The Once and Future King

“The Castle of the Forest Sauvage is still standing, and you can see it’s lovely ruined walls with ivy on them, standing broached to the sun and wind.”

The narrator frequently steps out of the narrative to address his audience directly, usually to provide historical context. Here, he acts as tour guide, creating a bridge between past and present. These asides allow the reader to find the contemporary relevance in a centuries-old tale, which is in keeping with the novel’s emphasis on The Importance of Cultural Myths. Myths must reach across the span of time, proclaiming their ageless themes to all audiences, much as Sir Ector’s castle remains standing.

“The great body, shadowy and almost invisible among the stems, ended in a face which had been ravaged by all the passions of an absolute monarch.”

Arthur’s first adventure into the natural world takes him into the moat where, as a fish, he meets the “king,” a massive pike called “Mr. P.” White gives Mr. P. human attributes, and this anthropomorphism allows Arthur to experience the animal kingdom through a human lens. This experience serves him well as he ascends the throne and must govern a human kingdom.

“The time is not yet ripe for you to be a hawk […] so you may as well sit down for the moment and learn to be a human being.”

When Arthur pleads with Merlyn to turn him into a hawk, the wizard urges patience. Never assume superiority or underestimate the social organization of any species, Merlyn suggests, simply by virtue of being human. Before Arthur can aspire to the nobility of a hawk, he must master the art of being the best human he can be.

“‘Mark my words,’ cried the beautiful Balan, ‘we shall have a regular king in that young candidate.’”

After a night as a hawk, Arthur proves his mettle by facing Colonel Cully without flinching. Using a bit of human psychology, he calms the colonel’s fear by assuring him that he’s in no danger. When he passes the test, the other hawks sing his praises, foreshadowing the boy’s rise to fame.

“I cannot change Kay into things. The power was not deputed to me when I was sent.”

Although Arthur wishes to share his animal experiences with his brother, Merlyn tells him it’s not possible. Only he, the future king, can be thus transfigured. Merlyn’s confession does two things: It establishes strict limits on his power, and it also suggests that Merlyn is in service of a higher power, his task being to prepare Arthur for the hard task of kingship.

“Ah, them book-learning chaps. They don’t know all.”

When Arthur and Kay encounter John Naylor (Little John) in the forest, he corrects them concerning the real name of his comrade: Robin Wood. Kay protests that all the books call him “Robin Hood.” Little John’s rebuttal is both a caution that simply being in a book does not make something true and a suggestion that there are better ways to learn than sitting alone with a book—a truth Arthur discovers with every new adventure. The episode also gently pokes fun at the legends the novel draws on, suggesting that they may be mistaken in certain details.

“The passion of nocturnal secrecy was a wine in his blood.”

As Arthur embarks upon a rescue mission with Robin’s men, he finds the danger gives him an adrenaline rush; his senses are sharper and his reflexes quicker. This important self-discovery remains part of him through his youth and young adulthood, allowing him to face the trials and obstacles of kingship head-on.

“But in the Old England there was a greater marvel still. The weather behaved itself.”

Nostalgia for medieval England runs through the narrative. In fable, at least, the era was a time of unspoiled wilderness, of magic and mythical beasts, and of clear moral distinction. Here, White uses the weather as a metaphor for England’s glory days, when even the climate understood it existed in the best of times. The implication that this is no longer the case typifies The Loss of Idealism associated with Arthur’s eventual downfall.

“But what creature could be so low as to go about in bands, to murder others of its own blood?”

When Arthur, spending several days as a goose, asks if geese kill each other, his friend, Lyo-lyok, is aghast at the idea. She cannot imagine what species would resort to killing its own—a jab at human aggression and its propensity for war and killing that develops the theme of Might Versus Right. The question of war bedevils Arthur all the way to his deathbed.

“There is only one thing for it then—to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it.”

As Kay’s knighting ceremony nears, Arthur despairs over the loss of his brother, who will no longer be his peer but his superior. Merlyn consoles him with education. Learning about the world, he says, is the only way to overcome sadness. The implication is that by understanding the world, it loses its power to hurt us. Arthur takes this lesson to heart, always thinking deeply about his problems in order to dispel their power over him.

“Perhaps we all give the best of our hearts uncritically—to those who hardly think about us in return.”

Gawaine and his brothers seek the approval of their mother, Morgause, even though she withholds her love. The less she gives, the harder they work for it, even slaying and beheading a unicorn to earn her favor. The narrator uses this to comment broadly on the human tendency to love those who demand the most and return the least.

“What is all this chivalry, anyway? It simply means being rich enough to have a castle and a suit of armor, and then, when you have them, you make the Saxon people do what you like.”

Arthur, a bit too enamored of his own power and his code of chivalry, receives a lesson in humanity from Merlyn, who points out that chivalry is easy if one can afford it. War is not a game to win but a plague of death in which no one wins. The young king wrestles with this lesson for his entire life.

“You might say that this moment was the critical one in his career—the moment towards which he had been living backward for heaven knows how many centuries.”

As Arthur prepares to address his Round Table for the first time, Merlyn watches with trepidation to see if all his lessons have taken root. He is pleased with Arthur’s desire to eradicate the brutality rampant in England at the time, although his foresight tells him that those efforts will lead inexorably to tragedy. White also reinforces the idea that Merlyn has been “sent” by some unknown power to accomplish a mission, lending the wizard an aura of mystery and authority.

“And then I shall make the oath of the order that Might is only to be used for Right.”

Arthur declares his new code of chivalry to his knights. Unfortunately, he can’t see how tenuous and arbitrary the code is; it leaves the impulse toward violence intact, and the definition of “right” varies from person to person. Arthur later attempts to rectify these problems, but force and morality prove persistently difficult to balance.

“On the contrary, he made it clear that the business of the philosopher was to make ideas available and not to impose them on people.”

In the ongoing debate over Might Versus Right, Sir Kay suggests a “good” reason for starting a war: to force people to accept a better way of life. Merlyn compares Kay’s rationale to that used by Hitler and argues that Jesus had a better way: articulating his philosophy and allowing people to accept it (or not) of their own free will. Force of any kind, the novel suggests, can lead to despotism.

“‘Love,’ said Sir Grummore uneasily, ‘is a pretty strong passion, when you come to think of it.’”

Sir Grummore’s simple statement foreshadows and summarizes the events of the novel’s final two books. It’s love for Guenever that compels Lancelot to betray his best friend. It’s love for them both that leads Arthur to let that betrayal continue. It’s the Orkney clan’s love for their mother and homeland that compels them to wage war on Arthur. It’s an understatement to say that love is “pretty strong” when in fact it topples Arthur’s kingdom.

“He thought of her only as the person who had robbed him, and, since robbers are deceitful, designing, and heartless people, he thought of her as these.”

Lancelot’s first meeting with Guenever in no way portends their future romance. Lancelot, jealous of the queen’s marriage to Arthur, sees her only as a rival and assumes the worst before truly knowing her. Only when he sees how his rudeness has hurt her does he begin to see her as a human being—a young woman married to a man without her consent—allowing him to empathize with and eventually love her.

“[F]ew people can hate so bitterly and so self-righteously as the members of a ruling cast which is being dispossessed.”

Lancelot’s quests put him in direct conflict with the old Norman barons, the feudal lords whose brutal oppression Arthur has vowed to eliminate. The barons fight tenaciously to preserve their privilege: Ironically, after years of oppressing the underclass, they now claim to be oppressed by the king’s pursuit of justice and equity.

“It is only people who are lacking, or bad, or inferior, who have to be good at things.”

Lancelot, the epitome of strength, courage, and virtue, explains to Guenever that his skills compensate for his lack of self-esteem. Described by White as “ugly,” Lancelot spends his life trying to make up for what he sees as his greatest flaw—his moral weakness.

“Arthur was not one of those interesting characters whose subtle motives can be dissected.”

The narrator, in an aside about Arthur, notes that he is precisely what he appears to be: “a simple and affectionate man” (389). All of his actions and motives flow from these two basic traits. White also makes a subtle jab at 20th-century literature’s application of psychology to characterization to find trauma in every villain or flaws in every hero. The novel implies that mythic characters resist such dissection, existing in a world of clear moral boundaries.

“‘I told Elaine,’ he said, ‘that I would not promise to stay with her: so I must.’”

Lancelot’s relationship with Elaine captures the inner turmoil that roils him. He vacillates between obligation to her and rage at her deception. His virtue, so important to his identity, takes precedence over everything—even his love for Guenever. That his rescue of Elaine entailed a miracle (his life’s desire) and that he is the father of her son only complicate matters.

“The World had been expected to end in the year one thousand, and, in the reaction which followed its reprieve, there had been a burst of lawlessness and brutality which had sickened Europe for centuries.”

Although the novel points out that the “Dark Ages” were not as dark as historians once believed, there was a surge of cruelty and violence during those centuries after the first millennium. Having escaped the Final Judgment, Europe feels free to indulge in its worst impulses, giving rise to a feudalism that Arthur seeks to redress.

“He was the badge of everything that was good in the Middle Ages and he had made these things himself.”

White addresses a historical revisionism that seeks to cast Arthur as merely a “distressed Briton” leading a revolution against invading Saxons in the fifth century. While this may be historically accurate, the novel seeks to preserve Arthur’s legend as “the heart’s king of a chivalry” (534)—a myth more than a man. To reduce Arthur to a simple warrior is to diminish not only his own status but also his place in English mythology.