Sarah's Reviews > The Once and Future King

T.H. White’s Arthurian opus, The Once and Future King, is probably as influential on the modern fantasy genre as The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia, yet has been overshadowed in the mainstream by its two major adaptations: Disney’s animated feature The Sword in the Stone (1963), which is based almost exclusively on the first quarter of the book, and the Broadway musical Camelot (stage debut 1960, film 1967) which is based on the last half. To adapt White’s whole book, and do it justice, is probably impossible. Even reviewing it accurately is an intimidating prospect. I will try my best.

White has adapted Sir Thomas Malory’s Morte de Arthur for modern audiences in this tome, divided into four books:

The Sword in the Stone, which chronicles Arthur’s childhood in Ector’s castle and his tutelage by Merlyn

The Queen of Air and Darkness, which follows the war between the newly-crowned Arthur and King Lot of Orkney from the perspective of Lot’s four young sons: Gawaine, Gaheris, Agravaine, and Gareth. The titular character is their mother, Morgause, who is terrifying. Cassandra Clare, true to form, has “borrowed” this title for one of her own books.

The Ill-Made Knight, which centers on Lancelot’s adventures, struggles, and family problems

The Candle in the Wind, wherein Mordred comes to power , and everything Arthur worked so hard to build collapses on him.

The tone of the first book is blithe and frequently, brazenly crosses from mere Monty Python-like silliness to outright self-parody. Merlyn, born at the wrong end of time and constantly blurting out anachronisms, is mostly a figure of great fun, while his owl Archimedes, Sir Ector, and the haplessly questing King Pellinore are wholly so. When I was younger, I remember watching The Sword in the Stone with a friend and being appalled by the irreverent treatment of Merlyn, especially the scene at the end where he shows up in the royal hall wearing a Hawaiian t-shirt and sunglasses. Little did I know that the book itself is almost as flippant—I think he wore a top hat in this version.

Yet even at this early point we get subtle hints of the darkness to come. The shards of social commentary are intriguing, such as White noting that the great predatory fish in the moat, who is the first to tell Wart (the child Arthur) that “Might makes Right,” looks like Uncle Sam.

Also, Robin Hood—Robin Wood in this version, and don’t you forget it—is camped out in the same forest as Ector’s castle, and he’s as merry and fun as you could ask for.

As the book progresses, both the comedy and the blatant anachronisms recede, although they don’t disappear entirely until the end. The first quarter ends with the coronation of the boy Arthur, noting that Archimedes sent a great-grandson to “perch upon the King’s throne and make messes behind it” or something to that effect. We then launch right into the early bloodlust of the Orkney brothers, and their sickeningly creepy relationship with their sickeningly creepy mom, but even this plot thread tangles for a while with the romantic travails of the senile Pellinore and a well-meaning trick by Sirs Palomides and Grunmore going horribly awry.

By the time that Morgause has worked her grisly magic on Arthur and become pregnant with the child of that incest, though, we are fairly settled in the darkness, with Lancelot, who even as a child is wracked with self-loathing and impossible expectations of himself. White’s insistence that Lance was hideously ugly is a curious departure from every other portrayal of the character, although the female characters sure don’t react to him as if he were. Perhaps Lance’s inverted hatred is so strong it effects even the narrator, or perhaps the author (whose life seems to have been sad and lonely) rendered the “ill-made knight” as a skewed self-portrait.

The Grail-Quest here is undertaken as a morale-boosting exercise to Gramarye (the name of Arthur’s kingdom; apparently Camelot is only the capital city) and is mostly told through flashbacks by the knights who came home. Galahad is portrayed as an arrogance priss with no concept of teamwork who gets on everyone’s nerves. I can see that. The quest itself makes about as much sense here as it does in any other version, that is to say none.

Arthur’s reign is usually understood as fairly short, but White again diverges from popular conception and portrays the King as a broken old man at the end, who has lived long enough to become the villain (in a fashion) and see the same eyes in different people and all that. Lance and Gwen are not much younger. Yet Gareth, only a few years younger than Lancelot, is cut down in the bloom of his youth, and Mordred is portrayed as even younger. Meanwhile Ector, Pellinore, and Lance’s Uncle Dap live to positively biblical ages. Trying to figure it all out was starting to give me a headache, so I can only imagine how White felt writing it.

In White’s version, the story takes place not in fifth-century, post-Roman Britain, but in a parallel twelfth century. Here Robin and his merry men exist independent of Richard and John—in fact, the real kings and queens are considered legends here.

But all the suspension of disbelief is well worth it. White’s character development for Arthur and Lance is spectacular, while Merlyn will cheer your soul, Morgause will freeze your blood, Guinevere will earn your loathing and Elaine, your pity.

Content Advisory
Violence: There are spurts of it, and where it occurs, it’s dreadful, some of it against animals. Morgause boils a cat alive as part of her evil magic. Later she wraps Arthur in a ribbon of human skin in order to bespell him. The young Orkney boys slaughter a helpless unicorn and messily butcher it. The man who later becomes Sir Bedivere beheads his wife for adultery. Agravaine slays his mother for the worst possible reason. Lancelot splits a guy’s head in half, and later, in berserker mode, strikes down his friend Gareth.

Sex: No racy scenes are described, but we know that a drunk Lancelot gets deflowered by Elaine, mistaking her in his altered state for Guinevere. The young Arthur falls asleep having a vague dream about a beautiful, hypothetical wife, and awakens to find Morgause climbing out of his bed with her gruesome ribbon while her four young sons look on. Lance and Gwen have secret liaisons for twenty-four years, none of which are ever shown. Even in her old age, Morgause maintained the appearance of a young woman through her witchcraft, and had successfully seduced Pellinore’s son Lamorak when they were ambushed and murdered by Agravaine, who is all but directly stated to have incestuous feelings for his mother. Mordred is hinted at sharing those feelings, and he also has a creepy preoccupation with Guinevere—his attempt to force her to marry him brings about the final battle.

Language: Lancelot accuses the late Tristan of boorish behavior including racism: “He was always riding on poor Palomides for being a n****r.” That’s it for the whole book.

Substance Abuse: Ector’s hunting guests get hammered. Lancelot gets hammered on one occasion. Gawaine is either hammered, angry, or hammered and angry, which isn’t a Scottish stereotype at all *clears throat aggressively*.

Disney did a surprisingly faithful job of adapting the first quarter of the book, although I am very relieved that they didn’t attempt the others at the time. The musical Camelot is definitely prettier and simpler than the last half, but it catches all the important themes, and preserves the poignant ending with little Tom of Warwick (who grows up to be Malory).

This weighty novel will appeal to a wide range of people and I heartily recommend it to anyone who can handle its gory flashes and its sorrow.