Le Morte Darthur: Book one, chapter 1-6. Arthur's origin.

Welcome to my big Le Morte Darthur read!

Le Morte Darthur was likely written by Sir Thomas Malory in 1469-1470. Interestingly, it starts out with a preface by the guy who printed it, William Caxton. Caxton writes that this is a very important book to print. You see, King Arthur was one of the "nine best". There have been (at the time of the book's printing, one assumes) nine "best" men: Three "paynims" (I guess pagans), three Jews and three Christians. They're Hector of Troy, Alexander the Great, Julius Ceasar, Joshua, King David, Judas Machabeus, King Arthur, Charlemagne, and Godfrey of Boloine. Caxton feels a special responsibility to print a book on King Arthur, since he's English.

I really can't help wonder whether we'll never have any "best" men again. Caxton presents this as some kind of final list. But what does he know? Maybe we're, like, up to twelve now?

Then he argues that King Arthur and his knights of the round table were totally real, since this was apparently controversial. But ok, this is really intended to be a history book, not fantasy book.

Let the story begin:

King Uther Pendragon was king of all England, and engaged in a long war with the Duke of Tintagil, a mighty duke in Cornwall. Eventually King Uther sort of forgot about the whole war business, because he got distracted by the hotness of the Duchess, Igraine. Uther called the Duke and his wife to his castle under the pretext of some kind of peace talks (I think; it's a bit unclear), but when Igraine realized it was all just pretext for Uther to bang her, she told her husband that they should leave immediately, and so they did. King Uther got really mad, and went back to warring with renewed efforts. For somewhat unclear reasons, the Duke arranged for Igraine to stay at castle Tintagil and himself to stay at castle Terrabil.

At this point, famous wizard Merlin is introduced! Uther is so horny that he promises Merlin pretty much everything if only he helps him to bang Igraine. Merlin says ok, I can help you, but she'll get pregnant, and then you have to give me the child she bears, and I'll place him in some family of my own choosing, although I promise it's gonna work out great. Uther is like yeah yeah, I'll do whatever, I'll give you my first born child, I don't care, I just wanna sleep with Igraine!
Uther is a terrible king! Kings shouldn't think with their dicks!

Merlin now puts a glamour or shapeshifting spell or whatever on Uther so he looks like the Duke, and on himself and one of Uther's knights so they look like two of the Duke's knights instead. Next, they sneakingly enter castle Tintagil where Igraine is staying, telling everyone they pass that the Duke is really ill and need to go straight to bed, can't chat with anyone, sorry. Everyone buys this, and Uther sleeps with Igraine.

This is not okay, Uther!

Later on,  Igraine is told that the Duke was killed in battle before their sex, and she's like WTF? Since she's now a widow, King Uther promptly marries her.

In one sentence, we're then told that Morgan le Fay is put in a nunnery, where she learnt necromancy (which I guess was par for the course for medieval nunneries?), only to leave again and marry King Uriens of the land of Gorn. Literally one sentence.

Back to King Uther! Uther tells Igraine about the glamour rape, and she's happy that the child is his (I guess because now she doesn't need to worry that he'll kill her in a fit of jealousy or anything; since she absolutely didn't wanna sleep with him earlier, it's hard to see any other reason for this sudden joy). Next, little Arthur is born, and per the agreement, Merlin hands him over to some guy named Sir Ector, whose poor wife now has to give away her own baby for adoption in order to nurse Arthur instead.

Now, you might expect that this is part of some really cunning plan on part of Merlin. Ha! You're so wrong. It's completely pointless. Merlin just adopt Arthur away for shits and giggles. Seriously, absolutely nothing comes out of this, except that it's now more complicated to make him king when Uther eventually dies.

Next: The famous pulling of the sword out of the stone! Although it really doesn't work as well as it usually does in the movie adaptations.