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!
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