King Arthur (astonished me)

Chi chi

I was reading the old novel about king Arthur. And the first few chapters already have astonished me!!!!!!


How come Arthur's father raped his mother and that was how he got breeded!!!!

His mother married his father immediately after his father killed his mother's ex-husband!!!!!

His mother became happy when she knew later that the rapist was her husband who raped her three hours after her ex-husband's death.

So put things together, one rapist, one traitor to her husband -- what a couple!

I really really really really really don't understand how this became the legendary tale passed down by people with fond...... I could bare that people that time took him as King because he could pull out the sword as a miracle. But the point of how he was breeded astonished me....

ps. I am Chinese. Perhaps it's the cutural difference that makes me feel hard to accept that....

Liquorice

Very few people would know those details, even if they knew most of the legend of King Arthur and the Round Table because it's pretty politically incorrect! It seems bizarre to Western Europeans also, so it's not just a cultural thing!

I'm afraid I haven't read anything on the early years and origins of Arthur, but depending on who wrote the particular version you're reading - Chretien de Troyes, Mallory or someone else - the approach to infidelity etc. could be very different. For example, Lancelot - supposed to be the best knight - has an affair with King Arthur's wife, meaning that he betrays both his king and the man who made him a knight. In Chretien's version, Lancelot appears, in a pretty open ending, to end his affair willingly, while in Mallory's, the fact that Lancelot remains totally in love with and committed to Guinevere makes him seem like a true and honourable knight (although Mallory is a little ironic about this...)

smcgiff

Picture the scene...

<Mum> What story would you like to hear tonight children.
<Eager Kiddies> Oh something new, please Mummy!
<Mum> Oh I know just the thing. Father brought a stack of his old books down from the attic last night. There's one about Knights and dragons and such like.
<Eager Kiddies> Yes - That one! That one!

:D:D

Anyway, it's not as if it's Arthur's fault he had the parents he had.

Chi chi

@Liquorice
I was reading Mallory's version (Le Morte Darthur). I was reading it because it was said to be the first novel in English.
You said the legend is popular because it is politically incorrect? I'm more confused now....


@smcgiff
I don't understand what scene you are picturing. My mom is half a world away and I am not so young as to let people read bedtime stories for me....

Also, though you are right - "It's not as if it's Arthur's fault he had the parents he had." -- the point of what kind of parents he had helped him to convince the people to believe that he was the one to be the King....according to the novel

Liquorice

Chi chi wrote: »

@Liquorice
I was reading Mallory's version (Le Morte Darthur). I was reading it because it was said to be the first novel in English.
You said the legend is popular because it is politically incorrect? I'm more confused now....

My punctuation was bad, I'm sorry! Should have been another comma after 'Round Table'. I meant that people don't know about all the rape, incest and bad behaviour in Arthurian legends because those bits are politically incorrect and not appropriate for primary school, which is really the only place people encounter Arthur unless they study Middle English or chivalric legends later on.

sceptre

I'd agree pretty much with what Liquorice said. Although I had a cut down version of Malory as a youngster (I assume it was probably intended for a teenage audience, I've no idea what happened to it so can't check that) and it didn't mention those bits either so presumably the publisher edited them out.

Arthur's origin is originally told (as far as I know) in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae. Although Malory's Morte d'Arthur is the earliest Ensligh-language version published, the entire backstory comes from Geoffrey's tale. But Malory includes this and puts it plainly.

Kids are probably safer with TH White, even if the four/five parts of The Once and Future King don't treat Lancelot as nicely as other versions.

To part-deal with the original question, such impersonations crop up in a small number of Celtic stories (which would obviously include Wales), this wouldn't be the only one. I've no idea if it's also used in other Western European stories if the time, though it was a favourite of the Greeks as well (Zeus is always taking one form or another to breed with things that aren't his wife). And to be fair, she didn't know - he took her husband's form, his army beat her husband's army in battle, that's the way things seem to work in literature of the time. It's not as though it still goes on:)