The Once and Future King (collective work) (edit title/settings)

Characters edit see section history

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• 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.
• Mordred: 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. The Beast has a serpent's head. the body of a libbard, a lion's haunches, and makes a noise in his stomach like that of many hounds questing.
• 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.
• Grummore: A knight of the "old school" who is polite to a fault, seeing combat (like the joust) as honorable, and as such, should not be diminished by a dereliction of the rules imposed by Chivalry. He's not as comical as Sir Pelinore, his rival in the joust, but just as fusty.
• Bors: A relation of Lancelot
• Palomides: A black night who has the idea to dress up as the Questing Beast with Sir Grummore.
• Jenny: a nickname used for Queen Guenever
• Robin Wood: Robin Hood's new name to distinguish him from his previous acts
• Gaheris: One of the son's of Morgause and part of the Orkney clan
• Meliagrance: A young night who falls desperately in love with Queen Guenever.
• Maid Marian: Robin Wood's companion who is surprisingly good at fighting
• Lionel: Sir Lancelot's nephew.
• Lamorak: King Pellinore's son, who is killed while in bed with Queen Morgause.
• Turquine: A blood-thirsty knight who is killed by Sir Lancelot.
• Tristram: A knight who is referred to as a copycat by Lancelot after his death. Committed adultery with King Mark's wife.
• Master Twyti: An old huntsman sent by King Uther to Sir Ector in the early part of the book.
• Wat: What Arthur's name is shortened to in his youth (also Wart).
• Percy: Add a description of this character.
• Cully: The dog-boy at the court of Sir Ector, who lived with the packs of hounds and was chased by local children.
• Balan: Brother of Balin, Knight of the Round Table.
• Gwen: One of the nicknames for Guenevere, Queen of Camelot.
• Aglovale: A compassionate knight of the round table.
• Bliant: An old knight, associated with the round table.
• Corbin
• Madam: Sometimes a name given to the Queen.
• Mother Morlan
• Malory: The seventeenth-century writer of Morte d'Arthur.
• Norman: The origin of the Arthurian nobility.
• Little John: A member of Robin Wood's band of men.
• Percivale: A knight of the round table.
• Mark
• Carados: An evil baron of Arthur's early days; he captures Gawaine but is defeated by Lancelot.
• Bedivere: A knight of the round table.
• Morgan Le Fay: Queen of the fairies.
• Tom: The page at the end of the book who is asked by Arthur to tell the tale of his life.
• King Arthur
• Friar Tuck: A member of Robin Wood's band of men who is taken by Morgan le Fay.

Quotes edit see section history

• “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.”

• “He had a contradictory nature which was far from holy. . . . For one thing, he liked to hurt people.”

• “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.”

• “'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.”

• “For love can exist with hatred, each preying on the other, and that is what gives it its greatest fury.”

• “True warfare is what happens between bands of the same species. Out of hundreds of thousands of species, I can only think of seven which are belligerent. Even man has a few varieties like the Esquimaux and the Gypsies and the Lapps and certain Nomads in Arabia, who do not do it, because they do not claim boundaries. True warfare is rarer in Nature than cannibalism.”

  Merlyn

• “The destiny of Man is to unite, not to divide. If you keep on dividing you end up as a collection of monkeys throwing nuts at each other out of separate trees.”

  Merlyn

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

  Lyo-lyok

• “His word was valuable to him not only because he was good, but also because he was bad. It is the bad people who need to have principles to restrain them…People have odd reasons for ending up saints…An ordinary fellow, who did not spend half his life torturing himself by trying to discover what was right so as to conquer his inclination toward what was wrong, might have cut the knot which brought their ruin.”

• “Far from being willing to execute his enemies, a real king must be willing to execute his friends.”

  Arthur

• “Let us now start fresh without remembrance, rather than live forward and backward at the same time. We cannot build the future by avenging the past.”

• “We civilized people, who would immediately fly to divorce courts and alimony and other forms of attrition in such circumstances, can afford to look with proper contempt upon the spineless cuckold. But Arthur was only a medieval savage. He did no understand our civilization, and knew no better than to try to be too decent for the degradation of jealousy.”

  Narrator

• “"Four things," he whispered, "that a Lothian cannot trust- a cow's horn, a horse's hoof, a dog's snarl, and an Englishman's laugh."”

  Agravaine

• “"Go on, said Sir Ector, "what do these words on this sword in this anvil in this stone outside this church, say?""Some red propaganda, no doubt," remarked Sir Grummore.”

  Sir Grummore

• “"Passive resistance," said Arthur with intense interest. "It is a new weapon. But it seems difficult to use."”

  King Arthur

• “Manners are only needed between people, to keep their empty affairs in working order. Manners makyth man, you know, not God.”

  Lancelot

• “Like likes like, they say- and at least they are certain that her men were generous. She must have been generous too. It is difficult to write about a real person.”

  Narrator

• “One of them who was called Baptista Porta seems to have invented the cinema - though he sensiibly decided not to develop it.”

  Narrator

• “Another little boy, this time a king of four years old in Scotland, might be sadly issuing a royal mandate to his Nannie, which empowered her to spank him without being guilty of High Treason.”

  Narrator

Setting & Locations edit see section history

• England
• Orkney
• Cornwall
• France
• St. Toirdealbhach
• Lothian
• Ireland
• Camelot
• Rochester
• Tower Of London
• Benwick
• Bedegraine
• Europe
• Uwaine
• Gaelic
• Forest Sauvage
• Rome
• Salisbury
• Great Hall
• Beaumont
• Britain
• Hungary
• Saracen
• Wales
• Flanders
• Winchester
• Carbonek
• Carlion

Organizations edit see section history

• Knights of the Round Table: Add a description of this organization.

First Sentence edit see section history

Table of Contents edit see section history

Series & Lists edit see section history

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. T. H. White (Author)

Other Contributors:

1. Elisabeth Brewer
2. Frederic Marvin (Artist)

First Edition edit see section history

Awards edit see section history

• BBC's Big Read (April 2003, #198)

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: PR6045.H2 1958
• Dewey: 823.912

Notes for Parents edit see section history

Often taught in high school but sections may be taught to younger students like the first novel in the series - The Sword in the Stone.

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Science Fiction & Fantasy › Fantasy › Historical
• Books › Science Fiction & Fantasy › Fantasy › Epic

Movie Connections edit see section history

• Camelot (1967) (IMDb): Musical staring Richard Harris, Vanessa Redgrave, Franco Nero, and David Hemmings

More Books Like This edit see section history

Books That Influenced This Book edit see section history

Books Influenced by This Book edit see section history