On Mordred

 Thoughts about not knowing what to do for NaNoWriMo are still crushing my soul, thanks for asking!

Thursday night right before falling asleep I had some fantastic thoughts about politics that I wanted to put in a letter some time but I don’t write a lot of letters these days because no one writes back.

I am not feeling great these days, but as of right now I feel better than I did last week, so that’s something. Maybe it’s that probiotic yogurt. I just have to survive past Election Day and then we’ll see what’s wrong with Eduardo! Hurray!

There are a lot of Thoughts I have about Battle Ground, but in the interest of avoiding spoilers that’s not going to be a Saturday Note topic for quite some time.

Also I’m currently re-reading The Lost World (the Michael Crichton one, not the Arthur Conan Doyle one), which is fun but maybe not great for stress. I’m hoping that since the last time I read it (middle school, I think?) I’ll find it less stressful, but who knows!

Anyway.

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"I could understand the darkness of Mordred because he was in me too; and there was some Galahad in me, but perhaps not enough."

-John Steinbeck

On Mordred

I thought about this one immediately after I finished the Note about Galahad, but I wasn’t sure if I could write this, because I couldn’t think if I’d read that many books that featured Mordred that heavily. But I suppose I haven’t read that many that feature Galahad either, in the grand scheme of things. I told myself I might try to pick up that one book from the YA section in the library about Mordred, but my sister tells me it’s not very good so I thought I’d go ahead and write the darn thing.

Alright, so let’s take it from the top, one more time: who is Mordred?

Story goes like this: Mordred, or Medraut in the Old Walish, is the warrior who traditionally brings about the downfall of Camelot. In the oldest mention it doesn’t describe much other than that he and Arthur both died at Camlann (though it doesn’t say if they were even on opposite sides!), at some point Geoffrey of Monmouth claimed he’s Arthur’s supervillain nephew. In the middle ages it was decided somehow that he’s actually Arthur’s supervillain son (which has some basis in the Old Walish stories) by accidental incest with his evil sorcererss half-sister Morgause, raised to destroy him. When Arthur leaves to fight a war with Lancelot, Mordred’s left in charge, and he immediately takes over, and Arthur returns to fight him and they have a big battle and everyone dies.

Happy fellow, this Mordred guy.

Mordred is, in theory, an interesting complex character, but a difficult one to write convincingly, because he is The Worst. A lot of adaptations don’t even try to make him sympathetic. Most of the ones I’ve read don’t. I suppose James A. Owen’s books give it a try, but his Mordred is so different than traditional depictions that I more or less consider him to be a completely different character entirely, much like I do with Marvel’s version of Loki in regards to the mythological figure he’s based on.

[Parallels between Marvel’s Loki and Mordred! Food for thought!]

Unless a work decides to consciously focus on Mordred, generally, he’s just a terrible person. Unless we count the BBC Merlin, which we shouldn’t, because it doesn’t know how to do character development--it decides to provide absolutely perfect motivation for Mordred to turn evil, and then throws it out, and then gives a different motivation, but throws that out too so that Mordred could have a previously-never-mentioned-before love interest appear and get fridged for him to turn evil over. 

Look, writing better character arcs than that isn’t difficult.

And there is a good-ish motivation for Mordred to turn evil, other than that his mom’s evil! In many versions, upon finding out that Mordred will lead to his downfall via prophecy, Arthur has all the babies in the kingdom born on that day rounded up and put on a basket to be put out to sea; except for Mordred, who is miraculously saved, they all drown. This little bit of infanticide and horrible decision-making is very rarely called out, except by Mordred in giving him motivation, like in The Once and Future King, or in, randomly of all places, The Fionavar Tapestry by Guy Gavriel Kay.

Most of the time, he’s kind of just a turd. And maybe that’s okay; not every villain needs a sympathetic backstory, but I would like for people to try a bit harder to give him something other than EVIL. I remember Excalibur, the movie, in which he’s a creepy child that goes around stabbing knights and giggles about it, before he’s magically aged up and then just drops the giggling bit. At least in that one he’s raised by his mother Morgan (Morgan and Morgause are often conflated in adaptations).

It makes me wonder though, why does this guy lead an uprising? Or rather, how? If no one likes being around this jerk, how does he get enough support to lead a rebellion against the good King Arthur? Like yes, in real life people who are obviously deranged often get into positions of extreme power and people fall in line behind them because they’re cowardly sycophants--

[refraining from making a more overtly political comment]

--but fiction has to make more sense than reality, and you have to wonder, if Mordred’s usually portrayed as a backstabbing jerkweed, why anyone listens to him. Different authors have different answers, because this is Arthuriana, and nothing is simple.

T.H. White, for instance, has this whole subplot about the Orkneys, and that they always stick together as a family, even if it’s not wise. Gawain doesn’t like Mordred that much, but they’re brothers, so he sticks with him even when he knows that he shouldn’t. They don’t even really hang out or anything, but when he’s plotting treason he promises not to tell on him because there’s a family bond or something. It also helps that when he does divide the table, it’s over something that’s absolutely correct--that Lancelot is sleeping with the queen, and no one’s doing anything about it.

Also by the end of the book Mordred’s totally a Nazi stand-in. ‘Cause why not?

Bernard Cornwell, in his Warlord Chronicles, doesn’t do that much that I remember with his characterization. In that trilogy, he’s Arthur’s nephew, and the true king, but he’s an infant in the beginning of the story so Arthur runs the kingdom while he’s growing up. But he becomes a cunning and treacherous leach that bites the hand that feeds him. And the way he gains support is by appealing to Arthur’s enemies. He teams up with the Saxons because they also don’t like Arthur, and by offering them what they want--Arthur’s life, and his kingdom in Britain--they form an alliance so that he has support, if not actually from any charisma on his part. Unlike Lancelot, who uses his reputation and charm to get away with being a piece of crap.

But what made me think about this, the whole, “Where does Mordred get support from anyway?” question, was reading The Squire’s Quest by Gerald Morris. Because that one features Mordred very heavily, and it goes with a characterization that I’d never seen before: Mordred as a charismatic speaker.

See Morris’s Mordred comes across as a very likable guy to most people that he meets. He admits he’s not very good with a sword, and tries to sell himself as a humble diplomat that has a way with people. And he does! And most people fall for it! The people who don’t see that there’s something up with him, that he always has the right thing to say, but because they haven’t actually caught him doing anything wrong (he’s too smart for that) they can’t really accuse him of anything other than giving an uneasy feeling. But the man’s dead inside. Mordred’s so full of hatred there’s really nothing else left. But no one can sense that from him, other than the one guy who met him before he put on his whole act for Camelot.

I like this take, if only it’s a different take than “He’s just that guy no one likes who somehow gains power” trope. Maybe that’s what I want from writers doing Arthurian characters--to actually think about how these characters would act, rather than just presenting them as is. That’s not bad, depicting archetypes, but it’s also fun to add depth to see how these characters would be if they were fleshed out people.

Mordred’s a particularly important case though, because he’s a key figure in a lot of stories. He’s the guy who brings it all down! But how? Why? And it’s a little disappointing that authors are often just not interested in doing something with Mordred. Or, like with BBC’s Merlin, going about it in a lazy way. I don’t want a sympathetic Mordred, honestly, but I want to know what’s going on in this guy’s head.

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And to close us out, here, listen to Heather Dale’s song that launched a bajillion fan music videos: “Mordred’s Lullaby.”