In which I ramble about poetry, Arthuriana, aroace stuff, etc. In theory. In practice, it's almost all Arthuriana.
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Latest Posts by taliesin-the-bored - Page 8
That would indeed be awesome. My first thought was that Melora would be the most competent of the siblings because of her better track record, but unless I’m mistaken, Amr and Loholt were pretty young when they died and never got much of a chance to prove themselves. It would be especially great and chaotic if instead of just having Bhalbhuaidh visit occasionally, they had a full-on exchange program with Alastrann’s court and, if you warp the timeline to its utmost, the Paladins. I would enjoy Bhalbhuaidh and Medoro confronting Bors and Roland and telling them off for being bigoted.
All the Canons, All at once
I am always thinking about the vast Arthurian Mythos and its various traditions and canons. All of them being mutually exclusive to each other...
...Aaaand I can't help but want to smash them together like playdough. Its my favorite past-time as of late.
Like, don't tell me no-one has ever amused themselves of the fact that the Celtic Gods like Gwyn ap Nudd and Manawydan just hanging out in Arthur's court with Palamedes, Dubricius, Galahad and Nasciens.
Or my very favorite concept of Guinevere being a giantess AND a sorceress while also being Morgan the fairy's ex-girlfriend Best-friend-turned-Arch-nemesis. Nevermind what this means for Lancelot, Arthur, Galehaut, Meleagant and the other abductors.
Or the various children that's been given to every character, including Palamedes, Merlin and Tristan. Even Freaking Lancelot and Guinevere have children together. They even have a grandson in Gargantua.
You could literally have your own next-gen version of the Round Table, led by Amr, Loholt and Melora. Staffed by: Guingalain, Ysaye, Lohengrin, Brisan, Bronsidel, Melehan, Munsolinos, Amren, Garanwyn, Kelemon, Andronia, Florismarte, Pantagruel, Vanoc, etc.
And then Dragon Knight Branor, (From Uther's Generation of Round Table Knights) shows up and kicks their asses.
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.
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.
Arthurian headcanon no. 1: Sir Galahad the Weird and his dubious fashion choices
The canon:
Percival’s sister, known as the Grail Heroine, makes Galahad a sword belt out of her hair, which was cut off when she became a nun and which she had previously been carrying around in a box because of a prophecy. To the best of my recollection, there is never any mention of him taking it off.
The headcanon:
Galahad never stops wearing the hair belt. People notice it but are too weirded out or intimidated to enquire about it, with the possible exception of random old ladies like Dame Clarys. Her reaction to his explanation (something along the lines of, “This was given to me by a most noble lady…no, we are both aroace; she is a nun…was a nun; she’s dead now… I really needed a belt, and she had this box of hair… Why? There was a prophecy…) would be, “That’s nice, dear”, because she too is an icon.
Obscure Arthurian text which everyone should read #1: The Story of the Crop-Eared Dog
This is what happens when you mash together a revenge quest, a slasher movie, a buddy road trip, a bildungsroman, a fantasy epic, and a shaggy dog story and set it in medieval times. Because there aren’t many Irish Arthurian texts, whether Bhalbhuaidh, the protagonist, is meant to be Gawain or Galahad is controversial. His name and titles could point to either and his life situation seems more like Gawain’s, but I will refer to him Galahad because I find the idea of a Galahad AU where he’s pagan and gallivants around with a prince who was turned into a giant dog and lost all qualms about murder along the way entertaining. It starts when Arthur, who inexplicably holds the title of King of the World, convenes a hunt in the Dangerous Forest on the Plain of Wonders and the mysterious Knight of the Lantern does what any antagonistic knight worth his salt would do: gatecrash and ask for violence. It gets less normal very rapidly from there. Abhlach the druidess is at least as awesome as she is wicked, Galahad may or may not have a magical music-making sword, and the fact that there’s an Island of Naked Monks is never given any explanation because it’s only mentioned in passing when the dog tells Galahad he killed them all.
Yeah, it’s a fun read.
Here’s a link to the translation I read:
