Something about a Sword and a Stone?
Arthur Dies at the End, volume 1
by Jeffrey Wikstrom
Table of Contents
Introduction: Who Is This Malory Person Anyway? 4
BOOK I: The Obligatory Origin Story 7
In which Arthur is conceived 8
In which Arthur is born and his father dies 12
In which Arthur pulls a sword out of something 15
In which Arthur has some trouble making friends 20
In which Arthur fights an incredibly bloody war 30
In which Merlin is a jerk, and Arthur retrenches 37
In which Arthur has a terrible day 41
In which Arthur reenacts the Massacre of the Innocents 53
BOOK II: Sir Balin, Lady Killer 56
In which we meet the Idiot Knight 57
In which Sir Balin gets back in Arthur's good books 66
In which Sir Balin strikes the DOLOROUS STROKE 78
In which Sir Balin gets discouraged 86
In which Sir Balin dies 89
BOOK III: The Best Table Ever 95
In which we meet the Round Table (also Guenever) 96
In which Arthur solves the Mystery of the Good-looking Peasant 101
In which Gawaine completes his first quest with only a little whining 109
In which Tor makes new friends 116
In which Pellinore is a dick 121
Women in Malory: Necessary Evil? 129
Peter the Dwarf and Other Inventions 133
Abridged Index of Knight Names 136
Arthur Dies at the End:
1. Something About a Sword and a Stone?
2. Morgan le Fay, Queen of Gore
3. Sir Tristan is Just Awful
4. Sir Galahad is Better Than You
5. Guinevere, Best Nun Ever
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Introduction: Who Is This Malory Person Anyway?
"It is like reading jousting fanfic by the world's worst jousting fanfic writer." -- Brant Casavant
"Have fun. I'd sooner listen to an audiobook of the worst parts of the Silmarillion read by Ben Stein." -- Chris Vaughn
"Le Morte d'Arthur:original Arthurian romances::Zach Snyder's Watchmen:Alan Moore's Watchmen" -- Michael "Matt" Grasso
As English literature goes, it's hard to find a work of fantasy more foundational than Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur. The tales of knights fighting dragons and giants, rescuing damsels, and questing after the Holy Grail are so baked into what we talk about when we talk about fantasy, that arguably the last couple hundred years of fantasy fiction have been a reaction to and a walking away from Malory. Like JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings it casts a shadow so wide that even texts that on the surface have no relationship to it bear subtle signs of influence.
It's also incredibly badly written. Like, a child could do better, in many places. And it's not like Malory was inventing anything; nearly everything in Le Morte d'Arthur appeared first in someone else's Arthurian romance, probably in French. Malory doesn't even do a good job as a translator: he tells bits of stories out of order, he conflates different stories, he skips over important explanations or plot points, he flatly contradicts himself. Sometimes he does more than one of those things in the same sentence.
That he was terrible at translating French romances into English (at least in ways what preserved the originals' imagery, narrative coherence, and allegorical allusions) is about the only thing we know for certain about Sir Thomas Malory. We know that Le Morte d'Arthur was written around 1460, in England somewhere. Several different men with that name lived at approximately the right time, from an obscure Welsh farmer to a member of Parliament convicted of sexual assault. The popular consensus is that he was the jailed MP, but that's more because that Sir Thomas Malory left more of a paper trail than his contemporary Sir Thomas Malorys, than because of any particular direct evidence. In the text Malory refers more than once to prison as, perhaps, the locale in which he was writing, but it's hardly a smoking gun. The consensus of historical scholarship has shifted several times on the question between now and the eighteenth century when folks first started seriously asking who this guy had been.
But while I would describe Arthur Dies at the End as a sort of guide to Le Morte D'Arthur, it's definitely not a biography of Malory. Malory interests me only to the extent that his authorial voice intrudes into the novel he wrote. In this book, and in its four companion volumes, I've broken the text down and described it. Chapter by chapter, I deliver the story as though I'd read it and we were having lunch and I was a horrible lunchtime companion and insisted on recapping a terrible book I'd just finished. In parts of it I try to be funny; you've been warned. I also threw in an assortment of entertaining anachronisms, because I'm a playful scamp. Bear that in mind.
Bear two other things in mind as you read. One, anything that's in bold is a verbatim quote from Malory, with the exception of some of the knight names. I've done my best to translate his pidgin French epithets into English. Two, Malory was terrible about providing names for female characters. Whenever a female character has a name, unless she's in Arthur's immediate family, odds are good that I made the name up because I didn't want to type "the damosel" over and over again.
This volume, Arthur Dies at the End vol. 1: Something About a Sword and a Stone, covers Books I through III of Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur. Endnotes include a list of named female characters and an abridged list of things I made up, as well as a selection of knights' names which I found funny or memorable.
BOOK I: The Obligatory Origin Story
In which Arthur is conceived
The story opens with Uther Pendragon, King of England! He ruled all of England (aka Britain aka Logris) we're told, and there was also this guy the Duke of Tintagil. He lived in Cornwall, which I thought was part of England but apparently not, since he and Uther were at war.
They'd been at war for a while; to end the stalemate Uther contacted the Duke of Tintagil, said to come over. "We'll have a nice civilized sit-down like reasonable people. And bring along your wife, the Duchess Igraine; I hear she has a good head on her shoulders."
So Igraine and her husband showed up at Uther's war camp, ready to diplomatize, and Uther started putting the moves on her, toot sweet. Igraine wouldn't have any of that; she went to her husband (Malory never provides her husband's name, but other sources call him Gorlas). "Listen," she said, "this peace talk has been a ruse! Uther just wants to get into my pants!"
"Well, screw that," said Gorlas.
"I agree," said Igraine. So boom, they rode back home to Cornwall.
When Uther found out about this, he was pissed beyond reason. I'm envisioning Uther as a Zap Brannigan type. Maybe Igraine smiled nervously and nodded and sent him off, with a rose between his teeth, to a love-nest bedchamber featuring scented oils and also a life-sized portrait of Uther in nude recline. Malory doesn't give us that level of detail, though. Malory doesn't give much detail, or any, actually. I'm interpreting pretty freely here.
Anyhow, Uther was pissed, and he called in his cabinet, and told him about it, and they agreeably looked grim and asserted that there was nothing to be done but to issue an ultimatum. They sent a message to Igraine and Gorlas: either Uther would sleep with Igraine, or he would invade Cornwall.
Real classy move, Uther.
Naturally Igraine and Gorlas were not down with this, and said so. Uther's respon
se was an instruction to decorate themselves with stuffing and garnish, because he intended to eat them. The Duke of Tintagil gathered up all the stuffing and garnish that he could and put half of it in Castle Tintagil with Igraine, and took the other half to Castle Terrabil. Castle Terrabil, Malory assures us, wasn't a bad castle at all. Not only was it not terrible, it had some very nice doorways and gates in it.
So Uther invaded Cornwall and laid siege to the two castles. When they didn't crumple immediately, Uther responded by throwing a childlike tantrum; he was mad about the whole thing and especially how he hadn't gotten to sleep with Igraine even though he wanted to. The guy was a jackass, man, trying to lure in Igraine under false flag of peace talks, then throwing a big ol' fit when she rebuffed him. We don't get any info as to why he was so all fired up to sleep with this particular duchess, either.
He told one of his knights, Sir Ulfius, about this frustration, and Sir Ulfius volunteered to go fetch Merlin, who would know how to make Uther feel better.
Interestingly Merlin is not given any kind of explanation, unlike all the other characters so far. Malory tells us that Uther was the king, that Igraine was the duchess of Cornwall whom everyone agrees has a good head on her shoulders, that Sir Ulfius was a noble knight, and so on. But Merlin, we're just supposed to already know who Merlin is. The word "wizard" does not come up. He's just Merlin, you know?
Anyway, Ulfius went off to find Merlin, and given that Merlin was a wizard, naturally bumps into him basically immediately. Merlin had disguised himself as a beggar