing but a reminder of your greatest heartache?
It was missed a missed chance for the male sole survivor to have known the OG Maxon before the war so meeting arthur would have been weird possibly even funny as the brother hood has kinda gone crazy since they started...i kinda Just want blue telling embrassing stories of the brotherhood founder like story time at a kindergarten...you know what i mean
This would absolutely have been hilarious. I could see a female sole meeting him too, either through her husband - or like in my Nora’s case, because her family has military ties xD
Arthur: I am a descendant of Roger Maxson, a great man who, seeing the atroci-
Nora: Captain Roger Maxson? From California?
Arthur: Yes, he was-
Nora: He was horribly crude. He would chew with his mouth open and drank beer from the bottle at dinner. I am not even surprised he formed a militant cult. Actually, I have a funny story about that, you won’t believe this [blablabla...]
Arthur: :[
Tbh there could be a lot of cute headcanons there!! I’m kinda imagining Arthur with puppy eyes hearing stories of his ancestor before the War, getting to feel connected to that legend as a living person, not just an icon. It could be very wholesome ;w;
