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Description
A novel about the court of King Arthur, which was the basis for the movie "Camelot".
Cast of Characters/Important People
- Arthur Pendragon: The protagonist of the novel. Arthur is known as Wart.
- Lancelot: A very promising knight.
- Merlyn: Arthur's tutor and first best friend, Merlyn is a wizard and teaches Arthur most of his life.
- Modred: The son of Arthur and his half-sister, Morgause. Cold, calculating, and vicious, Mordred is raised by Morgause to hate Arthur. He thrives on slander and insinuation, which he prefers to open confrontation.
- Morgause: The mother of Gawaine, Gaheris, Gareth, and Agravaine, and the half-sister of Arthur. Morgause is cruel and petty, but her little whims have a huge impact on Arthur and England. Her seduction of Arthur is the first step in Arthur’s destruction.
- Elaine: The daughter of King Pelles, she has been boiled for many winters by magic, and can only be saved by the greatest knight in the world.
- Galahad: Galahad is morally perfect and invincible and often seems more like an angel than a human.
- Gareth: Morgause’s sweetest and most sensitive son. Unlike most of his brothers, Gareth loves Arthur and Lancelot.
- Gawaine: Morgause’s oldest and strongest son. Gawaine, prone to murderous rages, is in many ways an emblem of everything that is wrong with knighthood. Despite Gawaine’s roughness, however, he is a decent man.
- King Pellinore: The first knight Arthur meets. An amiable bumbler whose lifelong quest is to hunt the Questing Beast, Pellinore becomes an accomplished knight after his marriage. Even after Pellinore is killed, his legacy of kindness lives on in his children.
- Sir Kay: Arthur’s foster brother and a knight of the Round Table. Spoiled as a child, Kay remains nasty and selfish, but is decent at heart.
- Sir Ector: Arthur’s foster father and Kay’s biological father. Sir Ector is good-natured, pompous, and boisterous. Although he often seems like a caricature, Sir Ector proves to be less foolish than we might expect.
- The Questing Beast: A magical creature that only a Pellinore can hunt. The Questing Beast needs to be hunted to survive, and after a series of comic mishaps, it is hunted by Sir Palomides instead of King Pellinore.
- Agravaine: One of Morgause’s sons. Agravaine seems to have the most problems with his mother’s promiscuity. As a child, Agravaine is the cruelest of Morgause’s sons, and he remains deceitful and cowardly throughout the novel. He is Mordred’s closest ally.
- Sir Bruce Sans Pitié: An evil knight known for his sneak attacks and ambushes. Sir Bruce always manages to avoid capture and is a recurring example of the old injustices that Arthur is trying to fight.
- Uncle Dap: Lancelot’s childhood instructor. Although he is the brother of kings, Uncle Dap is Lancelot’s squire when Lancelot becomes a knight of the Round Table. Morgan le Fay - Morgause’s sister and Arthur’s half-sister. Morgan le Fay, who is most likely a fairy queen, shows up periodically to torment knights and villagers with her malicious spells.
- Nimue: Merlyn’s lover, who eventually traps him in a cave for centuries. Despite her faults, Nimue is basically a nice woman, and she promises to take care of Arthur on Merlyn’s behalf.
- Sir Thomas Marloy: In the novel, a page whom Arthur asks to carry on the Arthurian ideals of justice. In real life, Sir Thomas Malory wrote the fifteenth-century text Le Morte d’Arthur, an account of the Arthurian legends that served as the basis for White’s novel.
- Uther Pendragon: The king of England during Arthur’s childhood. Uther Pendragon is actually Arthur’s father. Once Pendragon dies, the next king is determined by a trial, which Arthur wins. Thus, Arthur is eventually placed on the throne after his death.
Memorable Quotes
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“Power is of the individual mind, but the mind’s power is not enough. Power of the body decides everything in the end, and only Might is Right.”
Merlyn -
“Why can’t you harness Might so that it works for Right?… The Might is there, in the bad half of people, and you can’t neglect it.”
Merlyn -
“It is why Sir Thomas Malory called his very long book the Death of Arthur. . . . It is the tragedy … of sin coming home to roost. . . . We have to take note of the parentage of Arthur’s son Mordred, and to remember … that the king had slept with his own sister. He did not know he was doing so … but it seems, in tragedy, that innocence is not enough.”
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“He had a contradictory nature which was far from holy. . . . For one thing, he liked to hurt people.”
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“It was in the nature of Arthur’s bold mind to hope, in these circumstances, that he would not find Lancelot and Guenever together. . . . He was hoping to weather the trouble by refusing to become conscious of it.”
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“'Which did you like best,' he asked, 'the ants or the wild geese?'”
Merlyn -
“The best thing for being sad is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then--to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting.”
Merlyn -
“Perhaps we all give the best of our hearts uncritically--to those who hardly think about us in return.”
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“For love can exist with hatred, each preying on the other, and that is what gives it its greatest fury.”
First Sentence
On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays it was Court Hand and Summulae Logicales, while the rest of the week it was the Organon, Repetition and Astrology.
Table of Contents
Book 1 - The Sword in the Stone
Book 2 - The Queen of Air and Darkness
Book 3 - The Ill-Made Knight
Book 4 - The Candle in the Wind
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