I've already talked about how King Arthur is so interesting because
even though everyone kind of has a feel for the mythos,
it’s actually a huge pain in the butt to find anything concrete about it.
Who's who, what's what,
who's related to who and how,
are all things that tend to fluctuate from writer to writer,
and over the centuries, the focus got moved off of Arthur himself and onto his knights.
And he had a lot of knights.
There's no way we can talk about all of them today,
but let's take a hot minute to talk about some of the wacky or well-known knights
and some of their representative tales in the greater Arthurian mythos.
[Epic Opera Music]
So very early in Lancelot's personal character arc,
when he's but a young Knight still going freelance
with no idea of his true parentage or even his name,
he accidentally stumbles into a D&D module
when he find himself in a small town under the rule of the nearby castle of villainy,
known simply as Dolorous Gard.
As he is helpfully informed by a convenient damsel in distress,
Dolorous Gard used to be known as Joyous Gard, back when it wasn't the castle of villainy,
but it is now under the evil rule of Lord Brandin, who...
despite having a name more fitting of the villain in an 80's sports comedy
...is apparently a force to be reckoned with!
Further upping the intimidation factor,
Dolorous Gard is enchanted
so that any knight trying to gain entry must
first fight and defeat twenty knights single-handedly.
However, the damsel in distress reveals herself to actually
belong to the court of Lancelot's foster mother, the Lady of the Lake,
and informs him that she was planted there to aid him
in gaining entry to Dolorous Gard and freeing the castle and the town from its Dolorous-ness.
To aid him in his quest, the damsel gives him several enchanted shields that multiply his strength when used,
and Lancelot uses them to defeat the twenty knights guarding the Gard.
Instead of squaring up for a boss fight,
Brandin suddenly remembers an urgent sports movie he has to be in and flees the castle,
briefly tries and fails to assassinate Arthur, and overall makes a fool of himself.
Lancelot, meanwhile, discovers that the previous knights who had tried to free Dolorous Gard
who up until this point had been thought dead
were actually imprisoned in the Dolorous' dungeons instead.
So Lancelot briefly dips out on a side quest to break the enchantment on the castle,
then liberates the imprisoned knights,
claims lordship of the castle,
and renames it Joyous Gard.
As his quest reward, the damsel leads him to a tomb by the castle,
and tells him that only the person who freed Dolorous Gard could open it,
and it has the name and lineage of that person inscribed on the underside of the lid.
Lancelot cracks that sucker open,
learns his name and his status as a lost French prince,
and also that this is his tomb, and he'll have to be buried here when he dies eventually.
This is also the castle where he hides Guinevere after the whole affair thing gets exposed,
at which point it gets renamed back to Dolorous Gard,
because that's what happens when you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.
We talked briefly about Parzival/Percival back in the original Arthur video.
He was the OG Grail Knight before Galahad was introduced to the mythos,
and had a large number of adventures on his way to find The Grail and heal the Fisher King.
This particular story begins when Percival is embroiled in the Grail quest,
and he stumbles upon a mysterious knight named Feirefiz, leading 25 Moorish and Saracen armies.
Feirefiz is an African Prince from the fictional kingdom of Zazamanc,
and he's basically doing the generic knightly thing of questing around for honor and glory.
He's hoping to bring glory specifically to his Queen, Secundille,
who gifted him with some swanky decked out armor and an asbestos shield, of all things.
Anyway, questing knights apparently worked by Pokemon rules,
because as soon as Parzival and Feriefiz make eye contact, they immediately square up to duel!
So Parzival and Feirefiz joust for a bit,
and then they get off their horses and start smacking each other around with their swords,
and they're pretty much evenly matched, with Feirefiz being maybe just a little bit stronger than Parzival.
But just when it looks like Parzival might lose,
he remembers his lovely unpronounceable wife...
...Cond-wir-a-murs...
Condwiramurs.
And gets a major boost from the power of love!
Parzival breaks his sword over Feirefiz's head
before dramatically collapsing,
but lucky for Parzival,
Feirefiz is honorable to a fault, and refuses to battle an unarmed opponent.
So they call the duel off and chill for a while,
and when they start talking about their family lines,
it turns out they're actually half-brothers!
Their father being the wandering knight Gahmuret.
So that's cool!
When they take off the helmets, it turns out they look really similar,
with one major difference.
Feirefiz is biracial.
(But apparently the author of the poem didn't quite understand what that means, so...)
Feirefiz has black AND white skin.
(Vitiligo, maybe?)
Anyway Feirefiz joins Parzival on the Grail quest,
briefly wow's the court of King Arthur with his swanky crystal covered armor,
then eventually converts to Christianity
because his status as a pagan worshipper of Jupiter meant he couldn't actually see the Grail
which kind of bummed him out.
I've mentioned how Arthur kind of got eclipsed in his own mythos
due to the sheer volume of quirky Knights and quests writers could focus on instead
but that doesn't mean he was irrelevant by any means.
For instance one Knight makes his memorable entrance to the mythos by conquering a huge chunk of land,
thirty kingdoms to be precise,
and actually threatening Arthur's status as King through sheer military might.
The knight, whose name is Galehaut, is called the Uncrowned King
because he refuses to accept a crown until he conquers Arthur's Kingdom,
which in this story is called Logres.
He's also by all accounts an actually good king and is fairly well-liked by his subjects
which is neat and also not good for Arthur.
Now Galehaut is menacing!
His mother was a giantess, and it shows.
He's huge and intimidating, and is having no problem overpowering Arthur's forces at every turn.
But he's also utterly smitten with Lancelot!
And after being dazzled by Lancelot's impressive battlefield prowess,
he actually surrenders in exchange for becoming Lancelot's friend.
The presence or absence of big rainbow air quotes around that 'friend' is a matter of furious academic debate.
Regardless of whether or not Lancelot and Galehaut have more "bro" or more "ro" in their bromance.
They are very close.
Joined the round table at the same time
and Galehaut actually helped set up Lancelot and Guinevere together.
Which you know wasn't the best thing for Camelot in the long run,
but y'know, points for the bro move I guess.
Galehaut got largely written out of the mythos in the 15th century
when Thomas Malory basically left him out of his rewrites.
But he does make a cameo in Mallory's "Le Mort d'Arthur" during the wacky exploits of Sir Dinadan.
A knight predominantly known for being neither a lover nor a fighter who thinks
courtly love is dumb,
fighting for sport is lame
and it's much more entertaining to prank his fellow Knights at the Table Round
and be an overall swell guy with a great sense of humor.
During a friendly tournament that Dinadan is doing really well in,
much to everyone's consternation,
Dinadan pokes fun of the ever serious Galehaut by comparing him to a wolf
and suggesting he eat a huge fish in order to prove he isn't actually wolf
because apparently both wolves and Galehaut are well known for their hatred of fish...
(You probably had to be there for the joke to actually be funny.)
It's possible Lancelot takes this joke badly because in their next duel
Lancelot disguises himself, apparently very convincingly, as a girl!
Unhorses Dinadan while on foot,
stuffs him in a dress and parades him around the banquet hall
which everyone thinks is hilarious. Especially Dinadan!
It's a weird day.
(SIDENOTE: In just about every modern interpretation, Dinadan has at least one really funny line.)
(Which is a testament to how well his comic character has held up over the centuries.)
[Dinadan]: He probably WALKED across the Channel.
[Everyone else]: Ha ha laughs lol
Sir Gawain is probably the most boring of Arthur's well-known Knights.
What is there to say about Gawain?
He's not as strong as Lancelot.
Not as good as Galahad.
Not as evil as Mordred.
Just kind of... Not much of anything really.
He's generically chivalrous, but not a paragon of virtue.
And he spends most of his time not quite living up to the ideals put forward by Arthur.
Gawain is largely known for one specific story.
A poem called "Gawain and the Green Knight",
where Gawain demonstrates that it's okay not to be perfect as long as you're still trying.
So, the Round Table Gang is having a lovely Christmas dinner
when it is abruptly crashed by a large knight, colored all green.
He's holding a holly bow and a huge axe, and he has a fun little game he'd like to propose!
Basically anyone who wants to, gets to hit him with the fancy axe
and in a year's time, he'll be able to hit them back with it in the same way.
Also they get to keep the axe~
And it IS a nice axe.
But, despite the appeal of free weaponry, nobody seems too enthused at the prospect of maybe getting hit by it.
In the absence of any volunteers,
King "I'm getting too old for this fairy nonsense" Arthur steps forward,
but Gawain heroically volunteers!
With the reasoning that if anything goes wrong, he's significantly more disposable than Arthur.
(Points for self awareness.)
Anyway, Gawain takes the axe and knocks the Green Knight's head clean off.
At which point the Green Knight...
picks up his head and his axe,
gives a cheery 'See you next year!'
and dips out.
So one year later, Gawain heads off to find the Green Chapel and get his head cut off.
On his way he finds this random castle ruled by this dude, Bertilak, and his lovely wife
who offer to let him stay with them for a few days before he gets his head cut off.
Bertilak even proposes a fun game they can do in the mean time.
Basically, Bertilak will go out and hunt, and at the end of the day he'll come back and give Gawain whatever he gets
and in exchange Gawain will give Bertilak anything he gets that day.
The wager doesn't make much sense, until Bertilak heads out to hunt one morning
and his wife immediately starts putting the moves on Gawain.
So Gawain is between a bit of a rock and a hard place dealing with this.
On the one hand, she's married so he's definitely not going to sleep with her, because that would be wrong,
(coughLancelotcough).
On the other hand, the rules of chivalry mean he's not allowed to insult her by completely turning her down.
So, as a compromise,
Gawain accepts a single kiss from her
which he transfers to Bertilak that evening.
The following day plays out about the same, only this time Gawain winds up with two kisses.
The last day he ends up with three kisses
but Bertilak's wife also insists that he take her girdle
which she claims will make him immune to all injury.
Since he's due to get his head cut off the next day,
he decides this is a good thing to hold on to and only gives Bertilak the kisses he got, not the belt.
The next day, he takes his leave and heads off to the Green Chapel.
He finds the Green Knight waiting for him, who's impressed he showed up at all, and swings the axe.
But stops when Gawain flinches and makes fun of him for this.
Swings again and Gawain doesn't flinch
but the knight doesn't hit him because he's just testing his nerve.
Finally he swings for real
and gives Gawain the tiniest little cut on the back of his neck.
Ah, bummer! Looks like he couldn't swing right.
Good game though!
If you're as confused as Gawain is,
the Green Knight reveals that he and Bertilak are the same
and this whole thing was a ploy by Morgan LeFay
who had hoped that the initial party-crashing would make Guinevere die of shock.
The rest of the story was basically the Green Knight testing Gawain's nobility
and even though Gawain is ashamed of himself for hiding the girdle and flinching at the strike,
the Green Knight tells him not to be and that he doesn't lose any points for being human.
They part on good terms and Gawain returns home secure in the knowledge
that he isn't perfect but he's trying and that's what really counts!
Also he kind of goes off on a rage fuelled vendetta after Lancelot kills his brothers while escaping with Guinevere,
then he drags Arthur into a war with Lancelot,
leaving the throne abandoned for Mordred to seize control,
gets fatally wounded...
and forgives Lancelot on his deathbed
while begging him to return and help overthrow Mordred!
So...maybe the moral of Gawain's life is that,
you don't have to be perfect
but try not to screw up quite so spectacularly!
(NOTE: Parzival is the German name from the poem, 'Parzival' by Wolfram von Eschenbach.)
(Originally spelt as Perceval in French. And later Percival in English.)
(Also Galehaut is NOT related to Galahad, another of Arthur's knights.)
A law has made a distant moon ago here~
July and August cannot be too hot~
And there's a legal limit to the snow here~
In Camelot~!
The winter is forbidden until December~
And exits March the second on the dot~
By order summer lingers through September~
In Camelot~!
Camelot~!
I know it sounds a bit bizarre~
But in Camelot~!
Camelot~!
That's how conditions are~
The rain may never fall till after sundown~
By eight, the morning fog must disappear~
In short there's simply not~
A more congenial spot~
For happily-ever-aftering than here~
In Camelot~!
[Camelot - By Richard Burton, "Camelot" broadway musical]