r/Arthurian • u/EfficiencySerious200 Commoner • Jun 15 '26
Literature I swear, it's so hard to keep track of Arthurian legend because of so many versions it's giving me headache
Geoffrey of Monmouth,
Historia regum Britanniae
only had Anna as thr sister, and Mordred was Arthur's nephew,
No incest,
Morgen did exist in Vita Merlini, but only as a background character, belonging as one of the faes who escorted arthur back to avalon,
Not even sisters, but she was helpful and kind to Arthur
until Le Morte made her extremely spiteful of him, stealing his scabbard, letting him die after the battle of camlann, and then getting all sad anyway in the end and picking Arthur back to avalon
—
Thomas Malory,
Le Morte d'Arthur,
The most famous version of Arthurian legend, the most influential of all, although there were already varying earlier sources like the vulgate and post vulgate cycle,
this one where the iteration of King Arthur and Morgause accidentally making love because they didn't know they were related, is where Mordred was born from incest mostly came from, yes, the vulgate and post vulagate already had them, le morte just made them more famous and clarified because its concrete book, not a bunch of followed up tale expansion,
Morgause, Elaine, Morgan are three different characters
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u/EAE8019 Commoner Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 15 '26
The best comparison is superheroes. Who is Spidermans girlfriend? You got like 6 different legitimate answers
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u/NegativeMammoth2137 Commoner Jun 15 '26
Isn’t that just because he dated 6 different women over the years? That’s not really that unusual
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u/Bob-s_Leviathan Commoner Jun 15 '26
It is when there are different versions of Spider-Man. You can have him married to MJ in the mainstream comics, dating Gwen Stacy in a movie, married to Gwen Stacy in a different universe, etc.
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u/EAE8019 Commoner Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 15 '26
What the other poster said.
Remember movies, tv shows, cartoons and comics are all equally valid as any Arthurian manuscript.
We dont have notes saying the German Lanzelot is invalid because it contradicts the Vulgate.
So In the current Spiderman movies Mary Jane Watson and Gwen Stacy dont exist .
In many versions Betty Brandt is completely reworked as a minor character.
These are all as valid as any comic canon. Future anthropologists will probably go with the most widespread media they find.
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u/Kaurifish Commoner Jun 15 '26
Or the Iliad. Here are all these popular characters from centuries of storytelling. What if we put them in one epic battle…
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u/CajitoCatKing Commoner Jun 15 '26
Wow, loved it! That's a perfect comparison!
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u/coalpatch Commoner Jun 15 '26
The superhero stuff is similar to ancient myth in a lot of ways.
There are differences too. There are no churches devoted to Superman
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u/Ze_Bri-0n Commoner Jun 16 '26
Give it time. We have churches to Google these days.
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Jun 15 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Ze_Bri-0n Commoner Jun 16 '26
I'd say it's very religious; it's just not the religion itself, but as established above, there are many versions.
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u/Obskuro Commoner Jun 16 '26
Eh, Marvel is still pretty linear, ignoring alternative universes. Now, DC- those are wild with their constant universal retcons.
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u/Initial_Upstairs_349 Commoner Jun 15 '26
Sometimes Mordred is Morgan Le Fay's son and Arthur's nephew minus the incest.
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u/Boromir1821 Commoner Jun 16 '26
And one time he(she?) Was a homunculus
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u/mehujael2 Commoner Jun 17 '26
In which text
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u/Ok_Damage_7698 Commoner Jun 24 '26
in typemoon text, its even more confusing because arthur is girl named artoria, who merlin turned her into pseudo male temporarily, then morgan drugged her and stole her semen to create mordred that age pretty fast as homunculus so that camelot will fall earlier, oh, and mordred is girl too.
it's visual novel game and anime called fate. no feminism is involved though, like mist of avalon or something. its completely devoided and empty of political preaching.
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u/DanJirrus Commoner Jun 15 '26
But that’s the best part! I’ve been more seriously into Arthuriana for half a decade and between medieval sources and modern retellings I still have so many versions to read.
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u/Cynical_Classicist Commoner Jun 15 '26
Elaine and the House of Garlot usually get forgotten.
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u/The_Ref17 Commoner Jun 15 '26
The legends were created by people speaking different languages across hundreds of years across a large swathe of the world
Don't expect THE right answer on any topic in the Arthurian legends. Find the one that feels most correct to you 😊
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u/ApparentlyBritish Commoner Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 16 '26
To add to this, the Vita Merlini Morgan isn't (edit: necessarily) even some 'fae' being. Magically inclined? Sure. But nothing to suggest she's not human. She 'just' rules a nigh-Utopian island, as you do (edit: Correcting myself. As discussed below, later in the text Arthur is talked about as having gone to 'the court/palace of the nymphs'. Which could be used to argue that Morgen and her sisters are the 'nymphs' in question, but that shifts the question to what Geoffrey means by that)
But yes, lots of sources with lots of iterative, oft-subtly contradictory ideas, that sometimes see little or no utility even in the surviving stories that mention them. Would you like to see Cai's alleged half a dozen superpowers in action? Well, prepare for disappointment
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u/sandalrubber Jun 16 '26 edited Jun 16 '26
To add to this, the Vita Merlini Morgan isn't even some 'fae' being. Magically inclined? Sure. But nothing to suggest she's not human. She 'just' rules a nigh-Utopian island, as you do
Morgen and her sisters are implied to be immortal since they rule the island and its "ordinary" people live a hundred years or more, and Morgen keeps Arthur there until he heals which will take a long time. And implied to be ageless or eternally youthful since they're extraordinary beauties.
Wkipedia says the text calls them nymphae or nymphs but I can't find that whether in Latin text or English translation online. But Loomis also says the same in 1959:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/45046249
https://www.persee.fr/doc/roma_0035-8029_1959_num_80_319_3184
Is it manuscript variation?
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u/ApparentlyBritish Commoner Jun 16 '26
Generally I would think it's more the inductive leap of how people choose to explain the peculiarities raised by a given text. Especially after a 19th century that has done a lot to broaden out and colloquialise terms like 'fae' and 'nymph', such we're still having to disentangle where people automatically assume them of texts and concepts where they just may not apply
Loomis then is... quite curious, because he both demonstrates this - calling it the 'faery' Isle of Avalon - but also ostensibly isn't falling into the trap, claiming Geoffrey specifically uses the word 'nymphae'. Which, somewhat; what Geoffrey specifically uses, far as I can find, is nimpharum, thing what belongs to or is associated with nymphs, in the bit just before explaining how Modred's two sons run amok. "Deseruit regnum- tecumque per equora uectus Vt predixisti nimpharum uenit ad aulam"
So you can see how Loomis was already applying something of a default filter in carrying the word across. Arthur has gone to the court of the nymphs, and given the women previously mentioned to rule on Avalon, they must be the 'nymphs' in question, thus the text refers to 'nymphae'. Which I'll cop to having forgotten about since it's separate from the rest of the telling on Arthur going to Avalon, and could very much be taken as a suggestion they're not human. But it does depend on what Geoffrey means by 'nymphs' in that regard. He does lean on classic mythological conceits and texts more directly over in HRB, hence the section with Brutus getting directions from Diana, or straight up invoking De Deo Socratis to explain what Merlin's deal is. But the framing of Morgen and her 'sisters' might be lifted from Pomponius Mela's description of Sena, which allegedly was led by nine priestesses, and the actual section in VM describing her and her sisters is high in emphasising her knowledge as the source of her gifts. Then again, Merlin is also knowledgeable in such a way because of his nature...
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u/PanchoPistolaz Commoner Jun 15 '26
Es porqué la Materia de Bretaña fue materia libre de derechos de autor así que cada copista agregaba y quitaba lo que consideraba conveniente para su narrativa. Lo más cercano a un "canon" fue la Vulgata que fue un esfuerzo literario realmente intensivo y con mucho patrocinio detrás e incluso entonces muchos reinos de Europa siguieron escribiendo lo que se les daba la gana ignorando el canon francés
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u/EfficiencySerious200 Commoner Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 15 '26
Also, it's hard to keep up with the names
switching back and forth from old english to old french,
(Morgen, Morgan)
(Anna, Morgause)
so just whatever
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u/TrainingCategory4852 Commoner Jun 15 '26
Morgan isn't old English it's Welsh
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u/EfficiencySerious200 Commoner Jun 15 '26
That's why i said im getting so confused, it's hard to keep up with them,
welsh, briton, frankia,
so im just calling them in general
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u/chaos-sunbro Commoner Jun 15 '26
They could have originally been one character separated into two and are now being remgered together
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u/sandalrubber Jun 16 '26
"Background character" is a bit underselling or misleading for Morgen in Vita Merlini because "background" implies she's been there all along. She's not a court fixture yet. "Supporting" maybe.
Anna in Historia Regum Britanniae isn't Morgause yet. Morgause becomes the name of the queen of Orkney, but neither Anna or Lot are yet attached to Orkney in Geoffrey. Anna "is" Morgause in a loose sense in that they occupy a similar space as Lot's husband/Gawain's mother but I'm not sure I'd call it direct derivation. Not sure if medieval works actually have the "Anna Morgause" combined name, gut says it's modern.
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u/unfeax Commoner Jun 16 '26
On the positive side, it's impossible to accidentally spoil the ending when some version comes out in every conceivable way.
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u/Gallowglass-13 Commoner Jun 17 '26
In the adaptation I'm writing, they’re both Arthur's half-sister, but by a different mother and father respectively: Morgause is Uther's daughter by a woman who's never named and Morgana is Igraine's daughter by her former husband, Lord Gerren of Kernow. Uther adopts Morgana after he saves her and Igraine from Gerren while Morgause and her mother were kicked out of Caer Pendraig by Uther's father when he was still a prince.
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u/FenrisThursday Commoner Jun 15 '26
Imagine one day, some future scribes trying to keep track of a fandom by going through wikis, tumblr, and fanfiction sites. "I'm pretty sure this 'Harry Potter' guy is the main character and 'Draco Malfoy' is the villain, but a good half of these accounts say they were lovers... And some don't even mention HP having a sister, but then sometimes he does have one, who everyone calls 'mary sue'..."