Anyway, this was an idea I thought about for last week, but I ditched it because I felt like I didn’t have enough to say. It’s back, but maybe I have too much to say. [shrugs] I dunno.
Let’s talk about good ol’ Galahad.
[I don’t mention Neil Gaiman’s short story “Chivalry” in here, but you should go check that out because it’s pretty good.]
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On Galahad
Alright, how the fudge do we start talking Galahad?
Let’s start with this: the question of “Who is the greatest knight of the Round Table?” has been asked by scholars for ages. And different authors throughout history had different answers! Mostly in the forms of Mary Sues, inserted wish fulfillment characters that walk into the canon and make the narrative revolve around themselves. The most obvious example of this is Lancelot, a character added by French authors who is also French, and also incredibly handsome, talented, can maybe bring people back from the dead, is Arthur’s best friend, and also the queen falls in love with him, but Arthur can’t hold that against him because they’re BFFs, man!
You write a character like that now, your editor will probably (hopefully) tell you to go back and change a few things.
And yeah, there are a few knights who come across like this, though Lancelot’s the most famous. Lanval comes to mind, Marie de France’s character who is so incredible that the Guinevere tries to get into his pants as well, but unfortunately for her it turns out that Lanval has an EVEN HAWTER FAERY GIRLFRIEND that gives him a bunch of gold to not talk about her. Yes, this reads a bit like Lanval’s a prostitute for a faery lady but no one in-story brings that up.
Galahad is kind of the the Sue-est of them all. Of all Mary Sues. Galahad is THE Mary Sue character. Yeah, Lancelot is the more famous of the two, but there are versions of Arthurian stories in which Galahad is without sin. To be clear, in Catholic theology (and the authors of Arthurian legend would have been Catholic), there are exactly four human beings who were created without sin: Adam, Eve, Mary, and Jesus, and that’s even assuming that the person in question took the story of Genesis literally. But that’s a theological can of worms we’re not opening right now.
So, Galahad’s story goes like this (and I’m skipping a lot for brevity): Lancelot at one point saves this young woman named Elaine, and she falls head over heels for him, and her father encourages the match, but Lancelot doesn’t really reciprocate because he’s still in love with Guinevere. She at some point uses a magic potion or spell to make him think she’s Guinevere, and he sleeps with her, and this conceives Galahad.
Whether or not Lancelot knows about Galahad (as he generally leaves shortly after being date raped in the stories) changes from one version to another; commonly, he does not, and Galahad just shows up in Camelot one day and sits in the Siege Perilous, a seat that is reserved for the Greatest Knight EVAH or Else You’ll Be Lit on Fire and says his name, which is an old family name Lancelot recognizes, or maybe his name before he changed it to be more self-descriptive, or whatever.
Galahad is mostly tied to the Grail Quest--that thing where Arthur’s knights go looking for the Holy Grail (when it’s not Percival). Traditionally, he finds it, and then kind of sticks around as it’s guardian or something, or ascends into Heaven with it. A popular version says that he, Percival, and Bors all reach the Grail, and while Percival dies after finding it, and Bors goes to tell everyone what happened, Galahad stays with the Grail because he’s pure enough. Or something.
Now obviously, given his connection to Lancelot, and the whole Grail thing, you can probably guess that Galahad’s a relatively late arrival to the Arthurian party. There are a few people who believe that Galahad is in fact a kind of reboot version of the Saint Illtud, an old Welsh saint who is said to have been Arthur’s cousin that gave up being a warrior to become a holy man. But that’s a big maybe. Chances are, he doesn’t have an old Welsh counterpart in the way that Bedivere, Gawain, Percival, and Kay do.
As you can probably guess from all of this, modern writers struggle with what to do with Galahad. He’s meant to be the Perfect Knight, heck, the Perfect Man, really. So nowadays, if writers include him at all, very few of them will try to play that straight. And let’s be real here, the medieval standard of perfection, written by guys who were very educated but probably weren’t philosophers or theologians, isn’t necessarily what a lot of people would think of as being perfection.
So a lot of writers try to deconstruct him one way or another, if they use him. Mostly, he gets kind of ignored, because having a perfect knight kills a lot of tension. Kevin Crossely-Holland’s Arthur Trilogy has him only barely mentioned a couple of times, mostly in relation to the Grail Quest. He appears in the Guillermo del Toro Tales of Arcadia: Wizards animated series, but there’s he’s just kind of some guy, with no known relation to Lancelot (who is also a character) and might as well have been named something else because he doesn’t act anything like Galahad. I honestly can’t think of any movies that feature him; Kingsman doesn’t count, because it’s a code name modern agents use, and I don’t know if I’d consider the 2004 King Arthur, in which he’s just kind of some guy that’s there. And played by Hugh Dancy? And Mads Mikkelsen is Tristan??
Anyhow.
The most Galahad has been in a mainstream pop culture thing is, I think, The Librarians? In which he’s a major character, but less as an Arthurian character and more as an immortal who has seen a lot of stuff.
More often you’ll see some sort of deconstruction of the character? T.H. White’s The Once and Future King has very little focus on the character, as much as his effect on the relationship between Lancelot and Guinevere. But what we do get seems to lean into the idea that because of his almost angelic purity, he doesn’t relate to people very well. A lot of the other knights don’t like him or get along with him. When it’s pointed out that he doesn’t act normal, Lancelot says something like, “Well you wouldn’t expect an angel to act like a man, would you?” Gawain goes on to suggest he’s gay because he has no interest in women whatsoever which is… an interesting take, but it’s more gossip than based on anything in the novel. And then he ascends to Heaven before we see anything with it.
If you ever listen to songs by Heather Dale, who bases lyrics on Arthurian and medieval topics a lot, you’ll notice Galahad gets a mention in “The Trial of Lancelot,” in which he’s one of the knights that speaks at the trial when Lancelot’s been caught in his affair with Guinevere. He’s not… I don’t think Heather likes him much. He is by far the most judgmental of the knights at the trial, declaring “the laws of God declare this act damnation.” He also seems to act like Lancelot is a serial womanizer, and mentions his “unbeguiling mother.” And I get that Arthurian legend doesn’t have a “canon” as such (usually there’s not even a trial for Lancelot, he skips town when he’s been caught), but most versions have Elaine basically daterape Lancelot. So not precisely “unbeguiling” as all that.
Gerald Morris also has strong feelings about Galahad, and medieval Christianity in general, I think (though he’s a Protestant minister, so kind of duh). He deconstructs Galahad as a man who is driven entirely by fear--he’s terrified of the mere possibility of sinning, so he goes to Confession at least once a day. He’s also terrified of women, and when a beautiful woman talks to him he assumes that it’s because she’s trying to seduce him. He has a nightmare, and Beaufils is told that the nightmare was that a beautiful woman talked to him, and he fled because he was afraid of having impure thoughts. I’ve talked about how I don’t love the idea of Galahad as a misogynist, but at least this book brings up that Galahad is honestly trying to do the right thing, and will fight evil where he sees it; he’s just so terrified of evil lurking within himself that he doesn’t make a very good holy man or a knight. He’s not a figure of disdain like Morris portrays Sir Tristan, as much as pity.
And in truth, I don’t think this take has really aged well, because misogyny nowadays doesn’t really manifest as being straightforwardly afraid of women as much as… well, unwanted harassment from men. Hence the MeToo movement. But I did think it was an interesting take on character, even if it wasn’t one I didn’t particularly agree with.
[Also Gerard Morris is the only author I can think of that put Galahad in a scene interacting with Mordred, which I absolutely need more of because that’s an interesting dynamic.]
Weirdly, though, my favorite take on Galahad is the one in Warlord Chronicles? And it’s not a deconstruction? Like out of all the Arthurian authors, Bernard frickin’ Cornwell, the guy who has a vocal disdain for organized religion because he grew up with Christian fundamentalists, in a hardcore violent and edgy take on the Arthurian legend, plays Galahad more straightforwardly than Gerald Morris, the actual Christian minister? What?!
Part of this is accomplished by reworking Lancelot entirely. In Warlord Chronicles, Lancelot is not a noble hero, or an anti-hero, or a good fighter, or anything good really. He’s a cowardly opportunist who dresses up in fancy armor, sucks up to whoever he thinks will get him what he wants, and is followed by a retinue of paid bards and poets that tell stories about how amazing he is. Think of an ancient Celtic Gilderoy Lockhart, and you’re on the right track. In the trilogy Galahad is not Lancelot’s son, but his half-brother, and the one who actually lives up to the hype. He, like our protagonist Derfel, cannot stand Lancelot, and only puts up with him because he’s family. When Lancelot is finally beaten and hanged in the final book of the trilogy, which Galahad aids with, he’s called “the greatest coward and traitor in all of Britain” or something like that.
Right, I’m talking about Galahad.
In that trilogy, Galahad is basically perfect? Not the Perfect Man, but a good man, who is doing what he can to help the world. He’s a good fighter, a good friend, and a good advisor. He joins the quest for the Cauldron of the Otherworld, despite not being pagan, because he knows it’s important to his friends and wants to help them out. Heck, he’s even got a sense of humor, which most versions of Galahad lack. Kind of like a Celtic Michael Carpenter?
Which is more of what I want from a Galahad, I suppose. Not a deconstruction, not an effort to make an angelic saintly figure, just… a righteous man in a time of murky ethics. I suppose I understand why many writers feel the need to turn it into a deconstruction, as Galahad’s name is almost a synonym for unattainable perfection, and so the urge to deconstruct or satirize that notion is always tugging at the brain. But I’d really like writers to actually try to ask themselves what a realistic notion of saintliness is like and try to apply that to the character. How would you imagine a righteous man to act? And then make Galahad that guy.
I understand that it’s probably more difficult to try to create a saintly character than an evil one--I just read a C.S. Lewis thing on this actually--but writers should at least try, I think.
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