I've just finished reading Marion Zimmer Bradley's 'The Mists of Avalon'. It says much for the quality of its story that I enjoyed it just as much as I did T.H. White's 'The Once and Future King'. However, I'm not really one of those people obsessed with the Arthurian legend, (and I stress legend - more on that in a moment) and those two novels are the main literary contact I have had with it. For my purposes, or indeed anyone's, that movie with Richard Gere and Sean Connery, that telemovie with Sam Neill (as ultimately awesome as that guy is), and that silly teen drama thing that casts Merlin as a kid with big ears speaking to a CGI dragon in a cave, do NOT count. So it's not at all surprising that I found myself thinking of 'The Once and Future King' quite a lot as I read 'The Mists of Avalon', and quite definitely inevitable that I should end up writing how they relate to one another, and indeed why the story is still such a drawcard.
But first, let me be clear - there has always been this...idea that Arthur, Guinevere et al were all real people to an extent, that the story is on some basic level, true. The reality of the legend is a matter of debate, and in all honesty, if even the Wikipedia entry is long and complicated, I doubt the question will ever be settled. But in my opinion, it is a myth - a fiction in the most fundamental sense. Oh, it's a great story, never doubt that - why do you think it endures? But there is no truth in it. And its value to people is the basis of that - a tale that ultimately belongs to everybody, to be transfigured at will, but always to depict the playing out of unavoidable fate. Arthur shall marry Guinevere, and Lancelot shall love her, and doom shall come of it. Camelot will fall.
So, to the books in question. I did not reread 'The Once and Future King' for this (as much as I love it, it's one of the those rare books I am forced to read slowly), so I'll be going along on memory.
It would be very easy, I think, to simply say that the two texts are diametrically opposed - two sides of the same coin, for sure, but never to meet. This is due to two obvious divergences - the feminine viewpoints of 'Mists of Avalon' in contrast to the male-centric 'Once and Future King', and the bright Christianity of the latter to the complex religious struggle of the former. It would simple to leave it at that, to take the depiction you like best, and run with it. But 'The Once and Future King' is not just the stories of the Christian men of Camelot, and 'Mists' is not just the stories of Goddess-serving women. To say that would be to sell both short. Ultimately White and Bradley were both working with the same tale, and the similarities are there.
Let's begin with Lancelot/Lancelet. (I'll be referencing the OAFK name before the MOA one.) T. H. White's Lancelot is simultaneously one of the most wretched, and most brilliant characters I've ever seen rendered in text. His torment, his identity as the 'Ill-made Knight', the consistent feeling he has of being inescapably and eternally evil, even before Guinevere, is gut-wrenching. In 'Mists', due to the persistent use of feminine narrators, you hardly know how deeply torn Lancelet is until his son dies. Both are valid portrayals of the archetype we call Lancelot, but they are not at all far away from each other. At the end of the day, Lancelot is Lancelet is Lancelot, regardless of the matter of vowel use, and the pull of love and loyalty to his king, and the opposite pull of love to his king's wife, creates that torment which is common to both novels.
Guinevere/Gwenhwyfar is another I could reference as being fundamentally the same person in both texts. Though 'Mists' depicts her mostly as annoyingly pious and pitiably agoraphobic, and in 'Once and Future King' she is largely just a woman, not in the object sense, but in terms of her humanity. Nonetheless, they share an important thing in common - they attempt to stay faithful to Arthur. Ultimately the bond between Guinevere/Gwenhwyfar and Lancelot/Lancelet is too strong to be denied (though in 'Mists', Arthur quite literally puts his wife into the arms of his dearest friend -and what happened after that point was definitely NOT canonical!), but the fact that both versions strive honestly to do right by their husband (and indeed, so too does Lancelot/Lancelet) links them.
And then we come to Arthur, who is the same. The Arthur who is King of Camelot is fundamentally identical in any story - ultimately he is even less a character and more of an archetype than any other of the names associated with the legend - Morgan/Morgaine, Galahad, Mordred - all of them have more substance of humanity about them than Arthur does. Arthur is in some ways unimportant to the stories that grow around him because he is their linchpin. He is the symbol of beneficent rule, at the end of the day - a peacemaker, ill-fated like so many great leaders. Even in T. H. White's novel, which some would suppose to be centrally about Arthur, the only time true focus is put upon him as a person is in 'The Sword in the Stone', i.e. when he is a child, before he is the king and thus the epitome of all good in the world. (Slight touch of sarcasm there) And though Lancelot is probably the most strongly written character in 'The Once and Future King', and the four sons of Orkney are definitely more rounded out than Arthur, and that holds true for 'Mists' as well, that's actually how it should be. What keeps people interested, keeps people writing, is that Arthur created a society that was both joyous and peaceful, and that others conspired to tear it down, while still others invited its shattering through no fault of their own.
And that happy peace is the heart of it - no matter how different the interpretations and emphasis may be, no matter if Morgan le Fay is shown to be an evil witch, or seen as Morgaine, a Druid priestess simply doing as her Goddess wills, no matter if Christianity is the enemy or the backbone to the narrative, that is why the Arthurian story endures. There was peace, and it was good, and then it was lost. But it will come again. That is the message. Though White deals with this ultimate thrust of the tale and all those that have grown out of it with the burial mound, under which Arthur lies sleeping in order to come again some day and resurrect that world, Bradley is unequivocal -Arthur is dead. And as I said before, I doubt there ever actually was such a person, at least in the form we read him as today. It's not real, but like many things that are not factual, they are valuable and important all the same - and really, there are some facts and truths that are not as important as an idea like King Arthur at his Round Table, regardless of the former's status as 'reality'. Sometimes dreams are as crucial as the world they grew from. The Arthurian legend is one of these - and despite the ruin of Camelot, the utter certainty of that fate, and the tragedies of all kinds which occur in the process of its demise, it's a good dream.
