#sir uwaine

[illustratus]

Quest for the Holy Grail - The Failure of Sir Gawaine; Sir Gawaine and Sir Uwaine at the Ruined Chapel.

[poparthuriana]

Those Who Troll King Mark: Agravaine, Brandiles, Dagonet, Dinadan, Griflet, Mordred, Ozana le Cure Hardy, Uwaine les Aventurous

Vowtakers: Arthur, Baldwin, Gawain, and Kay

[tiodolma]

said Sir Kay, for ye of Cornwall are nought worth. So Sir Kay made carry Sir Uwaine to the Abbey of the Black Cross, and there he was healed.

Kay may be a foulmouthed knight but if any of the Round Table Knights get hurt he goes into protective uncle mode.

[lionofchaeronea]

The Failure of Sir Gawaine: Sir Gawaine and Sir Uwaine at the Ruined Chapel (Holy Grail Tapestries, #4), woven for Lawrence Hodson of Compton Hall, 1895-96. Overall design and figures by Sir Edward Burne-Jones; overall design and execution by William Morris; flowers and decorative details by John Henry Dearle. Now in the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, Birmingham, England, UK.

[rjalker]

Sir knight, said Sir Marhaus, I have well felt that ye are a passing good knight, and a marvellous man of might as ever I felt any, while it lasteth, and our quarrels are not great, and therefore it were pity to do you hurt, for I feel ye are passing feeble. Ah, said Sir Gawaine, gentle knight, ye say the word that I should say. And therewith they took off their helms and either kissed other, and there they swore together either to love other as brethren. And Sir Marhaus prayed Sir Gawaine to lodge with him that night. And so they took their horses and rode toward Sir Marhaus’s house.

??? Are they just leaving poor Uwaine there???? Did they forget about him???

Edit oh no it's okay they got him. The author just forgot to mention them picking the poor guy off the ground lol

and damsels unarmed them and hastily looked to their hurts, for they were all three hurt.

[mouseandboo]

Postcrossing US-9989737 by Gail Anderson Via Flickr: Postcard with a photo of one of the Holy Grail tapestries done by Edward Burne-Jones (1833 - 1898). This is a picture of Sir Gawaine and Sir Uwaine at the Ruined Chapel. Sent to a Postcrossing member in Belgium.

[blogdemocratesjr]

The Ordeal of Owain by Leonora Carrington

There is a great difference between a coward and a hero; for the coward seated beside the fire talks loudly about himself, holding all the rest as fools, and thinking that no one knows his real character. A hero would be distressed at hearing his prowess related by some one else. And yet I maintain that the coward is not wrong to praise and vaunt himself, for he will find no one else to lie for him. If he does not boast of his deeds, who will? All pass over him in silence, even the heralds, who proclaim the brave, but discard the cowards.

...

“My lady,” [Yvain] said, “one should have mercy on a sinner. I have paid dearly for my foolishness, and I am glad to have paid. Folly caused me to stay away, and I acknowledge my guilt and wrong. I’ve been very bold to dare come before you now, but if you will take me back, I’ll never do you wrong again.

—Chrétien de Troyes. “Yvain, the Knight of the Lion”

[fiercestpurpose]

i'm reading a connecticut yankee in king arthur's court and sir uwaine came up and i was like !!! that's my man <3

[exercise-of-trust]

le morte d’arthur book 4, thank god i’m finally almost caught up so i can actually start looking at the readalong tag again

because i am thinking about destiny and agency again (i say "again" like i'm ever not) i'd like to give a shoutout to merlin/nimue. merlin is well aware his attraction to nimue is going to get him locked in a cave for his troubles, and would like to avoid it, but he also seems completely incapable of not following her around like an idiot until she gets so sick of his advances that she locks him in a cave. also, given that she had to make him promise to stop trying to cast spells on her, i really don't feel an excess of sympathy for him, but it makes you wonder - how much of what he feels for nimue is real (for a given value of real), and how much is prophecy, and is she aware of that and what does she think of it??

"alas, said arthur, yet had i never rest one month since i was crowned king of this land"

to continue what i was saying last time about demonstrations of love, arthur goes to war and decides he wants guinevere to come with him, and her answer is "sir, said she, i am at your commandment, and shall be ready what time so ye be ready." she's not exactly enthusiastic about it! @counterwiddershins did raise the possibility that maybe she's just not very demonstrative with her affection which is a good point! so we'll just have to see what she's like when lancelot shows up

how was kay not on the round table already?? who is that kay got passed over in favor of them?? you were willing to just take a hundred knights from king leodegrance without further qualifications but you still haven't put your own seneschal and foster-brother on the table??? arthur????

i mean. you wonder what the other knights in the dungeon thought of arthur for agreeing to fight in an ignoble cause. i mean even if it is for all their freedoms, so far eighteen of them have starved to death rather than fight against ontzlake for damas, you'd think they'd be more annoyed at him for selling out.

"then sir accolon began with words of treason" he's literally just saying "you don't have a weapon, you are bleeding all over the place, i don't want to kill you so please surrender so i don't have to," i would think actively trying not to kill your king even when you have no idea he's your king is like, the opposite of treason

"this sword hath been in my keeping the most part of this twelvemonth" wait what when did i lose track of time this badly

am i to understand that accolon's "jesus save my lord king arthur, and king uriens, for these damosels in this ship have betrayed us" was ironic

"god knoweth i have honoured her and worshipped her more than all my kin, and more have i trusted her than mine own wife and all my kin after" until this moment you have not said a single word about morgan. where is this coming from.

blanket disclaimer murder is bad aNYWAY morgan le fay shows an incredible deal of agency and gumption here and i like her a lot

THOMAS MALORY WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU HAVE AGAINST GAWAINE

"as the book rehearseth in french, there were many knights that overmatched sir gawaine, for all the thrice might that he had: sir launcelot de lake, sir tristram, sir bors de ganis, sir percivale, sir pelleas, and sir marhaus, these six knights had the better of sir gawaine" bro please leave him alone please god

"and then they began to strive for the lady; for the knight said he would have her, and the dwarf said he would have her...and so they went all three unto sir gawaine and told him wherefore they strove. 'well, sirs,' said he, 'will ye put the matter in my hand?' 'yea,' they said both. 'now damosel,' said sir gawaine, 'ye shall stand betwixt them both, and whether ye list better to go to, he shall have you.'" he's a good boy, thomas

pelleas that's incredibly sweet but you deserve better. honey. please. grow a spine.

i'm so incredibly confused by this entire episode. was gawaine's entire plan to screw pelleas over?? i really don't understand what's going on here

well marhaus seems like a very decent fellow and he is also incredibly boring to read about

"that will we not, said they, for an we do battle, we two will fight with one knight at once," what the fuck! you can just do that! you can just stack the odds like that! what the hell!

uwaine is also a very sweet boy and i like him but he is equally boring to read about. there are few things less interesting than a litany of the assorted minor knights that are getting defeated.

closing point: thomas malory get the fuck up out of your grave i'll fight you for gawaine's honor

[thisisevenharderthannamingablog]

Are there two Sir Uwaines, or did Uwaine go by two different epithets?

Dammit Thomas.

[beyondthedreamline]

Ladies of Legend: Morgan le Fay and Morgause

References: Women of Camelot: queens and enchantresses at the court of King Arthur (Orchard Australia, 2000) by Mary Hoffman, Le Morte d’Arthur in two volumes: volume one and volume two (J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd, 1978, originally published in 1485) by Sir Thomas Malory, Mythology: Myths, Legends, & Fantasies (Hodder, 2013) by Dr. Alice Mills, The Complete Book of Witches and Wizards (Carlton Books Ltd, 2007) by Tim Dedopulos

Trigger warning: references to rape

There is a tendency, in Arthurian legend, for Igraine’s daughters to be highly variable in number and almost entirely interchangeable in identity, their roles within different versions of the myth generally depending on which woman gives birth to which sons. The Vulgate Cycle, for instance, has a whole crowd of half-sisters, while other versions whittle it down to one or two. The Complete Book of Witches and Wizards credits Morgan le Fay with eight sorceress sisters – Cliton, Gliten, Glitonea, Mazoe, Modron, Moronoe, Thitis and Tyronoe – all living together on the island of Avalon and acting as good fairies at Arthur’s birth. Mythology: Myths, Legends and Fantasies speculates that Morgan le Fay may have originally been a Celtic sea goddess or even a goddess of death. She has associations with the Morrigana, an Irish triple goddess represented by the three warrior queen aspects of Badb, Macha and Morrigan, the latter of whom is also strongly associated with fertility.

In Le Morte d’Arthur, there are three sisters: Morgause (alternatively spelled Margawse) being the eldest, Elaine the middle child and Morgan as the youngest. They were the children of Duke Gorlois of Cornwall and Igraine. When Gorlois was defeated in battle by King Uther Pendragon, Igraine had little choice but the marry the victor. She gave birth to a son, Arthur, who was taken away to be raised with a foster family, his very existence a well-kept secret. Uther then used his newly acquired stepdaughters to secure political alliances, marrying Morgause off to King Lot of Orkney and Elaine to King Nentres of Garlot. At this point Elaine promptly vanishes from the narrative.

Morgan was perhaps too young for marriage at the time because she was sent to a convent for an unexpectedly arcane education, learning the arts of necromancy and sorcery. Other stories have her trained at court by Merlin himself. Eventually, however, she was given a royal marriage of her own and became queen to Uriens of Gore.

Morgause had four sons with Lot – Gawain, Agravaine, Gaheris and Gareth. The only one to inherit any magical tendencies was Gawain, whose strength increased as the sun approached its zenith. When Arthur emerged from obscurity and Uther’s former allies went to war against him, including Lot, Morgause calmly came as a messenger to the embattled young king (with all of her boys in tow, what’s more) and had a month-long fling with him that resulted in a fifth son, Mordred. The relationship appears to have been consensual and mutually misinformed.

When Merlin finally told Arthur the truth, it came with a side serve of apocalyptic prophecy and the two of them threw a full King Herod routine by having all the baby boys born on May Day sent to sea to be drowned. Mordred survived. What’s more, he appears to have been raised by Morgause, because he shows up later in the story as a knight in Arthur’s court, not quite popular but respected and running around with the other Orkney boys. How he got from one point to the other is one hell of a mystery that Malory never explains.

Nentres and Uriens were also aligned against Arthur, though that did not stop Igraine bringing Morgan along when she met Arthur for the first time. Which means that Morgan was present, listening, when Igraine told the court how Uther appropriated her husband’s face in order to rape her.

The fight for the throne was brutal. During the final battle, thirteen kings were killed; among them, Morgause’s husband Lot, brought down by Arthur’s ally Pellinore. This was the beginning of a labyrinthine tangle of messed-up relationships, as Gawain eventually killed Pellinore and the widowed Morgause later took Pellinore’s son Lamorak as her lover.

Arthur held a great funeral, attended by Morgause and her sons, Morgan and her husband Uriens, and their son Ewaine (also spelled Yvain). Eager to connect with his half-sisters on a non-sexual level that is also not a battlefield – this family is such a disaster in so many ways – Arthur entrusted his sword Excalibur into Morgan’s care. Apparently she had a trustworthy vibe or something. Arthur proved once again that he was a shocking judge of people because not only did Morgan plan to use that sword for a double regicide, she had learned enough about Arthur’s personality to arrange it that he took every step into the trap for himself.

Arthur went hunting with Uriens and a knight called Sir Accolon who, unbeknown to the others, was Morgan’s lover and accomplice. The kings and their companion spied a beautiful ship floating in nearby waters and were invited to stay the night aboard by the twelve beautiful women who were its only occupants. However, when Uriens awoke he was in bed with Morgan – and when Arthur awoke, he was in the dungeon of Sir Damas, a knight in the middle of a property dispute with his little brother and who had a habit of kidnapping promising fighters in the hope that one of them would consent to be his champion. Thus far, nobody had. Arthur grimly offered himself on the condition that the other prisoners would be released. He didn’t realise that the messenger girl he was talking to was a servant of Morgan le Fay, or that the sword he went to fight with was not Excalibur at all. Morgan sent Accolon to Sir Ontzlake, Damas’ brother, to volunteer as his champion in the upcoming fight, and he had the true sword.

It’s neatly done. It would have worked beautifully had the Lady Nimue not been among the spectators, because in Le Morte d’Arthur it is she who received the training from Merlin, not Morgan, and after she got rid of him for good, she took over the role of Arthur’s intermittent protector. She forced Accolon to drop Excalibur, so that Arthur could reclaim it. Accolon confessed to everything. Morgan’s plan was to kill Uriens as well, take Accolon as her consort and rule the land herself. I shouldn’t like that. But I sort of do.

Expecting Accolon to have already succeeded, Morgan had moved in for the next kill. She sent a handmaiden for Uriens’ sword so that she could kill her husband with his own weapon – nasty sense of irony that the lady’s got there – but the handmaiden had qualms and woke Uwaine, who was sadly prepared for exactly this kind of situation. “I may say an earthly devil bore me,” he said, catching the sword before his mother could strike. She might be willing to murder her brother and husband in cold blood, but Morgan loved her son and in exchange for his forgiveness, she swore that Uriens would be safe from her. She kept her word, too; as far as Malory tells it, she never made another attempt on her husband’s life.

Arthur was deeply hurt by Morgan’s betrayal. He settled matters between Damas and Ontzlake, and when Accolon died of his injuries, four days after the fight, Arthur sent the body to Morgan as a warning. She hid her grief, planning her vengeance. She went to see Guinevere before Arthur returned to court, acquiring royal permission to travel into the country. Travelling with a company of her own knights, she found the abbey where Arthur was staying overnight and tried to steal Excalibur from him, only to discover he’d taken to sleeping with it in his hand. She settled for snatching the scabbard, which protected its wearer from physical harm. Arthur soon woke and pursued her. Maliciously, she hurled the scabbard into a lake and enchanted herself to disappear into the landscape as a rock until Arthur gave up looking.

After that, Morgan rejoined her knights and travelled on. She encountered one of Arthur’s knights, blindfolded and pushed into a fountain by the man whose wife he was sleeping with. The imperilled knight was Sir Manassen, cousin to Accolon. Morgan turned the tables: it was the other knight who drowned and Manassen was sent back to court unharmed, as a message to Arthur: she saved one of his knights for love of Accolon and with all her magic, she did not fear Arthur. She then turned her attention to building up the defences and devotion of Gore.

Her next attempt to get at Arthur was presented as a truce. She sent a handmaiden with a beautiful cloak as a reconciliation gift, but Nimue was there once again to foil her; she suggested the handmaiden try the cloak on first and the court watched, horrified, as the girl burned alive. Though Arthur did not blame Uwaine for his mother’s actions, the young knight was no longer welcomed at court and when he left, his loyal cousin Gawain went with him. The children of Morgause and Morgan were fiercely clannish. Of course, Morgause decided to be on good terms with Arthur – as he had no children with Guinevere, Morgause’s children were his obvious successors, a good reason if ever there was one to take his side in this unusually bloody sibling squabble. But Morgause never seemed to be on bad terms with Morgan either.

Which is not to say Morgause didn’t have problems of her own. To begin with, her (favourite) son Gareth took it into his head to arrive at Arthur’s court incognito and prove himself as an unknown knight instead of claiming his royal birthright from the get go, so Morgause had to storm over there and tell off Arthur for not keeping a better eye on his nephews – and then she told off her other sons for not recognising their own goddamn brother when he was right under their noses. Upon hearing that the court bully Sir Kay nicknamed her son Beaumains (meaning ‘fair-hands’, this being a way of calling him a freeloader) she tersely retorted that Gareth was ‘fair-handed’ indeed, flipping the insult into a compliment to Gareth’s sense of justice. The adventure ended happily, with three of her sons all getting married at once.

Meanwhile, Morgan’s one woman war on Arthur continued undaunted. She started running with a girl gang of fellow queens, including the Queen of Northgalis, the queen of Eastland and the queen of the Out Isles. I swear, I am NOT making this up. They captured Sir Lancelot while he was out questing and tried to make him choose a lover from among them, but he held true to Guinevere and was rescued by another independently-minded handmaiden, the daughter of King Bagdemagus, who is not named by Malory but who Howard Pyle calls Elouise. Morgan preferred to work with women (she was later reputed to have a spy network of up to thirty women across the kingdom) but was prone to overestimating her influence on them.

One woman Morgan was completely disinterested in bonding with was Guinevere, who she appeared to view as nothing more than a weak spot in Arthur’s defences. She knew – well, everybody knew – that Guinevere and Lancelot were lovers, and came up with increasingly ingenious ways to try and drum home the message to Arthur. She sent a horn that could not be drunk from by an unfaithful lady, only for it to be waylaid and given to King Mark of Cornwall’s court instead; she depicted a king and queen on a shield with a knight above them both, imagining the symbolism to be obvious, only for Arthur to dismiss it entirely. He was too familiar with his sister’s traitorous habits to take her word for anything.

Morgan also captured Arthur’s knights whenever she could. One of her female spies tried to talk Sir Tristram and Gawain into an ambush. Though Gawain revealed her as one of his aunt’s servants, Tristram wanted the fight anyway, but (recognising a bull-headed hero when she saw  one) Morgan refuses to send out her knights. She later managed to imprison Tristram and made  him carry the suggestive shield in return for his freedom. That was not enough for her lover at the time, Sir Hemison, who chased after Tristram against Morgan’s advice and was killed in the ensuing fight.

Morgause, meanwhile, was thoroughly enjoying her widowhood with Lamorak. He was a contemporary of her sons, so presumably a couple of decades or so younger than herself, and who was the kind of fiery type who picked fights with anybody who implied Guinevere might be more beautiful than his own regal silver vixen of a girlfriend. He also beat a whole gang of Morgan’s knights to work off some steam. The sex was canonically excellent.

Unfortunately, Morgause’s sons were not on board with her having an active love life. Gawain resented Arthur’s fondness for Lamorak, seeing him only as the man whose father murdered his own, and taking Lamorak as a lover ‘shamed’ Morgause in Gawain’s eyes. All his brothers, apart from possibly Gareth, took the same view. Having intercepted a message that named the time and place for a rendevous, Gaheris stormed in on the lovers and cut off his own mother’s head. Covered in the blood of the woman he loved, Lamorak screamed that he would rather have died in her place, but he was unarmed and could not fight back. Gaheris’ twisted sense of honour would not allow him to kill a naked man and so he let Lamorak go, but the enmity between him and the Orkney brothers was bitter after that and Lamorak was eventually killed by Gawain, Agravaine, Gaheris and Mordred acting as a mob. The only one who refused to be involved was Gareth.

It was a terrible end for a remarkable woman.

Both Arthur and Lancelot were horrified at Morgause’s death and Gaheris was banished from court. The narrative being what it is, Morgan’s reaction is not recorded, but her enmity with Arthur seemed to taper off after that. She went into small-scale acts of evil sorcery with the Queen of Northgalis as her partner. For instance, she allowed King Mark to talk her into using her sorceress connections to find an enemy of his…only to turn around and heal the young knight in question, swearing him to her service. She kept him at the castle of La Beale Regard. The castle’s true heiress soon showed up, brought the knight over to her side, then had the castle razed to the ground, once again proving that Morgan needed to stop underestimating other women.

It was possibly with that in mind that Morgan and the Queen of Northgalis cursed Elaine of Corbin, called the fairest lady in the land, leaving her to boil alive without ever dying until the best knight in the world came to rescue her. It’s a brutal act of spite. Of course, this could also have been an indirect attack on Arthur, as Lancelot’s rape by Elaine ends up triggering great turmoil at court, but predicting all of that might be beyond even Morgan’s talent for scheming.

In any case, Arthur’s court crumbled on its own, first losing many knights to the hopeless quest for the Sangreal before being shaken apart at the foundations when Mordred revealed Lancelot and Guinevere’s affair beyond any chance at denial. It was Mordred who took over the kingdom; it was he who led the final battle against Arthur and struck the blow that would kill him, even as he himself lay dying.

Arthur sent Bedivere, the sole knight remaining at his side, to throw Excalibur into the nearby waters. To Bedivere’s amazement, a hand rose to catch the blade. By the time he carried Arthur down to the water, a barge had arrived at the bank. Nimue was aboard it, and three queens: the Queen of the Waste Lands, the Queen of Northgalis and the Queen of Gore. Arthur laid his head in the lap of his sister and Morgan asked, gently, “Ah dear brother, why have ye tarried so long from me?” They disappeared together, across the water to Avalon. Neither were ever seen again.

Morgause and Morgan were ruthless women, in their different ways – Morgause being the pragmatic one, willing to overlook the blood on the hands of the men in her life if she got what she wanted out of it, while Morgan pursued power with a single-minded force of will and fierce cunning. What is so glorious about Malory’s women is that they are, above all other things, people. Their motivations may be obscure, but they are their own selves, making decisions in their own interests. They are not shadowy seductresses stalking the edges of Arthur’s court; these women are queens, and the daughters of a queen. Their lives might be tragedies, but they lived them proudly – the political matriarch and the warrior witch. They are not interchangeable at all.

These stories vary wildly depending on time and teller – I work with the sources I have to hand but if you know an alternative version I would love to hear it!

Originally posted on Wordpress

[roundtabletexts]

Morgan: What is that thing Uwaine is dragging around?

Agravaine: Mordred probably gave him Gareth's Lancelot doll.

Morgan: That ragdoll is supposed to be Lancelot? How does he even know who that is?

Agravaine: ...don't tell Mom, but Gawain's been giving me updates on what's going on in Camelot. When there's a good story, I tell the boys.

Morgan: Is she still mad at him?

Agravaine: Just try mentioning his name and see what happens.

Morgan: This is ridiculous.

[poparthuriana]

Those who troll King Mark: Agravaine, Brandiles, Dagonet, Dinadan, Griflet, Mordred, Ozana le Cure Hardy, Uwaine les Aventurous

*From Le Morte d’Arthur, book X, ch. XII. Most of it is Dinadan, Dagonet, and Mordred.

The queen’s knights: Agravaine, Dodinel, Griflet, Kay, Sagremore

*The knights protecting Guinevere in The Knight of the Cart; suggestion courtesy of @grail-lifesupport

[tiodolma]

my first thoughts when the following knights from sir thomas malory's le morte d' arthur are mentioned:

king arthur: teenage bastard king lancelot: sleep, horses gawain: drama balin: everyone dies around him kay: kitchen, etiquette and sass palomides: crying beside wells lamorak: morgause simp maleagant: guinevere simp tristam: shit husband and shit nephew gaheris: mother killer gareth: lady linet, entitled little sht king mark: he didnt deserve all that sht dinadan: everything is his business bors: bringer of lancelot news galahad: lancelot 2.0 percival: the lion thingy uwaine: "i go where my cousins go tbh" mordred: stealth mode

[tiodolma]

Sir Uwaine leapt unto his mother, and caught her by the hand, and said, Ah, fiend, what wilt thou do? An thou wert not my mother, with this sword I should smite off thy head. Ah, said Sir Uwaine, men saith that Merlin was begotten of a devil, but I may say an earthly devil bare me.

Owain: if you weren’t my mother i would have killed you!!! They said Merlin was the one born of the devil but i say The Devil birthed me!!!

Morgan le fay: have mercy on my son for i was just tempted by the devil!

..........

Gotta thank Morgan Le Fay for bringing the only real drama and suspense in this reading lol

[blogdemocratesjr]

The Dream of Rhonabwy

The Dedication by Edmund Blair Leighton

And this tale is called the Dream of Rhonabwy. And this is the reason that no one knows the dream without a book, neither bard nor gifted seer; because of the various colours that were upon the horses, and the many wondrous colours of the arms and of the panoply, and of the precious scarfs, and of the virtue-bearing stones.

—The Dream of Rhonabwy