So today I’ve done a bit of research on Arthurian Legend. The first part of the second half of The Storyteller, I’m sending Tabitha into The King Arthur tale.
Before this I knew the basics of this myth like most people:
There was a king named Arthur. He had a special sword called Excalibur that he got out of a stone or a lake, depending on who you ask. He had a wizard mentor named Merlin. He has a group of knights and a round table. He has a wife Guenevere who is also in love with one of his knights, Lancelot and that got everyone into a lot of trouble.
Places I have seen the Arthur Legend:
The Sword in the Stone by Disney, with adorable little Wart and old man Merlin who taught him everything important.
I saw a live action movie one time that may have been based on the book The Mists of Avalon (which I haven’t read) that focused more on Morgan le Fay. I don’t remember much of it except that she was tricked into sleeping with her half-brother, Arthur.
The BBC series Merlin, which toward the end used the less than happy ending to the Arthur story, ie Arthur getting mortally wounded by Mordred and then “disappearing”, but oh hey it might come back some day. (Argh, I don’t care how ‘faithful’ that ending was, I was so unhappy.)
New things I discovered:
Excalibur actually came out of the lake. There was a lady there who took care of it, and she and Merlin had a thing.
The sword that Arthur pulled out of the stone was not Excalibur.
There is apparently a lot of illicit sex going on among the peoples of this mythology. Arthur’s father slept with a married woman to get Arthur. Arthur slept with his half-sister Morgan and/or Morgause and sired the person who would kill him, Mordred. And some of his knights got naughty as well (Besides Lancelot).
Chivalry was a super big thing, but most things involving Courtly Love eventually just turned into illicit sex.
and …
I’m not sure how I’ll use this information for my story yet, but it was only an hour or so of research. Just enough to get me the basics. I think my main issue is that there are a lot of people in the Arthurian Legend, and if I’m keeping with calling people by their roles instead of their names, it gets a lot more complicated when there are all those knights. We’ll have to see what I come up with.
