hey uhhh do you know when the next chapter is expected to come out? i haven’t received anything in my inbox since wednesday ;-; or is it there’s smth up on my end? thanks!

It should have gone out today at about 12 hours earlier than it usually does! I try to queue a new book to start on a neat number to avoid getting mixed up, which usually means a couple of days' break in between each book. There's a timeline on the intro post where I have laid out the entire posting schedule with the break dates noted as well :)

Lmao... i screwed up and queued the posts for 5am my time instead of 5pm as the rest have been... bear with me for this book because there is no way I am requeueing all those posts!!

Put thee not on Silent

any knight born after 1200 can’t achieve the holy grail, all they know is feasting, charge their horse, kill, have affair, go mad in the forest & cry

And then they took their horses and rode throughout a fair forest; and then they came to a plain, and saw where were many pavilions and tents, and a fair castle, and there was much smoke and great noise; and when they came near the siege Sir Beaumains espied upon great trees, as he rode, how there hung full goodly armed knights by the neck, and their shields about their necks with their swords, and gilt spurs upon their heels, and so there hung nigh a forty knights shamefully with full rich arms. Then Sir Beaumains abated his countenance and said, What meaneth this? Fair sir, said the damosel, abate not your cheer for all this sight, for ye must courage yourself, or else ye be all shent, for all these knights came hither to this siege to rescue my sister Dame Lionesse, and when the Red Knight of the Red Launds had overcome them, he put them to this shameful death without mercy and pity. And in the same wise he will serve you but if you quit you the better. Le Morte D'Arthur, Book 8 | Thomas Malory

march to camelot #4: monstrous

arthur king of reacting to normal situations normally

Arthurian characters based on how likely I think it is that they can read

Can definitely read

The Lady of the Lake: taught Lancelot to read, also exchanged letters with Guenevere

Guenevere: see above, also exchanged letters with Isolde

Lancelot: taught to read by the lady of the lake, learned his own name by reading it off his gravestone, read the inscription on Galehaut's coffin which sent him into a dissociative murder rampage. Possibly the best-documented reader in the Arthurian canon

Isolde: exchanged letters with Guenevere

Tristram: exchanged letters with Lancelot

Definitely cannot read

Gawain, Yvain, Galegantin, Galecsconde, Tors, Carados, Yvain (the bastard), Gosenain, the Gay Gallant, Aglin: had to find a monk to read the creepy gravestones at the Dolorous Guard to them

I would be astonished if they couldn't read

Morgan Le Fey: surely that nunnery taught reading and writing in addition to necromancy right

Your average monk/hermit: gotta be able to read the Bible to do services for random passing knights

Galahad: an autistic Bible nerd raised by nuns. No fucking way that boy can't read

Most damsels: there seems to be a robust letter-writing tradition among ladies, especially queens, and damsels are often message-carriers. Perhaps not all of them can read, but I would guess the average one can

Strongly doubt that they can read

Arthur: I do not believe that Arthur can read. He did not clock the "He Who Pulleth Out This Sword" note, which I suppose there is an argument that he is dumb and just missed it, but can't read is simpler. And he does not strike me as the type to develop late-in-life literary ambitions, when you could just kidnap a bunch of scholars instead

Perceval: the idea of Perceval reading is wild to me, like a parrot who has somehow managed a note-perfect rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody. Not completely outside the constraints of physical possibility, but the effort involved would be so astronomical and what anyone would be getting out of it would be negligible. Just let him fly free in the woods.

Most knights. If those ten knights above are any indication, reading is not a prized or necessary knight skill. I would not be shocked to learn that a certain individual can read, but my baseline assumption would be no

The author’s biography doesn’t always tell you anything terribly significant about a literary work, but when I think about the fact that Sir Thomas Malory, the compiler of the most well known English-language literary interpretation of the Arthurian myth cycle, was a double-dealing knight who fought on both sides of the War of the Roses, was repeatedly charged with horse thievery, escaped from prison or skipped bail at least five times, and evidently made himself so obnoxious to those in power that he was specifically excluded by name from a general pardon of prisoners on two separate occasions – an accomplishment in which he is, to the best of my knowledge, unequalled – well, that tends to suggest a certain interpretive lens, is what I mean to say.

Sir Launcelot and the Witch Hellawes, from Thomas Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur by Aubrey Beardsley (1894)

There is so much that I want to say and share about the Tristan legend (long ago I once wrote a dissertation specifically on the love potion and various love magics in arthurian legend). What is most intriguing about it is how it's a narrative device that allows for such contradictory knightly behaviour.

Moreover, there are several variations in how the potion behaves, throwing even more complication into the mix. In Beroul's The Romance of Tristan, the oldest version that is believed to be closest to whatever an original tale might look like, the potion has a time limit, and wears off in the middle of the lovers' affair. In other versions, such as Thomas of Britain's Tristan, the love potion lasts until the end of the lovers' lifetimes.

In Le Morte D'Arthur, Malory works closely from the poem Sir Tristrem, as well as the Prose Tristan – a huge source which in turn takes many cues from Beroul and Thomas of Britain. Malory's lovers are in it for the long haul, "they loued eyther other so wel that neuer theyr loue departed for wele neyther for wo / And thus it happed the loue fyrste betwixe sire Tristram and la beale Isoud / the whiche loue neuer departed the dayes of their lyf | they loved either other so well that never their love departed for weal neither for woe. And thus it happed the love first betwixt Sir Tristram and La Beale Isoud, the which love never departed the days of their life."

But this love is fraught by social impropriety, the fact that they commit adultery is automatically a sin. However, if we view the love potion as the reason for their infidelity and excuse their moral failures, does that absolve their actions of any wrongdoing? And even if so, is manufactured passion truly the ideal of chivalric love that we should admire?

so don’t get me wrong because a lot of arthurian stuff is super misogynistic. but it’s never really in the damsel in distress way you expect. like the most helpless damsel is lancelot trapped and crying in a tower, completely useless, until this random girl who made him behead a guy in front of her fifty pages ago rolls up with a pickax and rope and is like “ok I’m minecrafting you out of here.” and this works.

opened my mobile kindle app for the first time in a while and it immediately started harassing me about le morte d'arthur

I typed up the Pentiment bibliography for my own use and thought I’d share it here too. In case anyone else is fixated enough on this game to embark on some light extra-curricular reading

I haven’t searched for every one of these books but a fair few can be found via one of the following: JSTOR / archive.org / pdfdrive.com / libgen + libgen.rocks; or respective websites for the journal articles.

List below the cut!

Keep reading

Sir Gawain by Brett Shaw, published in the London Magazine (Feb/Mar 2024).

I have an important question for you and your followers: what are good (instrumental) playlists to listen to while reading (*cough* catching up on several weeks of emails)? Spotify playlist search is severely letting me down with the Arthurian keywords I tried. I'm a Heather Dale fan myself, but for reading, the lyrics are just too distracting to me

such a good question!! I think there isn't much specifically on Spotify that's "Arthurian", but there's lots for "medieval" - I stumbled upon this one myself which is not half bad. Spotify also has categories for medieval composers, which is a good place to start!

Some others that have voices and aren't just instrumental:

Wagner's Tristan und Isolde; Tännhauser; Lohengrin (opera is my personal favourite soundtrack for this kind of thing)

Echoes of an Old Hall

Music of the Crusades

Not sure if this was exactly what you're looking for but hopefully someone will have good suggestions!

March to Camelot: an arthurian palette challenge for march 2024

When: March 1st to 31st Rules: The objective is to try to draw something Arthurian inspired by each word prompt using the palette provided. This could be anything from a full illustration to a character design. You have 5 days to complete each prompt, except for the last prompt where you get 6 days. If you have any questions, please feel free to send an ask. Why: I've been running a B5 palette challenge over on my fanart blog for the past couple of years and thought it'd be fun to do something similar with Arthurian Legend, even if it ended up just being me doing it. :') Finally, remember to tag your work #march to camelot or @ me so I can reblog and share your work. Happy drawing!

it’s the year 2023 and there’s still no knight emoji, how do you expect king arthur to rise again in these conditions