Since I Posted This, Another Of My Closest Friends Came Out As Aroace.

From what I’ve seen, Kay/Gaheris sometimes seems to go along with Balan/Bedivere, which could point to whatever source material there may be or be a testament to the lack thereof.

I’ve seen a few writers on Ao3 shipping Kay with Gaheris, which strikes me as a little random, though I haven’t read much about Gaheris and could be missing something. What do you think the rationale/source material behind that ship is?

i have legit no idea anon ive seen it too and i do not understand my only guess is that they interacted in an adaptation ?? if anyone knows tell me im curious now

La Tavola Ritonda is a cavalcade of different canons:

The Lady of the Lake, Sister of Morgan and, by extention, Arthur's

Lancelot stealing from Perceval's backstory

The Split-Shield from Lancelot-Grail, given by the Lady of the Lake symbolizing Lancelot and Guinevere's sexual union, being retconned into another plot by Morgan

King Pelles being King of Organia (Orkney). Also, Amite/Elaine/Pervida's Mom* organizing the... "conception"

*(It's kind of funny, but I've always felt that Brisen and the "Queen of the Wastelands" being separate characters was pointless) *(King Pelles x Queen Brisen, woot)

Uther Pendragon is Morgan's dad**

**(per the original Prose Tristan, apparently)

The events of Pulzella Gaia/The Merry Maiden being canon here. Yes, this technically means... a whole bunch of things

and finally, Lancelot has a daughter***

***(I would sincerely like this to be Gwen's but I'm not holding my breath)

I've only messaged people on Tumblr three times: the third when I didn't have an answer for an ask (I'm still working on it), the second when I had a question to ask someone which didn't seem big enough to be ask-worthy, and the first to a very prominent Arthurian blog which wasn't strongly related to my admittedly odd and random comment about the Grail questers but was the only Arthurian blog I'd encountered at that point, since I hadn't yet figured out how Tumblr worked or that I could post things. I'm a little mortified about that last one, but all three people were nice about it. Anyway, I don't make a habit of messaging people on here because I'm worried it would seem weird and invasive. Then again, if someone messaged me, I wouldn't find it either of those things. I don't think I'm alone in this: I can vaguely remember seeing a post where someone said they would feel like they were ambushing someone in a dark alley if they messaged someone but would be happy if someone messaged them.

Anyway, all that is to say I'm not really sure how Tumblr messaging culture works, but if you want to message me, feel free to. I won't think it's weird.

In The White Goddess, Robert Graves quotes an old Irish triad as saying, “It is death to mock a poet, to love a poet, to be a poet”. As a source of information, Robert Graves is slightly more reliable than Sir Breuse Sans Pitie, and while I’ve seen references to this triad elsewhere, I can’t find an original source for it. Regardless of that, I rather like it.

(From Athletics and Manly Sport by John Boyle O'Reilly)

Words to live by: Fear Celtic Poets

If this were the Book of Jonah, it might make more sense, but I guess someone just wanted to make a fish case for their favorite scroll, and I can respect that.

Esther scroll in fish-like case, Eastern Europe, 19th century, The Jewish Museum, London

Wait a minute...

Edward the Third was an Arthuriana nerd who named his son after Sir Lionel, and...

...made up a title for him, which....

...had previously existed in Arthuriana and didn't refer to a place. Coincidence?

Probably.

Well, darn. That would've been very interesting. Then again, maybe the knowledge that Edward III was such a nerd he named his son after Sir Lionel is enough to ask.

hi! i apologize if this is outside your ballpark. i recently came across a post about how religion appears in bbc's merlin and it got me thinking about religion in arthurian legend in general. i was wondering if you have any thoughts on the topic? what religions do the characters follow and how does it impact their lives? i know most of the 'cast' is christian but even then medieval christianity is different enough from modern christianity that i constantly feel like i'm missing some nuance/context when i read arthuriana. do other religions feature (such as judaism, islam, pagan spirituality) and are there any essays on it or books where that's explored? thank you for all you do and have a great day!

Hello!

So I’m definitely no religious scholar of any kind. Yet I somehow managed to write an obscenely long post in reply. I've provided copious amounts of literature on everything I'm discussing here, so I encourage anyone who sees this to read what's provided and form their own opinion. Although my reply is based on the Medieval stories I've read and quoted as well as the essays and books of people far more qualified than I am, it's still my own interpretation, and shouldn't be taken as the final word on this highly complex subject. If anyone finds something here I've gotten wrong, please don't hesitate to educate me otherwise and point me in a direction to learn more!

Without further ado...

The first thing anyone looking into this needs to understand is [most of] the Arthurian stories we have were drafted or documented by Christians, oftentimes monks (ie, people very devoted to their religion). Even the texts like the Mabinogion or The Welsh Triads, which contains no Christianity, wasn’t written down until the 12th century after the oral tradition had passed through the Christianizing of Britain. Not to mention translation bias, an oft overlooked factor. For example, French characters Lancelot and Galahad were retroactively added to The Welsh Triads to bring the Triads more in line with the widely popular French narrative. Translator Rachael Bromwich has excellent footnotes regarding this in the file I shared above. So just keep that in mind while reading/researching this subject.

More generally speaking, while some characters themselves aren’t Christian, such as Muslim Palomides or the occasional Jewish character, the texts are [mostly] from an overtly Islamphobic and antisemitic viewpoint. The depictions of religion in Medieval Arthuriana should never be taken as an indication of how things “really were,” either in the time it’s meant to take place (ie, the 5th-6th centuries when the Saxons were colonizing Britain) or the time/place it was written in (ie Chrétien de Troyes wrote from his own 12th century Breton perspective). Point being, it’s all very biased. Perception heavily depends on the place and year things were written and translated. If you're ever unsure which translation of a text will best suit your needs, whether that means accuracy, readability, or containing more robust footnotes, don't hesitate to ask.

That being said, the differences you’re touching on regarding Medieval versus Modern Christianity sometimes stems from Christian Mysticism, which was a prevalent theology in the Middle Ages and still exists today (albeit to a lesser degree). Some contemporary sources on this would be:

The Confessions by Saint Augustine of Hippo

The City of God by Saint Augustine of Hippo

The Book of Divine Works by Saint Hildegard von Bingen

The Letters of Hildegard von Bingen Volume I by Saint Hildegard von Bingen

The Letters of Hildegard von Bingen Volume II by Saint Hildegard von Bingen

The Book of Margery Kempe by Margery Kempe.

Now the thing with Christianity in history and Arthuriana is that the lines between orthodox practice and the mystical was blurred. On an episode about charms, the Medieval Podcast (also available on any podcasting platform like Spotify) explains how people bought and used charms all the time, even within their Christian practice. To them, it was a part of their worship. They may have chanted some words over a sick friend while anointing certain parts of the body in the hopes it would aid in healing. Depending on the time and place, this may or may not have been openly discussed for fear of repercussions or accusations of blasphemy, but it was common enough for historians to have gathered a multitude of examples preserved in spell books. To a desperate Medieval Christian, one of these charms occupied a similar place to Pray the Rosary or Hail Marys in hopes of boosting the success of their endeavor.

So in a similar vein, that concept is sometimes stretched for the sake of an Arthurian story. What you end up with are characters like Merlin, supposedly half-demon, but baptized, therefore his purified magic and prophesizing is considered "Christian;" Morgan le Fay, raised in a nunnery, yet learned necromancy from the holy sisters; and Gawain, who obtained his sun powers, as well as his name, from the hermit that baptized him. At least, so it goes in the Vulgate.

In a way, these people are not magical through their own power, but channeling the divine with the help of their Christian education in order to bestow those benefits, often health, strength, or prosperity related, onto others. (You'll see a lot of real life examples in the contemporary sources I linked above.) Vulgate editor Norris J. Lacy and his translation team left a footnote on the Gawain passage explaining the history of the Gawain/Gwalchmai character that lead me to theorize that this passage might be an attempt by Anonymous to maintain those heightened magical powers while offering a palatable Christian explanation for it.

A similar phenomenon can be seen in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the characters are staunchly Christian, and yet the presence of a green-skinned knight astride a green horse who can survive a beheading is seen as marvelous, even miraculous, rather than monstrous. As Larissa Tracy explains in the essay Shifting Skin Passing as Human Passing as Fay, although the Green Knight is Othered by the court, he's not so Othered as to be held entirely apart. He's "tallest of men" and "half a giant." He is still one of the "in" crowd at least a little bit. So while his green coloring shocks the court, and calls to mind Otherworldly fay, in a way similar to the Lady of the Lake or other such beings, the Green Knight isn't viewed as an enemy of the crown so much as a chance for the court to prove its virtue. In the end, this Green Knight was indeed a man, Sir Bertilak, transformed by Morgan le Fay to take on the monstrous visage, and was indeed "one of them" all along. In this way, concepts which seem magical (read: Pagan) to the modern reader remain steeped in Christian ideals. This extends to Gawain's pentacle shield as well, sometimes misconstrued with a similar Pagan symbol, which the poem outright states represents the five virtues of knighthood or even the five wounds of Jesus Christ. Then again, Rhonda Knight's essay All Dressed Up With Someplace to Go: Regional Identity argues the opposite point, that there is indeed a divide. Knight asserts that the poet has intentionally heightened the dichotomy of insider/outsider, particularly as it relates to the Anglo-Welsh border between Sir Bertilak's Wirral and King Arthur's London Camelot. It's quite plain from the moment the Green Knight enters the scene there's a stark split between the two cultures, whether that be interpreted as the people of Wales and the people of England, or the Otherworld associated with Wales and the dominance of Christianity.

But anyway enough about Christians. Let's talk about my friend Sir Palomides and Islam.

A brief recap for anyone who's unfamiliar with Sir Palomides, he's a Muslim knight, referred to in the Medieval Christian tongue as a "Saracen," who vows to convert to Christianity for the sake of marrying Isolde, but curiously hasn't yet. His father, Esclabor, and both of his younger brothers, Segwarides and Safir, have already converted. Palomides is continuously ostracized for his religion/appearance throughout the narrative and considered lesser than Tristan. This is pretty much always the roles they play. Sometimes Palomides is treated with extreme cruelty, such as in the Post-Vulgate, where Galahad forces him to convert to Christianity at sword point, only for Palomides to be murdered shortly afterward by Gawain once his narrative purpose, ie successful conversion, has been fulfilled.

For this break down, I'm ignoring that portrayal of Palomides as well as the Prose Tristan because they suffer from the issues I already outlined regarding Medieval Christian's malicious depiction of non-Christians. And I hate them</3 We'll be turning our attention to Le Morte d'Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory instead as Palomides is slightly more nuanced there. (Very slightly. "The Good Saracen Sir Palomides" is a loaded sentiment, but Malory was a Medieval Englishman imprisoned for his crimes and writing through his madness. We work with what we have.) The copy I linked is translated by Dr. Dorsey Armstrong, not only because it's very good, but because she authored one of the essays I'll be sharing on the subject. She also has a 24 part lecture series on Arthuriana that I highly recommend.

In Le Morte d'Arthur, and the earlier published La Tavola Ritonda as well as Byelorussian Tristan, Palomides is treated a teensy bit better. In most versions of the story, Palomides misses an appointment to duel with Tristan out of cowardice or dishonor. But Malory has written a scenario in which Palomides missed the appointment not out of subservience to Tristan, but because he was jailed elsewhere and couldn't physically make it. He still gets his ass kicked by Tristan, but Malory's change shifts implicational blame of Palomides to circumstantial blame of his situation which serves to create a more sympathetic character. So while Tristan's perception of events remains the same, Palomides is given a narrative excuse which maintains his honor and integrity in the mind of the reader. Yet as Dr. Dorsey Armstrong points out in her essay, Postcolonial Palomides, after Tristan discovers Palomides suffering a bout of grief-induced madness, Palomides's ability to communicate breaks down, and Tristan is unable to understand him. Palomides occupies a space that his fellow "Saracen" knights, such as Priamus of Tuscany, don't. He's Othered by everyone in the narrative yet gains renown among the Christian knights in part because of his extreme desire to join the Round Table, while resisting the necessity to conform to a religious order and community which does not otherwise accept him. Unlike his father and brothers, Palomides seems more aware of, and resistant to, the predatory systems which dictate their conditional acceptance.

Race as a concept did not exist in the Medieval world, rather it was intrinsically tied to religion. That said, colorism was always present. "Saracen" is a term used to refer to Arab people, but according to Hamed Suliman Abuthawabeh, the etymology of the word itself stems from the color brown, ie referential of skin tone. As it relates to fiction... Ever wonder why the Holy Land of the Middle East in Arthurian Legend, where Galahad, Perceval, and Bors seek the grail, is called "Sarras?" Now you know. This concept is not limited to Middle Eastern characters either. Black people in Medieval stories are referred to as "Moorish," ie from the "Moorlands." To that end, ever wonder why Aglovale's half-Black son is named "Morien?" Or how about Parzival's half-Black brother Feirefiz, who's described as having a mixture of "white and black skin," half his father's "fair country Anjou," half his mother's "heathen land Zassamank" with a face two-toned "as a magpie." (Author Wolfram von Eschenbach and translator Jessie Weston's words, not mine).

The fact is non-white, non-Christian characters are often reduced to their skin color, not only in what labels are applied to them as people, but their religions and falsified homelands as well. The cost of a modicum of respect is total assimilation. It's all or nothing for these characters, and even then, it's not a guarantee. Aside from the especially harrowing treatment of Palomides in the Post-Vulgate, this concept appears yet again in the poem The Turk and Sir Gawain, in which Gawain continuously oscillates between foe and friend with an unnamed Turkish knight, only to conclude the story by violently converting this individual through beheading. The Turkish knight is reborn, now Christian, and at last gains a name and identity, Sir Gromer. The expectation put on Pagan knights is so great they must submit to their white comrades and allow them to, literally, kill their former selves to be worthy of personhood in Christendom.

The same can be said of Jewish characters in Arthurian Legend. They're not often the focal point, but they do pop up from time to time. In La Tavola Ritonda, there's Dialantes the Jewish giant, as well as the beautiful Hebrew damsel of Aigua della Spina, who's curiously married to a Christian knight. Then of course there's the rampant antisemitism in Chrétien de Troyes's Perceval, as well as the continuations, which blame "the treacherous Jews" for killing Christ, while also casting Joseph of Arimathea as a Christian knight who brought the Holy Grail to Britain. Furthermore in The History of the Grail portion of the Vulgate, Joe is said to have "converted to the faith of Jesus Christ" while keeping it secret for fear that "the Jews would have killed him." Tons of revisionism happening. The bulk of the Vulgate makes little to no mention of Jewish people, good or bad, as it's mostly tied to the grail story. That said, when it does come up again in The Death of Arthur, it's a slippery slope into every other prejudice, as the term has become synonymous with evil, particularly as it relates to women.

I couldn't possibly outline the entirety of Medieval Christianity's relationship with other religions in a single tumblr post. Here's a link to my huge folder about Race & Religion in the Middle Ages. The essays and books there discuss this subject in a general sense but there's a sub-folder with Arthurian specific essays to learn more about Palomides, Priamus, Gromer, Morien, Feirefiz, and other characters or texts that touch on race/religion.

Despite all of the above, it's not all bad. Sometimes an author was anti-racist toward the non-Christian characters, yet limited by their time. (Think how Herman Melville portrayed Polynesian Queequeg in Moby Dick, positively, but used phrenology to compliment the shape of his skull by comparing him to that of white people. Not up to modern standards, but an attempt at progressive for its time nonetheless.) Looking at Dutch Arthuriana, while Morien's name is an insensitive indication of his unnamed "Moorish" mother, the only characters in the story who treat Morien poorly, such as the boatmen who refuse to ferry him, are openly condemned, even threatened, by the Knights of the Round Table, including Gareth.

I don't know what to call this writing technique, but it's used (and sometimes underutilized...) today. Essentially, as a means to indicate to the reader that the views of the antagonistic (in this case, xenophobic and anti-Black) character isn't shared by the author, they include another character who refutes and combats the negative behavior and who accepts the oppressed party as they are. However rare, it does happen in Medieval texts.

Last but not least, I'd be remiss to omit the Hebrew King Artus from this discussion. It's an incomplete story, but sets out to retell the Arthurian Legend from a Jewish standpoint. All the characters are Jewish and all religious allusions that were once Christian have been rewritten as Jewish. It has a thorough analysis by the translator and tons of footnotes to indicate the Jewish references throughout the text.

Regarding religion in modern Arthuriana like BBC Merlin, Druids aren't actually present in the Legends, with the one and only exception being The Adventure of Melóra and Orlando, which does refer to Merlin as a Druid! There's also the connection made between Merlin and Stonehenge in The History of the King's of Britain by Geoffrey of Monmouth; the word "Druid" is not used, but Merlin describes his own ability to manipulate the stones as "mystical." One has to remember that Druids didn't write down their own history, as it was their way to memorize religious practices and not document anything. All we know about them comes from outside sources, such as Greeks and Romans as well as Christian missionaries come to convert them. As Christianity took hold and figures like Saint Patrick "drove the snakes [Druids] out of Ireland," much of that history was either lost or purposefully maligned. Did the Druids actually participate in human sacrifice? Who knows! Bearing that in mind, we must acknowledge the influence of the several revivals of Druidism and recent boom in Neopaganism; a lot of popular interpretations of Arthurian Legend are just that, the creator's interpretation, and not necessarily indicative of what the historical people would have been doing. To learn more about that, there's Druids: A Very Short Introduction by Barry Cunliffe which I found helpful.

When it comes to Merlin, or Myrddin Wyllt, his character is potentially based on a few different people who really existed, but there isn't a name given to whatever religion they practiced in anything I've read. While the time period did have clearly delineated religions such as Christianity, Judaism, Zoroastrianism (and then Islam), Mithraism, Druidism, etc, there were just as many people who prayed to Jesus Christ while simultaneously leaving out offerings for the local spirits. Most religions come with regional differences, various sects, or shift gradually over time. Saint Patrick himself is said to have had a "fluid identity," as his autobiographical work The Confessions paints him in a fairly positive light as a peaceful missionary, while Dr. Janina Ramirez indicates in her book The Private Life of Saints that other sources characterize Saint Patrick as an aggressor. Some scholars even believe Saint Patrick may have been two different people, combined over the centuries, similarly to Myrddin Wyllt. Modern Arthurian books and shows really lean into a dichotomy between Christianity and the "Old Religion" for the sake of entertainment. But bouts of unrest weren't as fantastical nor made up of two wholly separate, well-defined teams.

Wow this got long. I think we'll leave it at that. I hope that answers your questions! Take care!

It was a musical, but...I am not beating the allegations.

I shall take this as an opportunity to ramble about Rómeó és Júlia, the subject of said allegations by @unstark, who may have created a monster (/j; thank you for doing so).

The first thing to know is that I haven't read Romeo and Juliet since middle school and liked it well enough then but wasn't really enthused because I liked the poetic elements but found the romance somewhat grating. However, I am a theater kid/opera nerd at heart, and looking at different versions of things and analyzing the connections, sometimes to an obsessive degree, is one of the things I live for (that's part of the lure of Arthuriana).

The second is that Rómeó és Júlia (ResJ) is fantastic, in large part because the cast is incredibly talented. I've seen all or a good portion of several different language versions of the musical, which originated in France as Roméo et Juliette (RetJ), and they all have good or decent but reasonably similar Juliets and mostly fine to mediocre Romeos. In addition to having a good Juliet, this Romeo, played by Dolhai Attila, was quite charming as an actor as well as a great singer so the rest have been mostly downhill. I am afraid, though, that like most of the people on ResJ/RetJ Tumblr, the characters I found most interesting were Mercutio and Tybalt, who both vary wildly from production to production. In ResJ, Mercutio (who fans call Zolicutio because he's played by Zoltán Bereczki) is a force of nature, and I did not properly appreciate that the first time I watched it. He sings, dances almost constantly, acts well, and raps in Magyar, and he never seems to stop or slack in energy until he dies. Tybalt, on the other hand, is a deeply tortured soul who's occasionally comedic in his melodrama (he does the Mr. Bean walk once) but has genuine pathos. I originally watched the first half without subtitles and did not realize the...ahem...concerning nature of his thoughts about Juliet, but that's in almost every version of the musical, and it is not as big a trigger warning as the obvious one, which is that Romeo and Juliet includes onstage suicide and murder, as well as references to sexual content. This is probably the first thing anyone learns about Romeo and Juliet, but I thought I should put that out there to be safe. Anyway, Szilveszter Szabó was vastly different than how I pictured Tybalt while reading the play, but he was excellent and brought a new perspective to the character. You love to see it. Also, ResJ Benvolio is a punk with the heart of a golden retriever, another far-from-the-play take which works in its context.

Now, the 2010 French version. I followed ResJ with the RetJ revival because John Eyzen's Mercutio is the second most popular Mercutio on Tumblr, after the inimitable Zolicutio, and I wanted to see what the hype was about. He is vastly, vastly different, both from how I imagined Mercutio and how Mercutio is in any other production. Eycutio alternates between stillness and over-the-top energy. He may or may not be bad mental illness rep. He may or may not be beholden to the madness-inducing entities of Chaos. Eyzen fully embraced the vibes of "La Follie" and the Queen Mab speech Mercutio has in Shakespeare to create a very unstable dude who revels in unpredictability and danger to a greater degree than Zolicutio and has probably won Best-Haired Veronese Man three years in a row. He has a love/hate relationship with Tybalt and flirts with him while fighting. (Zolicutio also flirts with Tybalt, but less in a I've-secretly-liked-you-since-we-were-twelve-but-also-hate-you-and-we-kissed-at-a-party-once-but-you-pretend-you-don't-remember-and-I'm-going-to-make-that-hard-for-you way than an I-bet-you're-into-me-and-also-that-you'll-hate-this-and-I-could-be-into-you-but-it's-not-clear-and-I-canonically-kissed-Romeo-but-didn't-seem-serious-about-it-and-I-rap-about-not-liking-romance-and-it-might-be-to-hide/drown/prevent-the-pain-or-I-might-be-aroallo-and-thriving way). Tim Ross's 2nd Tybalt looks and acts like the unlikely and maltreated test-tube child of George Michael and Cruella de Vil, and I'm going to leave it about that, because I have rambled too long without mentioning that Romeo's costume is exceptionally terrible in this one, that I really did not like Escalus, and that the Nurse was fantastic. All in all, what this one has to recommend it is the excellent Nurse, plus Tybalt and Mercutio's unevenly acted but ultimately interesting dynamic, which is the stuff of Fanlore pages.

I have not watched all of the 2001 French original, even though many people say Cécilia Cara is the best Juliet, because the other Juliets are also good and apparently a bald Mercutio is one thing I cannot take. (I could under certain conditions. If he were a young cancer patient, then that would add an urgency to his fervor for living life to the fullest, and a suspicion that he's going to die painfully soon whatever he does could influence his recklessness, but him being considerably older and more sophisticated than Romeo is weird). I might watch more of it, but it's low priority.

Apart from those, I've watched large parts of the Italian and Israeli ones, which I prefer to the French ones in acting but not in singing. The Italian one is a lot more dramatic than the Israeli one, which is maybe the least dramatic RetJ variant ever but pulls it off really well. The characters seem like normal people you would meet who try their best but get caught up in a tragedy bigger than they can understand. Of special note, as usual, is that ever-shifting scene, the duel between Mercutio and Tybalt, and this is the most original take on it I've seen. What sets it apart is that THEY DON'T EVEN DISLIKE EACH OTHER. You get the sense that they've had a lighthearted rivalry since they were kids but they're sort of friends and it's all a game to them. It's also the only version I've seen where those two actually have fencing swords, so the fight looks more realistic, emphasizing that they're playing with fire. When he realizes Mercutio is dying, Tybalt is visibly devastated and seems to lose the will to live. I don't usually cry at movies or shows, but that is the version which brought me the closest to crying.

I would like to watch the 2019 Toho version, since it comes highly recommended, but am not sure where to and might have to wait a while on that one. After I'm done with the Italian one, I intend to watch the Russian one, the German one, and the alternate cast recording of the Hungarian one. As for the English one...well, I've listened to a bit of it, and it was awful.

If you want to watch multiple versions at once or see which ones you might like, there is a great playlist on YouTube where someone edited together parts of the videos of different versions. If you want an incoherent-without-watching-the-full-thing but possibly still entertaining look into it, watch this compilation someone made, which is extremely funny if you've actually seen the full musical.

If you've read this entire semi-coherent ramble, you're a trooper. I hope it was vaguely interesting. Have a wonderful day!

it’s really easy to become obsessed with a shakespeare play you just have to watch one version of it and then read the play and then go mad trying to watch every possible version of it you can find and then study several centuries worth of performance history and controversy

I had a realization the other day:

Gawain was supposed to be the narrator of the Grail Quest.

Before Vulgate cycle and Sir Bors, the only other participant of the Grail Quest was Gawain. Gawain was used as a foil for Percival's story - a counterpart for Percival's character arc.

When reading Chretien's (unfinished) Grail story, it was always funny how Gawain takes up a significant chunk of the tale, but looking back at every version of the Grail cycle, there's this general trend that Percival was never going to return to Camelot to report the entire adventure to Arthur.

Percival's story is meant to end with him staying in the Grail Kingdom. So, someone else had to tell the story so it could be "passed down" and preserved as "history".

And that someone, had to be Gawain, the then-premier hero of the romances and Chretien's favorite.

Gawain isn't just the deuteragonist in Percival's story, he's also the one lives to tell the tale of Sir Percival.

Of Course, Robert de Boron comes along, and suddenly, the Grail Quest is everyone's adventure, but that's a different story...

The Grail Heroine leading Galahad to the ship, where Percival and Bors wait

Stained glass by Veronica Whall for King Arthur’s Great Halls at Tintagel