Camelot

Characters

Persons in Arthurian lore

• King Arthur is the central character in these stories.  It is much debated whether or not he was a historical character.  The legends of Arthur arose in the middle ages, and then were compiled in the XV century by Sir Thomas Malory in Le Morte d’Arthur. If there was a historical Arthur, he most likely lived at the time of the collapse of Roman power in Britain in the 5th century, defending the Christian British people (later called Welsh) from the invading pagan Anglo-Saxons. At the end of the story he is mortally wounded and taken to the Island of Avalon to be healed of his wounds. On his tomb supposedly are the words: Hic jacet Arthurus, rex quondam, rexque futurus — “Here lies Arthur, king once, and king to be”. The legend arose that Arthur would return to England in her time of greatest peril. So far the two times of England’s greatest peril were at the end of the 8th century, when King Alfred the Great saved his kingdom from the Danish (Viking) invaders, and 1940, with the Battle of Britain, when the country was led by Winston Churchill.
  Arthur is portrayed first as a timid youth of a king, afraid to face Guenevere on their wedding day.  He soon matures into a well-intentioned and wise king, seeking to find the perfect formula to promote goodness and justice in his kingdom.  Eventually he seems to be indecisive.  He apparently is aware of Lancelot and Guenevere’s affection for each other, but does nothing to stop it.  When he is forced to put them on trial, he cannot use the prince’s right to pardon those condemned.
• Guenevere is said to be the daughter of Leodegrance of Cameliard in late medieval romance. She marries Arthur and then has a love affair with Lancelot, which causes the downfall of Camelot.  She is beautiful, but often petty.  Although fundamentally decent, she has somewhat of a “wicked” streak in her. ( T. H. White spells the name Guenever, although the usual spelling in English is Guinevere. The name is actually Welsh, since the characters in the story are Welsh. The usual version of the name in English is Jennifer, which is of course shortened to Jenny. In Italian, the name is Ginevra, and in French, Guenièvre. Ginny Weasley, one of the important secondary characters in the Harry Potter series, has the given name of Ginevra.)
• Lancelot is Arthur’s best knight and best friend. But Lancelot betrays Arthur in his love affair with Guenevere. Lancelot is a deeply conflicted figure. Although he is considered to be the greatest knight in Arthur’s court, he struggles constantly with feelings of guilt and inadequacy. He is doggedly faithful to those who love him, even if they do not always have his best interests at heart.
• Merlin, Arthur’s adviser, prophet and magician, is basically the creation of Geoffrey of Monmouth, who in his twelfth-century History of the Kings of Britain combined the Welsh traditions about a bard and prophet named Myrddin with the story that the ninth-century chronicler Nennius tells about Ambrosius (that he had no human father and that he prophesied the defeat of the British by the Saxons). Geoffrey gave his character the name Merlinus rather than Merdinus (the normal Latinization of Myrddin) because the latter might have suggested to his Anglo-Norman audience the vulgar word merde. In Geoffrey’s book, Merlin assists Uther Pendragon and is responsible for transporting the stones of Stonehenge from Ireland, but he is not associated with Arthur. Geoffrey also wrote a book of “Prophecies of Merlin” before his History. 
  The Prophecies were then incorporated into the History as its seventh book. These led to a tradition that is manifested in other medieval works, in eighteenth-century almanac writers who made predictions under such names as Merlinus Anglicus, and in the presentation of Merlin in later literature. Merlin became very popular in the Middle Ages. He is central to a major text of the thirteenth-century French Vulgate cycle, and he figures in a number of other French and English romances. Sir Thomas Malory, in the Morte d’Arthur presents him as the adviser and guide to Arthur. In the modern period Merlin’s popularity has remained constant. He figures in works from the Renaissance to the modern period. In The Idylls of the King, Tennyson makes him the architect of Camelot. Mark Twain, parodying Tennyson’s Arthurian world, makes Merlin a villain, and in one of the illustrations to the first edition of Twain’s work illustrator Dan Beard’s Merlin has Tennyson’s face. 
  Numerous novels, poems and plays center around Merlin. In American literature and popular culture, Merlin is perhaps the most frequently portrayed Arthurian character.
• Mordred
  http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/mordmenu.htm
  Mordred (Modred, Medrawd, or Medraut) has become the quintessential traitorous villain in the Arthurian tradition. According to the majority of texts, he is Arthur’s bastard son by his half-sister Morgause, the wife of King Lot. This incestuous begetting, alternately an innocent mistake on the part of both parties, as the French Vulgate portrays it, or a perverted seduction on Morgause’s part, as in the film Excalibur, can in part explain why Mordred’s character and sense of loyalty is so twisted. However, his reputation has not always been quite so bad.
  In Welsh tradition there is no hint that Mordred is a dishonest traitor. The Annales Cambriae records the battle of Camlann, “in which Arthur and Medraut fell” in the year 537, and includes no details describing whether the two fought each other, whether they were related, or what the circumstances of the battle were. In another Welsh text, the Dream of Rhonabwy, we learn that bad blood erupts in an already tense diplomatic relationship between Arthur and his nephew Medrawd because of a messenger, Iddawg, the “Churn of Britain” who is eager for battle. Iddawg delivers Arthur’s kind request for peace in the “rudest possible way,” and thus causes the war.
  In the Historia Regnum Brittonum of 1136, Geoffrey of Monmouth first makes Mordred the traitor causing the downfall of Camelot and the death of Arthur. The villain is as yet Arthur’s nephew, the youngest son of King Lot and Anna, King Arthur’s half-sister. Interestingly, he fills the adulterous role with Guinevere that Lancelot will eventually play. While Arthur is away fighting the Roman general Lucius, Mordred marries Guinevere and attempts to claim Arthur’s throne as his own. 
  Arthur returns from France to fight a series of battles. The tragic last battle, called Camlann, takes place at the River Cambula in Cornwall (the present-day Camel River). Medieval French authors first introduce the incest factor. In the Vulgate cycle, the massive collection of French Arthurian texts that served as one of Sir Thomas Malory’s sources for the Morte D’Arthur, two conflicting stories of Mordred’s incestuous conception appear. In one, Arthur and his anonymous sister, the beautiful wife of King Lot of Orkney, commit incest unknowingly, discovering afterwards that they are brother and sister. In another the woman has been the object of Arthur’s affections, and in a scene strangely reminiscent of the conception of Arthur himself, is deceived by Arthur into thinking that he is her husband, Lot. The result of this morally ambiguous union is Mordred, who, the Vulgate authors relate, “would have had a very handsome face if his demeanor had not been so wicked” (Lancelot-Grail, ed. and trans. Norris Lacy, vol. 3, p. 108).
  Thomas Malory’s account of Mordred’s treachery is the most well-known and influential version of the story. Malory popularizes an episode from the Post-Vulgate Suite du Merlin, commonly called the “May-Day Massacre,” in which Arthur heeds Merlin’s prophecy that the child who will cause the downfall of his kingdom will be born on May-Day. He collects all of the children born on the first of May throughout his kingdom, some only four weeks old, places them in a ship and sets it adrift at sea with the hope that the fatal child will die. His plan fails, however; the ship breaks up on the rocks, killing all of its occupants except for Mordred, who is rescued and fostered until age fourteen. Throughout the text he appears now and again in tournaments but does not figure importantly until towards the end, when he joins Agravain in the plot against Lancelot and Guinevere. Narrative details emphasized by Malory figure importantly in the later adaptations of his character; for example, he only manages to kill Sir Lamorak by stabbing him in the back, and in the fight outside the Queen’s bedchamber, he only survives by running away from Lancelot. In the ensuing strife after Lancelot rescues Guinevere from being burned at the stake, Mordred attempts to take over the kingdom while Arthur and Gawain are away at the Siege of Benwick. Typically Malorian detail follows in the description of the fatal wounding of Arthur and the death of his treacherous son: “And whan sir Mordred felte that he had hys dethys wounde he threste himselff with the myght that he had upp to the burre of kyng Arthurs speare, and ryght so he smote hys fadir, kynge Arthure. . .” (Malory, ed. Vinaver, p. 1237). For an excellently gruesome illustration of this final fight, see Arthur Rackham’s “How Mordred Was Slain by Arthur . . .” (left).
  This tradition of a treacherous and twisted character, present in the minor yet unsavory details Malory provides, work as a foundation from which modern authors represent Mordred. Edwin Arlington Robinson’s “Modred, a Fragment” is a masterful and intensely psychological portrayal of villainy. Robinson’s Modred is brilliantly manipulative and eloquent, and chillingly reminds us more of Milton’s Satan than of the Mordred in Geoffrey’s Historia and other chronicles. In fact it is here we must realize the drastic change between villain portrayals when we move from chronicles to romances and novels. Villainy takes on a more psychological aspect; Mordred is suddenly a full-bodied character with motivations, instead of a catalyst with a name.
  In The Once and Future King, possibly the most widely read twentieth-century depiction of the Arthurian Legend, T. H. White paints Mordred as a court fop, the herald of outrageous new fashions and modern ideas, and, most importantly, the victim of his depraved mother’s moral training. White describes how “now that [Morgause] was dead, [Mordred] had become her grave. She existed in him like the vampire” (White, The Once and Future King [London: Harper Smith, 1996], p.666). While he nurses his grudge against his father for trying to kill him in infancy, White’s Mordred manipulates his brothers, lurks behind doors while eavesdropping, and eventually becomes a mad, black-clad, sinister version of Hamlet. While White’s Mordred is a satisfyingly complex and thoroughly evil villain, later authors (most notably Mary Stewart, in The Wicked Day) have tried to create a more sympathetic character. 
  --- Emily Rebekah Huber
• Sir Lionel was the younger son of King Bors in Arthurian legend, and brother of Bors the Younger. Both brothers became knights of the Round Table.
• Sir Dinidan and Sir Sagramore were two other knights of the Round Table.
• Morgan le Fay is Morgause’s sister and Arthur’s half-sister. She lives in the enchanted forest, and shows up now and then to torment knights and others with her magic.
• Sir Kay, son of Sir Ector, was one of the Knights of the Round Table and King Arthur’s foster brother. In Welsh his name was Cai, and in Latin Caius or Gaius. He is sometimes known as Sir Kay the Tall for his stature.
• Nimue is the Lady of the Lake in Arthurian legend. She is also Merlyn’s lover and seducer.  In White’s story, she imprisons Merlyn for years. In one story, it is she who gave to Arthur the sword Excalibur. In various versions she is known as (among other names) Nimue, Viviane, Elaine, Niniane, Nivian, and Nyneve.
• King Pellinore of Listinoise is a minor character in Arthurian legend. An older man, father of Sir Aglovale of the Round Table, at times he is a kind, bumbling fool, but at other times he is cunning, cruel, and intelligent. He is also variously depicted as a supporter or an enemy of Arthur and his knights.  In this version, and also in The Once and Future King, where, as one of Arthur’s knights, he searches for the Questing Beast and pines for the love of the King of Flanders’ daughter. He is also said to have defeated Arthur in combat, breaking his sword, the sword he pulled from the stone. (Arthur later receives the sword Excalibur from the Lady of the Lake.)
• The Questing Beast is a magical creature that only a Pellinore can hunt. It needs to be hunted to survive. It seems to be used by White to symbolize some of the folly of knighthood.
• Tom of Warwick is Sir Thomas Malory, who makes an appearance at the end of The Once and Future King, and this is the Tom that both T. H. White and Alan Jay Lerner had in mind.  He is ordered by Arthur to preserve the memory of Camelot.
• Sir Galahad was one of the legendary knights of King Arthur’s round table. Galahad was always known as the “Perfect Knight”: “perfect” in courage, gentleness, courtesy, and chivalry. Galahad was the son of Sir Lancelot and the Lady Elaine of Corbenic. He was the only knight able to sit in the Siege Perilous. He once rescued Sir Perceval, and he is best known as the knight who achieves the quest for the Holy Grail.
• Elaine of Astolat is a lady in Arthurian legend that falls in love with Lancelot, when he spurns her, she dies of heartbreak, and, per her request, is put in a boat to float down the Thames to Camelot, where her body is discovered. Lancelot explains the story, and then pays for her elaborate funeral. She does not appear in the musical Camelot, but does appear in The Once and Future King. She is also the subject of Tennyson’s poem, “The Lady of Shallot”, which is familiar to readers of Anne of Green Gables.
• Knights of the Round Table
• Sir Agravain
• Bagdemagus
• Sir Bedivere
• Bors
• Breunor (La Côte Mal Taillée)
• Calogrenant
• Sir Caradoc
• Dagonet
• Sir Dinadan*
• Sir Ector
• Sir Elyan the White
• Gaheris
• Sir Galahad
• Gareth
• Sir Gawain
• Geraint
• Griflet
• Hector de Maris
• Sir Kay
• Lamorak
• Sir Lancelot
• Leodegrance
• Sir Lionel*
• Lucan
• Maleagant
• Marhaus
• Palamedes
• Pelleas
• King Pellinore
• Sir Percival
• Safir
• Sir Sagramore*
• Segwarides
• Tor
• Tristan
• Uriens
• Ywain
• Ywain the Bastard

• See: The Camelot Project at the University of Rochester
• See also: http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/futureking/characters.html