Something I only just realized about the Arthur Saga-

[mary_j_59]

This is passed on from eleanor X, who had posted the video to her own livejournal. It really is a terrific song; I can't get it out of my head, and the lyrics (in spite of a couple of infelicitous words like "puppetile" - why not "puppet-like" or simply "puppet's"?) are pretty astonishing. If you watch this, consider the relationship described between Morgana and young Mordred, and then go here:
http://sigune.livejournal.com/93168.html#cutid1

Follow the links for "the Darkest Hour" and read the whole thing - and you will see, quite clearly, what I only just realized. The Arthur legend is, at heart, a revenge tragedy about a seriously disordered family. And young Mordred - if you read him as the instrument of his mother's revenge; there are other ways of reading him - is actually not so much a villain, as the last victim of this family. Why didn't I see this before?

Anyway, the song and the comic are both terrific, and I look forward to reactions to them both. ) BTw, the little fellow who plays Mordred is much, much closer to my idea of young Harry than Dan Radcliffe. For one thing, he is slender and actually has greenish eyes.

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Comments

[seductivedark.livejournal.com]

I usually go with the reading that Mordred was yet another "orphaned" child in the stories. The theme repeats over and over - feelings of illegitimacy and the desire to overcompensate. There's a nice book out, modern, that shows this. It's called The Winter King by Bernard Cornwell. The thing that makes this book interesting is that Cornwell was an orphan and recognized certain similarities between his desire to please and Arthur's actions in the earlier stories. My mother was an orphan too and once it was mentioned and I started thinking about it, that reading seems to make sense.

That said, Mordred is a victim. I would say his mother dehumanized him but, in the strictest sense, did she ever think of him as human? He was a tool, a weapon, against Arthur. He was payback against Uther and possibly Ygraine.

I suppose that wasn't such a big deal back in those days. Children meant hands to work the farm or helpers in the shop; they meant prestige in number and in sex. It was a duty to produce children. Mordred was Arthur's only child - he never had a child with Gwenivere, their marriage was impotent - but his child with Morgana was both outside of marriage and incestuous. A non-entity.

[sigune.livejournal.com]

Hee! Any idea where the song comes from? It's amazingly appropriate and kind of fascinating.

Is the show any good? All I can tell from the video is that it has a beautiful Morgana and a cute little Mordred :). Do they make Mordred Arthur's child? If so, how do they explain the relationship between Arthur and Morgana (I assume there is no Morgause)?

The revenge tragedy - that depends on the angle you take, I think. In most (especially older) versions of the story, it is not said that Ygraine is unhappy about the things Uther does. She mourns her husband, but she is not shown as resenting Uther. (Of course there is not exactly a lot of characterisation, which I personally interpret as an invitation to do as I please with the material ;-).)

To me, the revenge tragedy certainly makes sense, also because it offers a motivation to some characters that would otherwise be - well, motivationless. Morgana is probably the best example. She is said to hate Guinevere and/or to hate Arthur and, by extension, (most of) his knights, but the old texts are usually pretty vague about the why of it all. I think it's mostly modern authors who bring in the idea that she (and/or Morgause) takes revenge for her mother (and, in T. H. White, for the Gaels) and hates Arthur purely because he is Uther's son.

Errr... I seem to have sort of lost my point along the way, but I guess what I was trying to say is that I'm not sure to what extent the revenge motif was present before Malory came along. In any case, I'm rather partial to it myself ;-).

Thanks very much for reccing my story! I'm really very glad you are enjoying it :D.

[anne-arthur.livejournal.com]

This is good, isn't it? I don't remember the song from the TV programme at all, though: was it actually written for it?

About 'Merlin' (to answer Sigune's question): it is now into its second series in Britain, and I continue to be surprised at how well-made and well-thought-out it is. I love it - I find that it is something I look forward to every week. But it is definitely not for those who subscribe to One True Version of the Arthur story! It presupposes a basic knowledge of the story - when Arthur smuggles Mordred out of Camelot against his father's wishes in the episode featured in the video, for example, you are clearly meant to know that he is saving the boy who will grow up to kill him - but it is very much its own take on the legend. So no, here Mordred is not Arthur's child - as Arthur is only about 18-20, he would not really be old enough to have a son this age! Instead he is the son of a druid, a wizard - the man we see near the beginning of the clip. We have not seen his mother. His father is put to death by Uther, who is paranoid about magic in any form, and Mordred flees into the castle. Morgana, Uther's ward, who is not aware of her own magic powers, feels herself drawn to him, and hides him at great risk to herself: eventually she persuades Arthur to smuggle him back to the other druids and to safety.

So, as you can see, a very different take on the Arthur legend! But if you can bring yourself to see it as 'different' rather than 'wrong', it is entertaining, and not without its virtues. Arthur, for example, is so exactly what James Potter should have been - arrogant, spoilt, something of a bully, but also very aware of the duties as well as the privileges of his position, always trying to do the right thing, and unquestionably brave. Uther's hostility to magic is implacable, and increasingly paranoid - he will kill any witch or wizard without hesitation, and Merlin and Morgana are in constant danger of discovery - but at the same time we do see how magic has corrupted this world, and get some idea of what lies behind his fear. It might be worth watching as much as a commentary on the world of Harry Potter as anything else!

[anne-arthur.livejournal.com]

As I've said above, it's probably worth trying to start at the beginning, if you can find a DVD or something. And you've made me curious about Kaamelott - I'll have to try and see if I can get hold of it. And your Gawain comic looks great - I've loved him since we read 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight' at school (and he doesn't feature in 'Merlin') so I will find time to read it all!

It usually annoys me too, when people take something and reinvent it like this - the new Star Trek film is a case in point! Here, 'Merlin' takes a little bit more than just the names, I think - and some of the elements of the traditional story, like Arthur's conception or Mordred's, would be quite hard to include in what is basically a children's show! But I've always thought of the Arthurian canon as a sort of medieval fandom, with different authors rewriting the story to suit themselves, or inventing new knights if they didn't like any of the existing ones - so I'm relatively relaxed about even quite a radical re-imagining - provided that it is done well, which I think this is.

[puckling.livejournal.com]

Okay, knowing what variations on the Arthur mythos that Merlin is pulling and then watching that vid is a bit odd, not going to lie.