is this what a shrine is?

King Pellinore closed his eyes tight, extended his arms in both directions, and announced in capital letters, 'Whoso Pulleth Out This Sword of this Stone and Anvil, is Rightwise King Born of All England.'

t. h. white, The Once and Future King (p.219)

headlines

favourite characters


Lancelot
esp. in troyes, white Kay
i can fix him Bedivere
i just get it


Mordred
maybe, sometimes, he's right Merlin
hopeless, an icon of failure, i'm obsessed The Fisher King
i need to read everything abt him

One has to come through a door somehow, madam. It is more convenient than coming through the window - though, I believe, some people have been known to do that.

mordred to guenever
t. h. white, the once and future king (p.693)
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resources

texts and reference


visual

utpictura18 - database, good for searching for miniatures

the heraldry society - arthurian coats of arms
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personal library

favourite texts


arthurian romances
chretien de troyes idylls of the king
alfred lord tennyson the once and future king
t. h. white

'Bind me to one? The wide world laughs at it.'

Alfred Lord Tennyson, The Idylls of the King, 'The Last Tournament', l.690

Ideal advice, which nobody was built to follow, was no advice at all. Advising heaven to earth was useless.

t. h. white, The once and future king (p.718)

texts i've read

The Mabinogion
The Book of Taliesin
Geoffrey of Monmouth, The History of the Kings of Britain
The Lais of Marie de France
Beroul, The Romance of Tristan
♡ Chretien de Troyes, Arthurian Romances ♡
♡ The Death of King Arthur ♡
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Thomas Love Peacock, The Misfortunes of Elphin
♡ Alfred Lord Tennyson, Idylls of the King ♡
Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fall of Arthur
♡ T. H. White, The Sword in the Stone, The Once and Future King ♡
Kazuo Ishiguro, The Buried Giant
Tracy Deonn, Legendborn
Kat Howard, A Cathedral of Myth and Bone
Amy Rose Capetta and Cory McCarthy, Once & Future
Kieron Gillen and Dan Mora, Once & Future

up next:
Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival
Alliterative Morte Arthure
Stanzaic Morte Arthur
Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte D'Arthur
Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene
Alex Myers, The Story of Silence
Swapna and Northington, eds., Sword Stone Table
Nicola Griffith, Spear
Tracy Deonn, Bloodmarked
Annwn Press, Dark Reflections
Thomas D. Lee, Perilous Times


Sir Gawain and the Carle of Carlisle - x
The Carle of Carlisle - x
The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle - x

up next:
The Awntyrs off Arthur - x
Two Irish Romances - x

fave arthurian media

casting i can't stop thinking about


franco nero as lancelot
camelot (1967) eoin macken as gwaine
merlin (2008-2012) katie mcgrath as morgana
merlin (2008-2012)


rufus sewell as marke
tristan & isolde (2006) rutger hauer as vortigern
merlin (1998) vanessa redgrave as guinevere
camelot (1967)


fave film and tv

the sword in the stone (1963)
♡ camelot (1967) ♡
lancelot du lac (1974)
monty python and the holy grail (1975)
♡ excalibur (1981) ♡
knightriders (1981)
♡ merlin (2008-2012) ♡
the kid who would be king (2019)

up next:
mists of avalon (2001)


fave video games

♡ tomb raider: legend ♡
tainted grail

up next:
tainted grail: the fall of avalon
king arthur: knight's tale

costuming i can't stop thinking about


nicol williamson as merlin
excalibur (1981) angel coulby as guinevere
merlin (2008-2012) character
text

bonus round: music(als)

up next:
Silence: A 13th Century Medieval Adventure, a stage production- YT
Artus Excalibur, German musical, 2014 - YT
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personal attachment

There's a bogus theory on the internet which says that each of us will have only three loves in our lifetime: a first love, an intense love, and an unconditional love.

My first encounter with the Arthurian tradition was hunting for fragments of Excalibur in Tomb Raider: Legend, one of my favourite games. My second was watching the BBC programme Merlin. My third was after I picked up a copy of Chretien de Troyes' Arthurian Romances from a secondhand bookshop. The moment Lancelot climbed into that cart, I knew this was something else.

It is good to put your life in other people's hands.

T. H. White, The Once and Future King (p.361)

My interest in this narrative is also what led me to meeting some of my favourite people - so that helps. ♡
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scrapbooking

camelot on its king

Rapt in this fancy of his Table Round,
And swearing men to vows impossible,
To make them like himself: but, friend, to me
He is all fault who hath no fault at all:

 Alfred Lord Tennyson, The Idylls of the King, 'Lancelot and Elaine', ll.129-132

'cold, / High, self-contain'd, and passionless'

Alfred Lord Tennyson, The Idylls of the King, 'Guinevere', ll.402-403

'Give me a moral man who insists on doing the right thing all the time, and I will show you a tangle which an angel couldn't get out of.'

t. h. white, The Once and Future King (p.498)

why i can never hate arthur

'If I were to be made a knight... I should insist on doing my vigil by myself... I should pray to God to let me encounter all the evil in the world in my own person, so that if I conquered there would be none left, and, if I were defeated, I would be the one to suffer for it... I shouldn't mind.''Wouldn't you? Wait till it happens and see.'
...
'Well, anyway,... suppose they did not let you stand against all the evil in the world?' 'I could ask.' ... 'You could ask.'

t. h. white, The Once and Future King (p.200-1)

When he saw the body of the man he had loved so much, there was no grief that a man can suffer for another that Arthur did not feel... He swooned again and all the barons were frightened that he might die in front of them. He was unconscious for as long as a man could walk half a league; when he came to he said, loud enough for all to hear: 'Ah, God! Now I have lived too long! Ah, death! If you delay any longer I shall consider you too slow in coming. Ah, Gaheriet! If I must die of grief, I shall die for you.'

The death of arthur

'Ah! Mordred, now you make me realize that you are the serpent I once saw issuing from my stomach, which burnt my lands and attacked me. But never will a father have done to a son what I shall do to you, because I shall kill you with my two hands. May the whole world know this; God forbid that you die at anyone else's hands but mine.'

The death of arthur

But he had never had a happiness of his own, never had himself... He wanted to have some life; to lie upon the earth, and smell it: to look up into the sky... and lose himself in the clouds... He wanted time off, to live. He did not want to be sent back to pull, with lowered eyes, at the weary yoke.

t. h. white, The Once and Future King (p.785)
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♡ ♡ ♡ scrapbooking - lancelot ♡ ♡ ♡

my boy

'One could say truthfully that you would be removing the sun from among the stars, that is to say the flower of the world's knights from King Arthur's men.'

bors to guinevere
The Death of Arthur

white's lancelot

The boy thought there was something wrong with him. All through his life - even when he was a great man with the world at his feet - he was to feel this gap: something at the bottom of his heart of which he was aware, and ashamed, but which he did not understand. There is no need for us to try to understand it. We do not have to dabble in a place which he preferred to keep secret.

T. H. White, The Once and Future King (p.353)

Tennyson and the Pre-Raphaelites would have found it difficult to imagine a boy who would do ie, until you realize from the start that Lancelot was not romantic and debonair. Tennyson and the Pre-Raphaelites would ahve found it difficult to recognize this rather sullen and unsatisfactory child, with the ugly face, who did not disclose to anybody that he was living on dreams and prayers. They might have wondered what store of ferocity he had against himself, that could set him to break his own body so young. They might have wondered why he was so strange.

T. H. White, The Once and Future King (p.359)

His Word was valuable to him not only because he was good, but also because he was bad. It is the bad people who need to have principles to restrain them. For one thing, he liked to hurt people. It was for the strange reason that he was cruel, that the poor fellow never killed a man who asked for mercy, or committed a cruel action which he could have prevented.

T. H. White, The Once and Future King (p.380)

An ordinary fellow, who did not spend half his life torturing himself by trying to discover what was right so as to conquer his inclination towards what was wrong, might have cut the knot which brought their ruin.

T. H. White, The Once and Future King (p.381)

He loved Arthur and he loved Guenever and he hated himself. The best knight of the world...

T. H. White, The Once and Future King (p.415)

Lancelot, half-way through the story, was already shouting for his armour. By the time it was told Arthur was kneeling at his feet, strapping on the greaves.

T. H. White, The Once and Future King (p.562)

In the middle, quite forgotten, her lover was kneeling by himself. This lonely and motionless figure knew a secret which was hidden from the others. The miraclt was that he had been allowed to do a miracle. 'And ever,' says Malory, 'Sir Lancelot wept, as he had been a child that had been beaten.'

T. H. White, The Once and Future King (p.580)


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