The Once and Future King (The Once and Future King, #1-4)

by T.H. White

Something of the new ideal of the Round Table which was to be born in pain, something about doing a hateful and dangerous action for the sake of decency—for they knew that the fight was to be fought in blood and death without reward.

They would get nothing but the unmarketable conscience of having done what they ought to do in spite of fear—something which wicked people have often debased by calling it glory with too much sentiment, but which is glory all the same.

This is why, although Malory clearly tells us that only a Pellinore could catch her, we always find her being pursued by Sir Palomides in the later parts of the Morte d’Arthur.

This shit is so meta

In these a small page of the King’s household excelled. He was a son of Arthur’s ally at Bedegraine—King Ban of Benwick—and his name was Lancelot.

Whatever the explanation may have been, the Queen of Air and Darkness had a baby by her half-brother nine months later. It was called Mordred.

That is why we have to take note of the parentage of Arthur’s son Mordred, and to remember, when the time comes, that the king had slept with his own sister. He did not know he was doing so, and perhaps it may have been due to her, but it seems, in tragedy, that innocence is not enough.

He would call himself the Chevalier Mal Fet—the Ill-Made Knight.

She was not the Elaine who had been one of the Cornwall sisters. It was a popular name in those days and several women in the Morte d’Arthur had it, particularly as some of its manuscript sources have got mixed up.

Lancelot was angry at being taken from Guenever, because he felt that it implied a lack of trust. Besides, he knew that Sir Tristram had been left with King Mark’s wife of Cornwall on a similar occasion. He did not see why he should not be left with Guenever in the same way.

LMAOOOOO

It is the bad people who need to have principles to restrain them. For one thing, he liked to hurt people. It was for the strange reason that he was cruel, that the poor fellow never killed a man who asked for mercy, or committed a cruel action which he could have prevented. One reason why he fell in love with Guenever was because the first thing he had done was to hurt her.

THERE is no need to give a long description of the tourney. Malory gives it.

LOL

for few people can hate so bitterly and so self-righteously as the members of a ruling caste which is being dispossessed.

“There are some marsh soldiers,” said the knight, “cantering after us. Look behind. They are armed cap-à-pie.” Lancelot reined his horse and looked over his shoulder. At the same moment the knight leaned over to his near side and swapped off the lady’s head.

It is so fatally easy to make young children believe that they are horrible.

It was not enough for me to conquer the world—I wanted to conquer heaven too.

for love can exist with hatred, each preying on the other, and this is what gives it its greatest fury.

Arthur was not one of those interesting characters whose subtle motives can be dissected. He was only a simple and affectionate man, because Merlyn had believed that love and simplicity were worth having.

They looked at each other with hostile, smiling faces.

“The next thing he did was to throw away his sword and rush straight into the pavilion. My poor wife was there, in bed, with no clothes on. But he just jumped straight into bed with her, snatched the coverlet, rolled himself up in it, and went fast asleep.” “Must have been a married man,” said King Pelles.

He had worn a place for himself in some corner of her heart, as a sea shell, always boring against the rock, might do. The making of the place had been her pain. But now the shell was safely in the rock. It was lodged, and ground no longer.

One of the young men who came to court in those days was Gareth. Another was Mordred.

But a woman could wait too long for victory—she could be too old to enjoy

Nimue, though scatterbrained and unpunctual, was a good girl in her way. She turned up a day late, told how the apple had come to be poisoned, and went back to her own concerns.

Lancelot said: “Jenny, couldn’t you forgive her? She is probably ugly as well as miserable now. She never had much to fall back on.”

Damn say less

It was a long time since Arthur had been the happy Wart, long since his home and his kingdom had been at their fortunate peak. Perhaps he was tired of the struggle, tired of the Orkney clique and the strange new fashions and the difficulties of love and modern justice. He may have fought against Lancelot in the hope of being killed by him—not a hope exactly, not a conscious attempt. This just and generous and kind-hearted man may have guessed unconsciously that the only solution for him and for his loved ones must lie in his own death—after which Lancelot could marry the Queen and be at peace with God—and he may have given Lancelot the chance of killing him in fair fight, because he himself was worn out.

MY HEART

forgive you for making me.” “Yes, and I shall go into a Nunnery for my sins, and live happily ever after. What shall we sing now?”

“Now,” said the King, “need we talk about the Gawaines any more? Do I never get a kiss from my wife?” “Dear.” She drew his head towards her and kissed him on the forehead, thinking of him as a faithful old thing—her friendly bear.

“You will find,” he explained, “that when the kings are bullies who believe in force, the people are bullies too. If I don’t stand for law, I won’t have law among my people.

“The kind of mercy,” asked Mordred, “which used to set those babies adrift, in boats?” “Thank you, Mordred. I was forgetting.”

“I wish I had never been born.” “So do I, my poor boy. But you are born, so now we must do the best we can.”

Now that she was dead, he had become her grave. She existed in him like the vampire.

Gawaine was trying to think, an effort not made easy to him by practice. On this dark evening it was twice as difficult, because of his head.

Was it the wicked leaders who led innocent populations to slaughter, or was it wicked populations who chose leaders after their own hearts?

A knight with a silver suit of armour would immediately call himself a have-not, if he met a knight with a golden one.

“Oh, page?” “My lord.” “What is your name?” “Tom, my lord,” it said politely.

“Thomas, my idea of those knights was a sort of candle, like these ones here. I have carried it for many years with a hand to shield it from the wind. It has flickered often. I am giving you the candle now—you won’t let it out?” “It will burn.”

The fantastic thing about war was that it was fought about nothing—literally nothing. Frontiers were imaginary lines.

The fate of this man or that man was less than a drop, although it was a sparkling one, in the great blue motion of the sunlit sea.

The cannons of his adversary were thundering in the tattered morning when the Majesty of England drew himself up to meet the future with a peaceful heart.

This pops into my head all the time.