I Love Speculating About Medieval Welsh Poetry! As A Cauldron Kids Enthusiast, I'd Like To Elaborate

Griflet-centric Reincarnation AU following Mort Artu canon

Griflet remembers bits and pieces of his past life, mostly from Camlann, so he starts doing surface-level research on Arthuriana. Since he's the one to throw the sword in the lake in Mort Artu but Bedivere is best known for it, he becomes convinced that he's the reincarnation of Sir Bedivere.

There are two outcomes which immediately come to mind. One is that he runs into other Arthurian reincarnations. In this case, he might vastly confuse everyone, particularly if Bedivere shows up too. They might even think he's an imposter. However, they might remember who he actually was and have a laugh about the whole thing.

The other is that he never tells anyone, or only tells the people he's closest to, because he doesn't think anyone will believe him. He goes about the rest of his life secretly thinking he's Bedivere. It impacts nothing substantial, though from time to time he makes references which confuse the people around him and he's always kind of worried something will happen to his hand.

Happy Halloween to Guinevere's mother's terrifying prophetic ghost

The Adventures of Arthur at the Tarn Wadling (Jessie Weston translation)

“Lancelot Bears Off Guenevere” by Henry Justice Ford

Crop-Eared Dog makes the overzealous descriptions in the Vulgate look tame

This is a quote about the villain, the Knight of the Lantern, who should consider getting a job at Vogue if being his brother’s seneschal doesn’t work out:

“And when they were in a pleasant state, drinking and pleasuring, the king arose standing, and he looks to the four broad-bordered quarters on each side of him all around ; and he saw one young champion, armed, accoutred, and equipped, approaching him; and a tunic of fine silk around his white skin; a wonderful gold-threaded mantle above his fair tunic; and a firm, close, well-woven breastplate about his slender, brightly beautiful, well-curved body; a handsome gold-hemmed scapular above that breastplate; and a goldenhilted, ingenious, broad-grooved sword on his left thigh. A beautiful, very firm, jewelled diadem of manifold art about his head; a shapely, studded, flesh-coloured shield on the ridge of his back, and lines of golden letters in the edges of that royal shield, to announce and proclaim that there was not at the back of shield or sword in the world a warrior or champion better than that mighty soldier. Two angled spears in his white right hand; he had a long, narrow, radiant face, and a grey, clear-glorious, fresh, brilliant, joyous eye in his head ; and he had a slender, shapely, handsome mouth, a smoothslow, quiet, kingly raising in his eyelids, springs of love in each of his royal cheeks; and the people of the world were inferior to him. And in this wise was he; a glistening, full-lighted lantern was in his left hand, and the king was watching him till he came to his presence; and King Arthur asks news of him.”

I mean, really. Describing Lancelot’s eyebrows is weird enough, but glowing descriptions of eyelid raising are on another level.

This may be the greatest Wikipedia page I’ve ever encountered.

First, there’s the content. This is from the page on Merlin’s Shop of Mystical Wonders, a movie which is probably best known as the last episode of the original Mystery Science Theater 3000 to air. The synopsis is enough to make this a distinctive page. After all, it’s not in every film that a lady suddenly gets both freedom from her jerk husband and the baby she always wanted when he accidentally turns himself into a baby using dark magic.

Then there are the links. In addition to the clearly relevant links to “Merlin”, “Ernest Borgnine”, and “The Monkey” by Stephen King, there are links on “benign”, “infancy”, “birthday”, “cat”, “goldfish”, “dog”, “car”, “storm”, etc. “{C}ymbal-banging monkey toy” is divided into two links: “cymbal-banging monkey” directs to “cymbal-banging monkey toy” and “toy” directs to “toy”.

Whoever wrote it had a sense of humor: the part describing the ending, when Merlin “suddenly appears” to save the day, directs to “Deus ex machina”.

Long live obscure Wikipedia pages and terrible movies.

Crop-Eared Dog Quotes No. 2: Lanny beat up over 7,000 knights and Arthur has the healthiest priorities (not)

Like any decent gatecrashing antagonist, the Knight of the Lantern demands battle, which shouldn’t be a problem, because Arthur is (inexplicably) the King of the World and

not more were the plants through the floor of the world, or joints in a human body, or days in the year, than the active warriors and very valiant knights in the household of that powerful king: that is to say, there were twelve knights of valour, and twelve knights of activity, and twelve knights of the Round Table, and twelve knights of counsel, and two hundred and two-score knights of the Great Table, and seven thousand knights of the household…

but…this happens:

{T}he Knight of the Lantern bound them all save only Galahad de Cordibus, who was a young, beardless boy, on that spot. And he goes straight back by the same way, after leaving the king and his people tightly bound in that fashion, and he pours a dark mist of druidry behind him, and they were thus till the setting of the noonday cloud, and to the rising of the sun on the morrow. Then the king spoke to the household, and thus he said:

"A pity is this thing which has happened to us," said he, "for were the ladies and women of the Fort of the Red Hall to know of our being like this, they would make the mischief of a mock and jest of us, and publish our despite and our weakness over the whole world, and to doomsday and the world's end would never again be beside us…"

One knight has just beat up all of his knights, even though there are well over seven thousand of them, and Arthur’s big concern is that the ladies of the court will laugh at them.

Arthurian characters I interpret as acespec:

Galahad, the Grail Heroine, and Bors: They generally have no apparent trouble or qualms with the eternal chastity thing (except Bors when he gets cursed, but he gets cursed).

Brangaine: In La Tavola Ritonda, she tells Gouvernail that she never wants to have sexual relationships, and in a text I haven't yet read or been able to identify, she apparently stops Kahedin from sleeping with her by using a magic pillow to make him fall asleep, a role which is Camille's in Kaherdin and Camille.

Dinadan: In LTR, they call him the Wise Man Who Does Not Love, and while he has a romantic interest in LTR, their relationship isn't sexual. To the best of my knowledge, he has no other romantic interest and no sexual relationship in all of medlit and pretty much always scorns both concepts. Usually aro, demiromantic in one text, and always ace.

Lucan: It's not anything he says or does, but unless you count the actions of Lucano the evil half-giant half-lion in LTR, he doesn't have any romantic and/or sexual relationships in any medlit I know of. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but in my mind, he's on the aro and ace spectrums.

Happy Ace Week to all who celebrate!

Edit: I had somehow left out Dinadan, who I originally meant to include a picture of. I guess you could say he's implicit. Truly one of the aroace icons of all time. He ran so Jughead could also run.

Arthuriana never gets old, and there's always something new to be written and always something which you would not have guessed exists already.

That said, finding an Arthurian poem by Aleister Crowley where Palamedes gives birth to the Questing Beast after killing it, gets pelted with eyeballs, learns music skills equal to Orpheus', rides on an eagle, has a vision of Pan and hears the voice of Christ, becomes a hermit in Finland, and kills his own son out of necessity in the Welsh mountains was not on my bingo card for today.

The funny thing is that in Knight of the Parrot, Arthur leaves KING LOT HIMSELF in charge and somehow everything turns out swell.

i’ll leave my nephew in control of the kingdom while i go to fight in rome it’ll be fine 

Little reminder that in at least one version of this story, Tristan shoved the tongue of a dragon he defeated down his pants. This nearly killed him.

Brangaine finds him later in the swamp after Isolde deduces the crime scene. My personal headcanon is that every time he gets on her nerves Brangaine threatens to expose him.