Book two, chapters 10-12: A knight with possible superpowers and a villain with bona fide superpowers no doubt about it

 King Rience of Northern Wales has a brother, called Nero, just like the famous Roman emperor. Nero now battles Arthur and his knights, and although the former's army is numerically superior, Arthur's is just so much better that they win anyway. 

However, apparently Nero was friends with King Lot of the Orkney Islands. If Lot had helped Nero, that would likely have been too much for Arthur. How fortunate for Arthur that Merlin continues his recent helpful streak; he goes to King Lot and starts prophesying so much that Lot becomes all distracted, and when finally he remembers that he was gonna help Nero beat Arthur and his knights, it's too late, Nero's army has been destroyed already.

King Lot, on hearing this, is ashamed (understandable). He decides to take his army and attack King Arthur even though it's too late to help Nero, thinking at least he can avenge his friend, and Arthur and his knights are gonna be really tired by now. Things don't work out as Lot planned though, since he's killed by Arthur's knight Pellinore, who chops his sword straight through Lot's helmet and head. (This doesn't seem feasible to me, but possibly Pellinore has a bit of super strength. More obvious superpowers soon to come in this story!) 

Next, there's this big family meeting, since all those involved in these recent battles are family too. Morgan le Fay sees her chance to pull the old switcheroo on Arthur's magic invulnerability-granting scabbard. Morgan is married to King Uriens, but she's got a secret boyfriend on the side, and decides that he better be invulnerable. Arthur suspects nothing.

 On his way home, King Arthur falls ill, and has his servants set up a pavillion where he can lay down and rest. A knight rides by, "making great dole". (In this day and age, men were not afraid of showing their emotions, that much is clear.) Arthur feels sorry for him, and asks him why he's so sad, but he won't tell, and just rides on. This pisses Arthur off! When Arthur wants to show compassion, he doesn't take no for an answer. So when he spots Sir Balin, Arthur orders him to chase down the doleful knight and bring him back, by force if necessary. 

Balin does as he's told. He finds the sad knight in the company of his girlfriend, and tells him that he has to go back to Arthur and tell the king about his sorrows. The knight goes why? I will just feel worse doing that, and it seems completely pointless. (Reasonable.) Balin says look, you gotta come with me, you gotta tell Arthur about your sorrow, or else I'll have to take you back by force.
The knight doesn't want to make a fight out of it, and goes back with Balin.

Right when the two reach King Arthur's pavillion again, an invisible knight runs up to them and impales the sad knight on a spear. Seriously! 

As the knight lies dying, he still manages to say a few last words to Sir Balin: The invisible murderer is called Garlon, and it is now up to Balin to finish the quest that the sorrowful knight was on before he was murdered. Balin should take his horse, which is a better horse than Balin's original one, ride back to the knight's girlfriend, and she'll inform him about the quest. Also, his name is Sir Herlew le Berbeus. 

King Arthur, who sadly never got the chance to hear Herlew tell him all about his sorrows, now bury him instead, whereas Balin dutifully takes up this new quest. 

 

Book two, chapters 7-9, where Balin is blamed and blamed

To recap: After many unnecessary and terribly stupid deaths, Sir Balin was unexpectedly reunited with his brother Sir Balan, who promised to help him kill the king of Northern Wales in order to get back into King Arthur's good graces.
However, I was too quick in finishing my last recap with "they ride off together"  - actually, they were just about to ride off together when a dwarf from Camelot rides up to them.

The dwarf asks who killed Sir Lancour and his girlfriend. Balin responds that he killed Lancour, but only because the latter insisted on jousting with him (remember, for the extremely stupid reason that Lancour was pissed off at Balin for being the better knight when it comes to magic sword pulling). He also explains that Lancour's girlfriend committed suicide. The dwarf goes on about how sad it is that Lancour is dead, because he was "one of the most valiantest [sic!] men that lived" (more like one of the pettiest), and also, his family will now chase Balin for vengeance. 

As the dwarf keeps lamenting Sir Lancour, suddenly King Mark of Cornwall comes along. When he sees the bodies of Lancour and his girlfriend on the ground, he, too, "made great sorrow" (this must feel increasingly awkward for Balin). He then has the bodies taken away for a splendid funeral, and finally we learn that Lancour's girlfriend was named Colombe (a rare example in this book of a female side character actually named, albeit not until her funeral). Balin and Balan comes along.

At the funeral, Merlin appears and immediately starts prophesying, because why not I guess.
"Here shall be in this place the greatest battle betwixt two knights that was or ever shall be, and the truest lovers, and yet none of them shall slay the other."
Merlin then writes their names on... the tomb... where Lancour and Colombe lie? In magic letters and all, so it's not like it's gonna wash off. Couldn't he put his prophecy somewhere else in the vincinity than on top of their tomb? Once again, Merlin is casually being a dick. Anyway, it's Launcelot and Tristram who will fight here. And them being the truest lovers is, of course, meant to refer to how Launcelot loved Guinivere so much and Tristram loved Isoud, but that's not what it sounds like. 

King Mark asks who Merlin is (since he barged in on the funeral and started prophesying and vandalizing the tomb without so much as introducing himself), but Merlin is all mysterious and won't tell. He only gives a really vague doom-gloom warning to Mark about the future (being a dick as usual), and then turns to Balin and blames him for not stopping Colombe from committing suicide (ok, that's fair). Merlin then doom-prophecies a bit more over Balin, saying he's gonna hurt a great knight and throw three kingdoms into poverty. After that, Merlin vanishes again. 

When the funeral is over and done with, King Mark rides to see King Arthur at Camelot, whereas Balin and Balan finally go to seek out King Rience of Norther Wales. 

On their way, Merlin comes up to them again, in disguise, and refuses to tell his name, but when he says he knows where they are going and that they will need his council they figure out who he is anyway. Merlin knows that King Rience is on his way with a bunch of knights to visit a Lady de Vance with whom he intends to have sexy-times. Balin and Balan lie in ambush for them, kill all Rience's bodyguards and bring him to Arthur. And finally, Sir Balin is back in Arthur's good graces!

Book two, chapters 4-6: Sir Balin kills an orgulous idiot of a knight

Today's Arthur-reading bonus: I learnt a new word. Orgulous. It means haughty. 

Sir Lanceor, son of the Irish king and a knight of the round table, was a very orgulous knight. He got pissed off with Balin for drawing the magic sword (see previous entry) after Lanceor had failed. So pissed off, in fact, that he asks Arthur's permission to ride after Balin and kill him as revenge! WTF? That's some serious orgulousity right there! (Just kidding: "Orgulousity" is not actually a word.) King Arthur, still mad at Balin for decapitating Lake Lady, says okay. 

Suddenly Merlin arrives! He declares to everyone that Lake Lady was right, and Sword Lady really is a terrible bitch. Everyone goes wut? Yes, Merlin says, and I will tell you why (here comes the backstory I wanted last time!):
Sword Lady had a brother, a really good knight. She also had a boyfriend. Her brother didn't want anyone to bang his sister, so he killed the boyfriend. Now Sword Lady got really mad at her brother for doing this. So she went to the Lady Lile of Avelion and asked her for help. Lady Lile put the magic sword on her, and said that a great knight will be able to pull it out of its sheath, and after that happens, the same knight will end up slaying Sword Lady's brother.
Apparently Sword Lady thought this was a great plan at first, but from what we saw last time, she seems to have regretted putting this fate on Balin afterwards.
Merlin goes on to say that Balin is now dooooomed, dooooomed I tell ye, and this is super tragic, since he's the best ever. 

It seems, in this part of the text, as if the real evil of Sword Lady was that she conspired to murder her own brother. Even though said brother did kill her boyfriend, and this is the kind of thing that people normally think warrants vengeance by death in this book (heck, way smaller matters are considered sufficient grounds for killing your enemey - see Sir Lanceor's hate of Balin above). I guess him being her brother makes all the difference here.

Anyway. Sir Lanceor arms himself, rides after sir Balin, catches up with him and challenges him to a joust. Balin doesn't even know who Lanceor is (I guess because Lanceor joined King Arthur's court during the time Balin spent in the dungeon). Balin also (reasonably) thinks that Lanceor wants to avenge Lake Lady, rather than restore his pride after Balin drew a sword that Lanceor couldn't. When they joust, Sir Balin runs his lance straight through a) Lanceor's horse's neck, b) Lanceor's shield, and c) Lanceor's armour, all in one go, and both knight and horse drop dead.
I'm gonna go ahead and mark this blog entry with "superpowered knights", since, seriously... that's some jousting! (Balin's horse might need powers to for this to even begin making sense.)
Then Balin feels sad over killing Lanceor. And, yeah... he was killed for extremely stupid reasons, but on the other hand, Lanceor started it, and Balin only agreed to joust with him because he insisted. 

Next thing he knows, a lady rides up on a horse, says she was Lanceor's girlfriend, and now when he's dead, she's got nothing more to live for. She jumps off the horse, takes Lanceor's sword, and immediately faints. Then she wakes up again, and makes "great dole out of measure". Balin tries to take the sword from her, but he can't, since she's holding on so tight that he fears he might hurt her. So she commits suicide with it. Considering the super strength that sir Balin just displayed, I'm calling bullshit on him being unable to stop her from killing herself; he probably thought it was just easier to let her do it than dealing with her.

Right after this sir Balin's brother sir Balan rides up to him. They take off their helmets, hug and kiss. Balin asks what Balan is doing there, and Balan says he heard a rumour that Balin finally got out of the dungeon, so he "rode to this country" to look for him.
This raises so many questions.
If Balan wasn't even in England, then a) how did he hear about what happened at Camelot this same day? (I went back and re-read some parts but... it really does seem like it's still the same day.) Did they have magic telephones or something? Messenger ravens a la Game of Thrones with superspeed? b) What are the odds he'll actually come across Balin as soon as he rides over to England to look for him... like, England is pretty big?

Anyway. 

Sir Balin tells Sir Balan everything that happened, including his plan to get back into King Arthur's good graces by killing King Rience of North Wales, a.k.a. the creepy beard taylor. Right now, he lies at siege at Castle Terrabil. Balan promises to help his brother Balin with this, and they ride off together.

Book two, chapters 1-3, in which King Arthur isn't as great as he thought he was. Also, more magic swords and decapitations.

 After more than a year-long hiatus, I decided to start up this blog again. I had already finished book one of this super thick volume; time to start on book two.

King Rience of Northern Wales, the one who wanted to add barely pubescent King Arthur's non-existent beard to his creepy beard mantle, attacks England, and there is much fighting at the border. Arthur, meanwhile, gathers up loads of knights in Camelot for council and jousts. 

They're visited by a beautiful (unnamed) lady wearing a thick fur coat. When she drops her coat to the floor, she reveals a big-ass sword tied to her waist. She explains that this sword is stuck on her, and only a good man without treason could draw it from the scabbard and free her from its cumbersome weight. Weirdly, Sword Lady doesn't say how she got it in the first place, but probably some magic dick like Merlin did it to her for shits and giggles. Anyway, she first went to King Rience the Creepy, but none of his knights could pull it. Next she moved on to Camelot.

Arthur holds a little speech which I must assume fooled absolutely no one, where he insists he does not claim to be all that good and virtuous and therefore the one chosen to draw the lady's magic sword, not at all, he just thinks it fitting that he'll be the first to give it a little yank, since he's king and all. He ends up pulling at the damn sword as hard as he can while Sword Lady protests that the one chosen to draw it shall do so with little effort. Eventually, Arthur gives up and lets all the knights of the round table try it too, but none succeeds. 

Now, someone decides to free Sir Balin (yep, like the dwarf in the Hobbit) from Arthur's dungeons, where he had spent six months for killing Arthur's cousin (whom Arthur apparently knew he was related to...? Despite knowing jack shit about his family otherwise...? Maybe it was his cousin by adoption, the child of Sir Ector's sibling or something). Just as Sword Lady is about to leave, Balin asks if he could try the sword as well, because although he's currently dressed in rags, in his heart, he knows himself to be as good as any other man. Sword Lady is suspicious, but eventually Balin persuades her to give him a try. Balin easily draws the sword, and the lady declares that this proves he's the least villainous and treacherous knight ever, destined to do great things. (I guess we can conclude from all this that Arthur's cousin had it coming, and Balin merely handed him his just deserts?) 

However, Sword Lady is a precog and suddenly has a vision: If Balin keeps the sword, it will lead him to kill his best friend, and ultimately be his doom. She asks to get the sword back, despite being tired of its weight, in order to protect him from this terrible fate. Balin dismisses her advice, decides to keep the sword anyway, and deal with any future problems as they arise. Now, in our own world (or rather, our own time, since Sir Thomas Malory assures us that these are historical records, not fantasy) it might make sense to dismiss someone's sudden vision of the future, but Balin should have known better. The odds that any random posh lady has legit magic powers in this universe seem to be around fifty-fifty. 

And his stupid dismissal immediately comes back to bite him in the ass! Next thing we know, the Lake Lady who gave Arthur his sword rides in on a horse. She reminds Arthur that he had promised her any favour whatsoever in payment for the sword, and Arthur goes yeah, I remember. Lake Lady then asks for Sir Balin and Sword Lady's heads! Arthur goes nooo, not thaaat, since he was just warming up to Sir Balin again after hearing Sword Lady singing his praise. Lake Lady reminds him that he promised her anything she'd ask for.
So this is the deal: Lake Lady had, by "enchantment and sorcery", destroyed many knights before, and also somehow conspired against Balin's mother to have her burnt at the stake. As vengeance, Balin therefore killed Lake Lady's brother. As vengeance for that, Lake Lady wants Balin dead, and she wants to kill Sword Lady (seriously, I wish more women got properly named in this book) because Sword Lady somehow caused the death of Lake Lady's father (details not explained). 

Everyone basically argues about who started it all, until Sir Balin resolutely decapitates Lake Lady. King Arthur is now furious over this breach in hospitality, but Balin just shrugs and rides off into the sunset, with a vague idea of eventually winning back Arthur's favour by killing King Rience of Northern Wales, the Creepy Beard Taylor. 

Arthur and all his knights lament Lake Lady (it's unclear to me why, exactly) and give her a grand funeral.

Book 1, chapters 26-27

King Rience of northern Wales, all of Ireland, and "many isles", sends a message to King Arthur. He says that he's defeated eleven other kings, and then forced them all to shave off their beards. Rience then took those beards and made a mantle out of them! However, there's still a hole in the mantle, where Rience intends to sew in Arthur's beard, so now he demands that Arthur shaves for him. Arthur says a) he's too young to have a full beard yet (like seriously, how young is he?), and b) also, fuck you King Rience, you're the biggest asshole ever, so many fuck you:s, fuck you forever (it's a longer speech but this is the gist of it).

So that was chapter 26. In chapter 27, I fear we've got a bit of a continuity issue.

Merlin had previously neglected to tell Arthur about his biological family, resulting in Arthur knocking up his big sister completely unaware of the family relation (although totally aware that she was married, but whatever, that never stops anyone in this book) (also, serious cradle-robber, that big sister of his). Later on, Merlin tells Arthur that now he's gonna have an incest baby with his sister, who's fated to destroy him. In chapter 27, however, it's suddenly like Arthur hasn't heard this. Now, Merlin just tells him that there's a child born on May-day who's fated to destroy him eventually. Arthur resolutely thinks to himself that there's no kill like overkill, and in a probably Herod-inspired move gathers up every child in the realm born on this day, including his incest son Mordred, and put them all in a boat that is pushed out to sea so that they will die. Both less efficient and less humane than if he'd just had all their heads chopped off!
Obviously people are very upset about this, but most of them blame Merlin more than Arthur, which is, okay, fair enough I guess.

Anyway, the boat crashes on a shore by a castle, and all the kids die except for Mordred, who's saved by "a good man" who takes him in and raises him.

And that's the end of book one!

Book one, chapter 23-25 : Rome pays a visit, random fighting, Arthur receives Excalibur

Ok, so after a really long hiatus, for no reason in particular other than I had a lot of other shit to do, the Arthur saga is back. At this point, the super weird plot point with the Roman emperor is introduced.

Twelve knights arrive at Camelot, from Rome, telling Arthur he has to pay taxes. Arthur is like "Screw you, you can tell your emperor I'm coming down to pay him with my sword!"
Apparently, King Arthur was in an extra bad mood too, because Sir Griflet had been so badly wounded... in a fight he wasn't prepared for, and only engaged in because Arthur ordered him to.
You're weird, King Arthur.

Next day, Arthur is riding around on his horse, when he sees Merlin being chased by three murderous peasants. Was that a general problem, in these days? (Whichever "days" we're talking about, since there are so many anachronisms in this book?) Wizard-hating peasants? Arthur chases them off, and then tells Merlin that he just saved his life. Merlin is like nah, you totally didn't, I could have chased them off by magic any time if I wanted to, but I didn't feel like it. Merlin goes on to say that it's actually Arthur who's in danger, because he's soon gonna be in a fight with another knight, and soon enough they run into a knight called Pellinore, and Arthur fights him.

Pellinore is about to win the fight and kill Arthur when Merlin steps in and put a sleep enchantment on the former. Convenient! Merlin then goes into prophecy mode and tells Arthur that Pellinore is a really big knight (this is weird: Could "big" be used the same as "great" when this book was written? Or is he just literally very big? But if so, surely Arthur could see this with his own eyes, and wouldn't need Merlin to tell him?). He will have two good sons, Percivale and Lamerake, and one day reveal to Arthur the name of his own incest-son that he had with his sister (because, remember, Merlin hadn't bothered to tell them that they were actually siblings), who's fated to destroy the realm.

Unfortunately, Pellinore destroyed Arthur's sword in the fight. Merlin brings him to a lake, in the middle of which a white-clothed arm sticks up from the water, holding a sword. Merlin is like look, you can have this one instead!
So, I didn't quite get all this from just reading the book, I also did a bit of googling, but apparently the Lady of the Lake or the ladies of the lake (even though they talk about her in singular terms in this chapter, there are more of them later on) are like a kind of fairie species in English folklore. And they don't literally live in lakes, they live in a sort of magical fairy realm, but they put glamours over the portals making them look like lakes, which they ascend from when entering our world. So this lake lady who was holding the sword above the water now comes up and gives it to Arthur, on condition that he's gonna do her a favour later on when she asks. And Arthur agrees to this! He has no idea what the favour is gonna be or when she's gonna ask it. He's just "cool sword, sure, I'll do you a favour, whatever whenever."
Also, the sword has a magic scabbard, that makes Arthur invulnerable for as long as he carries it. Neat!

Book one, chapter 21-23: The mystery of Arthur's age

When Queen Igraine has arrived at Arthur's place, Sir Ulfius challenges her - or, rather, some male champion of hers - to a fight. He says that if only she'd publically told everyone that Arthur was her and King Uther's son, and thus the rightful heir, lots of war and fighting could have been avoided. Igraine explains that Merlin just took the baby away from her right after birth to adopt him away, and she didn't know until just recently which family he ended up with or even that his name was Arthur. Everyone is like ok, so it wasn't your fault, it was Merlin's fault… and then everyone is just fine with things? Like Sir Ulfius doesn't challenge Merlin to a fight instead, on finding out that he's the one to blame? Probably because Merlin is a wizard. Wizards get away with shit.

Next, a young squire called Griflet wants to be one of King Arthur's knights. He's really, really young; no older than Arthur himself!

So, I'll paus here to consider Arthur's age. I wanna know exactly how old he is! He's described as this young, beardless boy, and now another boy, same age as him, is said to be too young to be a knight. At the same time, Arthur has actually already produced two children of his own. One of those stories I didn't recap, because it's basically just "Arthur meets hot lady, they have sex, she got pregnant", the other one is the accidental incest. How old is he? 
Anyway. The fully adult knights think that Griflet is too young to be knighted, but Arthur says otherwise (maybe he's biased by being just a kid himself?). So Arthur knigths Griflet, on the condition that (now Sir) Griflet challenges some random (but adult) knight who's camping in the area to a fight, and comes back after the fighting is done.

Sir Griflet rides out to this knight's camp and challenges him to a joust. The other knight is like "Seriously? I'm  an adult man with lots of jousting experience, you're just a kid." He says he really doesn't wanna fight Griflet, but Griflet insists. Eventually the knight agrees to jousting with him, and promptly runs his jousting lance through Griflet's body. Griflet manages to make it back to King Arthur's place even though he's got this lance through his chest (it doesn't go through the middle of his body but more to the side - still though).
If you wonder whether anything important hinged on this young kid fighting way above his league and ending up seriously injured in the process, the answer is "no", absolutely nothing. But I guess Griflet proved that he's really tough or something? Or that he's the kind of guy who'll do as he's told by his superiours, regardless of how mad the orders.

Anyway, Griflet is treated with "good leeches" and recovers! Wow. Those are some leeches!

Next, a messager arrives from the Roman emperor who demands that King Arthur pays truage, or else Rome will destroy England. But Arthur refuses!