#the REAL grail guy was a bastard son of the most famous knight of the round table and his side bitch zeusing him into getting her pregnant

[insinirate]

brushing up on sir galahad lore is FUNNY as hell hes the churchs mary sue and he is their meowest little meow

[venusiancarbondioxide]

okay i actually have a strong-ish idea for an original project that i want to talk about bc i have thoughts and feelings and excitement for it. see below for gay arthuriana and Two Bastards In Love!

so as a known liker of fate/typemoon, i spend a lot of time thinking about what we can loosely call "canonical arthuriana" (there's not really a set arthuriana canon). and as i was looking at the galahad wikipedia page for the umpteenth time and thinking about his supposed chastity and definite lack of love interest, i thought about it for a second and was like "...okay so he's totally gay, right???" and is there canon evidence for that? not really, but i think it would be interesting, so it's canonical to me now. i just think that opens a lot of interesting doors! his whole character in the canon is very...bland, in the sense that he's just the Best Knight Ever and not shown to have much internal struggle, but bastard son of the Best Knight In The Land dedicates his whole life to being holy and perfect and proving himself worthy to wider society? that's something, especially when you add in the stuff about "i am judging my father for the sin of extramarital sex (which is not really what happened between lancelot and galahad's mum elaine, but he doesn't figure that out until way later) when i am a full blown homosexual, which is seen as just as bad in our society." there's a judgemental and hypocritical and bitterly self-righteous side to this stubborn idiot, but also he's so earnest. so serious. thoughtful and introspective and gentle. a defender of the defenseless. a bit of a goofball and an airhead, once he lets his guard down. galahad du lac has Layers to me.

and as i was thinking this, i knew any story with him needed a love interest so that some of the queer stuff could be unpacked with another person. i was thinking maybe percival because canonically they're pretty close, but you know who else is the bastard child of a famous member of arthuriana who craves external approval and status while also being fundamentally transgressive in one way or another? mordred!! and mordred is a hothead of epic proportions, impulsive and moody and mean as shit when he wants to be. he's also very passionate, confident, a jokester and a guy in love with being alive who will always help someone in need (even if he's calling you a moron the whole time). he feels every emotion all the way through, and does what he thinks is right no matter the cost.

as far as backstories: galahad is raised in corbenic as a bastard whose father is officially Unknown (but everyone with eyes knows it's lancelot), half in his mother's castle with her and her extended family, and half in an abbey run by his aunt. after some shenanigans (baby galahad runs away from home when he's locked in a room in the abbey; this happens because lancelot is recovering from one of his canonical insanities in corbenic and everyone agrees that seeing baby galahad would make it worse), the lady of the lake finds out that this is lancelot's kid swimming in her lake and officially adopts him as a grandson and makes him galahad du lac. the lady of the lake is easily the most normal adult in his young life. everyone else says stuff like "god told us he's the special grail boy so we should send him up to the mountains to slay the local dragon without any weapons." galahad's a grandma's boy for real. he doesn't eat fish because his grandma, the lady of the lake herself, personally cares about every fish and he's not going to eat his grandma's friends. he gets the lady of the lake's blessings, of course, and insists that being adopted as the lady of the lake's grandson is unrelated to lancelot being her adopted son in public. in private? he knows, and is pissed as hell that lancelot refuses to acknowledge him because his father should own up to his mistakes. <-thoughts of a guy who doesn't know what elaine of corbenic did to lancelot) and mordred? the result of arthur falling in love and having an affair with one of the nine sisters of avalon during his engagement to guinevere (a woman he's met all of once at this point; later he is genuinely in love with her). morgan, the head of the sisters, queen of orkney, and also arthur's biological half-sister, agrees to raise mordred as one of her sons. king lot formally adopts him and thus mordred grows up as a prince of orkney, but everyone knows that he's not biologically an orkney royal. morgan gives him the lo down very early on and he's convinced that by earning his place at the round table and being the bravest, coolest knight on earth, arthur will accept him as son and heir and make him prince of camelot. this...is not going to happen, lol.

mordred and galahad meet during shenanigans, after which galahad leaves home to be his squire. they bond while traveling and after some deeper conversations about their aligned sense of justice and the fact that they're an iconic comedy duo and about being bastards, they become a certified team. mordred is going to help galahad fulfill his grail destiny, which will also obviously fix everything with his parents, and galahad is going to help mordred become prince of camelot. that's not going to go according to plan, of course, but they're still in it together.

i have so many other ideas (did you know the holy grail here isn't actually holy? this ruins galahad's perception of his life btw) but i'm going to stop bc it's late and i need to work tomorrow. to separate them from their fate counterparts, galahad stuff will be tagged galahad du lac and mordred stuff will be mordred le fae, but i think the context will make it obvious when i'm talking fate or talking about this. i really need to name this wip stuff, but later. not now. i am so sleepy now.