Following Off Of, But Moving Away Slightly From All The Fate Talk: If You Were To Write A ‘King Arthur

Following off of, but moving away slightly from all the Fate talk: If you were to write a ‘King Arthur but female’ story, how would you go about it? What would you look for in such a story?

I can think of a couple ways I'd do it!

First, the easy part. Sword in the anvil/stone, whosoever draws it forth is the rightful king of England. Well shit, that little peasant girl just pulled it out like it was nothing. Hail to the king, any objections can be directed to The Indomitable Soul Of Albion Herself.

Or, if ancient England accepting a lady king is too much of a stretch, Merlin has a habit of helping people out with magical disguises. If necessary - and if it would be fun from a story standpoint - our peasant girl of Secret Noble Heritage could get a magical disguise that lets her appear male. Could even go full fairy tale and do something like having her appear as her true self at night, and King Arthur during the day. If we really wanted to blend it, we could let her female identity be Morgan le Fay, Merlin's student with an affinity for dark times. However, doing that would spoil the potential gay drama of letting Morgan be a powerful villainess who learns Arthur's true identity early on, and that might be too good to pass up. And since Arthur's eventual destiny is to be taken to Avalon by Morgan to sleep until England's greatest hour of need, that gets Cool Layers if we let them have a whole enemies-to-lovers thing going throughout.

Arthuriana is extremely loose in the canon department anyway, so while there are touchpoints I'd want to hit, we'd have a lot of freedom of movement in how we'd hit them. This would basically just add layers of characterization to how Arthur would handle the various adventures she gets into - especially if she feels the need to obscure her identity from some or all of her knights. There's a surplus of damsels in various folktales that could be Arthur stuck in her secret identity due to Magical Hijinks.

Unfortunately, Guinevere's foundational role in the story almost always involves her sleeping with dudes who are not Arthur, and since the overall story of Camelot is a tragedy whose downfall is brought on by a schism in the royal family, we might need to keep that for thematic consistency. And it takes on layers if we stick with the "Arthur's public identity, at least at first, is a Dude" thing, because - shocking as this may be - some people actually aren't even a little bit gay, and if Guinevere ended up politically wedded to Arthur only to learn that her husband is in fact not her preferred gender of lover, she might not be jazzed about that.

Other than that, let the cool swordfights and quests remain unchanged and I think you've got a good recipe for episodic character drama.

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it doesn't exist anymore. it got blown up.

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Please tell me your red hilt conspiracy theory. I know very little about the narrative surrounding the sword so I’m curious.

oh my god. okay okay i got into it like a few months ago and that post is so incomprehensible so this time i am going to attempt to not just rant like an insane person.

okay. lets go chronologically through le morte, my main source for this whole thing.

In Book 2 chapter 1, a damsel arrives at court challenging people to draw a sword from a scabbard. They fail and she continues on, meeting Balin on the road, who successfully draws her sword in chapter two, which is summarized thusly:

“Balin, arrayed like a poor knight, pulled out the sword, which afterward was the cause of his death.”

He refuses to return it to the maiden, who warns him that “ye are not wise to keep the sword from me, for ye shall slay with the sword the best friend that ye have, and the man that ye most love in the world, and the sword shall be your destruction.”

Soon, as she predicts, Balin, after doing a whoopsy daisy Dolourous Stroke, kills his brother Balan and is mortally wounded in the same battle. Merlin shows up, buries them both, switches the handle of Balins sword with a red handle, and says:

“there shall never man handle this sword but the best knight of the world, and that shall be Sir Launcelot or else Galahad his son, and Launcelot with this sword shall slay the man that in the world he loved best, that shall be Sir Gawaine“ (book 2 chapter xix)

Then he plunks the sword in a rock and sends it magically floating in the river. Cut to like thirty years later, the rock floats to Camelot, arriving at exactly the same time as Galahad. uh oh galahad!

In the vulgate grail quest, the knights find this rock, and it is first presented to Lancelot, who refuses to attempt to draw the sword. Arthur then asks Gawain, who also initially refuses, but is unable to deny Arthur when he gives him a direct command. Gawain reluctantly attempts to draw the sword and fails, whereupon Lancelot immediately gives him shit for it even though it wasn’t his fault--! he is warned that this will have dire consequences.

whatever. Then, because percival <3 percival tries it, specifically so gawain wont be embarassed at being the only one to fail. i love percival so much. he also fails though. then galahad tries it and succeeds. horay!

(this goes down much the same in le morte, and lancelot says: “My lord Sir Gawaine, said Sir Launcelot, now wit ye well this sword shall touch you so sore that ye shall will ye had never set your hand thereto for the best castle of this realm.” again, not his fault, but go off i guess lancelot)

except not horay. this is where the speculation starts in earnest but:

knights in the grail trio who die on the grail quest: galahad, percival

knights in the grail trio who dont die on the grail quest: bors

knights in the grail trio who touch the red hilted sword: galahad, percival

knights in the grail trio who dont touch it: bors

ya know??????

anyway so galahad dies and the sword gets passed to lancelot, who uses it to eventually deal a fatal blow to gawain, fulfilling both the prophecy of the sword and the doom gawain earned by attempting to draw it.

conclusion: sword bad. should have kept secace instead. fuck the sword with the red hilt all my homies hate the sword with the red hilt

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the-crabmaster

2 years ago