The Once and Future King - T.H. White
Aug. 9th, 2020 12:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
troisoiseauxIf any love triangle could and should be resolved by polyamory, it's Arthur/Guenever/Lancelot. It wouldn't solve all of their problems, but it would make at least three people less miserable and many people less dead.
The Once & Future King is one of my favorite books of all time, so I was shocked to discover how little of it I actually remembered? I had remembered most of the "The Sword in the Stone," and the parts of the second section that revolved around Gawaine & co.'s childhoods (which was so sad to read about immediately after reading about Arthur's much happier one), and of course the very last scene of the novel - Arthur talking to the young page Thomas of Warwick (i.e., Thomas Malory) the night before his last battle - but I'd forgotten the specifics of most of what happened in between those points.
Things I'd forgotten include the entire premise of Phyllis Ann Karr's Idylls of the Queen (I spent that entire book like, "I wonder who did it?" and it turns out the answer was on page 506-507 of TO&FK the whole time) and - most surprisingly to realize, since at one point I had very strong feelings about it - the fact that White's Lancelot is definitely on my list of top 10 favorite fictional characters in literature, if not in the top 5.
Realized that I've hit another milestone of being the same age as/older than characters in a book I last read while younger than them— Guenever is 22 and Lancelot is 22 or 23 at the beginning of their relationship. And poor Elaine is only 18?! She's a baby. I felt so much for Elaine, this time.
Speaking of The Idylls of the Queen (which was on my mind a lot, re-reading this, mostly in the context of "ohhhh, that's who X was") I was intrigued by White's comparison of Mordred to Richard III, because Karr's characterization of him as still on the edge of deciding whether to self-destruct or self-fulfill vis-a-vis his prophesied role of villain made me think of the line from Richard III:
After reading two sympathetic depictions of Mordred in a row - Karr's, and Elizabeth Wein's The Winter Prince - White's characterization of him as Richard III meets Oswald Mosley was a bit of a turnabout, but while not a sympathetic villain, he was still an interestingly complex one.
It's definitely a product of its time, in both interesting and, uh, interesting ways - among other things, T.H. White has Opinions on the Irish and hoo boy is it A Lot - but a lot of its themes are strikingly relevant today.
The Once & Future King is one of my favorite books of all time, so I was shocked to discover how little of it I actually remembered? I had remembered most of the "The Sword in the Stone," and the parts of the second section that revolved around Gawaine & co.'s childhoods (which was so sad to read about immediately after reading about Arthur's much happier one), and of course the very last scene of the novel - Arthur talking to the young page Thomas of Warwick (i.e., Thomas Malory) the night before his last battle - but I'd forgotten the specifics of most of what happened in between those points.
Things I'd forgotten include the entire premise of Phyllis Ann Karr's Idylls of the Queen (I spent that entire book like, "I wonder who did it?" and it turns out the answer was on page 506-507 of TO&FK the whole time) and - most surprisingly to realize, since at one point I had very strong feelings about it - the fact that White's Lancelot is definitely on my list of top 10 favorite fictional characters in literature, if not in the top 5.
Realized that I've hit another milestone of being the same age as/older than characters in a book I last read while younger than them— Guenever is 22 and Lancelot is 22 or 23 at the beginning of their relationship. And poor Elaine is only 18?! She's a baby. I felt so much for Elaine, this time.
Speaking of The Idylls of the Queen (which was on my mind a lot, re-reading this, mostly in the context of "ohhhh, that's who X was") I was intrigued by White's comparison of Mordred to Richard III, because Karr's characterization of him as still on the edge of deciding whether to self-destruct or self-fulfill vis-a-vis his prophesied role of villain made me think of the line from Richard III:
And therefore since I cannot prove a lover
To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
I am determined to prove a villain
After reading two sympathetic depictions of Mordred in a row - Karr's, and Elizabeth Wein's The Winter Prince - White's characterization of him as Richard III meets Oswald Mosley was a bit of a turnabout, but while not a sympathetic villain, he was still an interestingly complex one.
It's definitely a product of its time, in both interesting and, uh, interesting ways - among other things, T.H. White has Opinions on the Irish and hoo boy is it A Lot - but a lot of its themes are strikingly relevant today.
no subject
Date: 2020-08-09 07:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-09 08:21 pm (UTC)"Everything not forbidden is compulsory."
Date: 2020-08-09 08:35 pm (UTC)OT: What is your icon from?
Re: "Everything not forbidden is compulsory."
Date: 2020-08-09 08:58 pm (UTC)My icon is one of Vanessa Stockard's paintings of Kevin the Kitten!
no subject
Date: 2020-08-09 07:49 pm (UTC)Maybe I ought?
no subject
Date: 2020-08-09 08:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-09 08:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-09 09:09 pm (UTC)It's a trojan horse of a book in the best way possible— it pulls you in with Wart's Charming Boyhood Adventures and very quickly turns into a reflection on, like, leadership and ethics and society.
no subject
Date: 2020-08-12 04:35 pm (UTC)This is exactly what I realized when I reread The Once and Future King for the first time as an adult!