Gone Medieval - King Arthur's Sex Life

Episode Date: January 15, 2024

The stories of King Arthur are among the great legends of British history. But behind the romance, chivalry and sorcery of it all, there were some pretty sexy shenanigans going on, at least in the early to mid-Medieval versions of the legends. And the good, virtuous King Arthur wasn’t quite so innocent as we might have been led to believe from The Sword in the Stone and the poems of Tennyson.In this episode of Gone Medieval, Dr. Eleanor Janega pops across to our History Hit sister podcast Betwixt the Sheets to talk with Dr. Kate Lister and spill the beans on King Arthur.**Warning: This episode contains strong language and explicit content***This episode was edited by Tom Delargy and produced by Stuart Beckwith and Rob Weinberg.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code MEDIEVAL - sign up here.You can take part in our listener survey here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on history hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries

with a brand-new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world, to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. The stories of King Arthur are among the great legends of British history. His rise to be the king of all England, the battles that he fought alongside his knights of the round table, the quest for the Holy Grail, the sword of the stone, all that stuff, you know it well. But behind the medieval mythology of it all, behind Merlin the magician and the lady of the lake who was supposed to have given Arthur his beloved excalibur,

there were some pretty dodgy, sexy shenanigans going on, at least in the early-to-mid medieval versions of that story. And good, virtuous King Arthur, well, he wasn't quite so innocent himself. I'm Dr. Eleanor Yanukkah, and on this episode of Gone Medieval, I'm popping across my history-hit sister podcast betwixt the sheets to spill the beans on King Arthur with my sister podcaster, Dr. Kate Lister.

We're going to separate the man from the myth, Oh, and I should warn you, as per usual, when I go on betwixt the sheets, some of the content may be a little explicit for sensitive ears. With that in mind, take it away, Kate. That's what we're talking about today. What an interesting, strange little subject he is, right? It's part of British history, but also it's a bit of French history, a bit of German. There's some Italian in there. The Welsh would want a shout out, as would the Irish as well.

It's this melting pot of different stories, right? Yeah, it's really interesting. So there's a term that medieval people use when they talk about what we now call Arthuriana, although maybe Arthiriana is still happening. If you write something about King Arthur now, it's added to the canon, right? That's still Arthiriana. But they have this way of talking about it where they call it the material of the English. This is the literary thing to write about if you're going to write about England.

There's two schools of thought with that. Because when British people, like when Welsh people or English people write about Arthur, they often write about him as though this is history. So you have guys like your boy, Jeffrey of Monmouth, who writes histories. So it would be like me or you saying, okay, here we go. I'm doing a history of the British. And King Arthur. And King Arthur's a guy. He's a definite real guy.

And here's like the things about him. And they write that into the story of Brit. So his thing is he positions Arthur as having been a live. this time after the Romans have left Britain, but before the Saxons come over from the continent. And it's in that kind of slice of time that he places Arthur. Now, Welsh people had been writing about Arthur for centuries before this. But when you look at the really early Welsh material, it's like campfire stories. And it's often like little rhymes, I often say, because they're like poems and things.

And it's really funny. It's like a super early hip-hop where they'll introduce varying night. of the roundtable and it's, my name is Arthur and I'm here to say, I like killing boars in a serious way. And then they'll be like, and next on the mic is Sir Kay. And that's how they introduce everyone. And all of the adventures, they involve so many boar. Yeah, boar hunting is a big thing in this particular legend. And then you get to high medieval period. And then French people are like, girl, I'm about to write about King Arthur and make it sexy. And so this becomes like the romance tradition and the kind of courtly love tradition. And so that's when, not to put too fine a point on

on it, but you and I as sex historians, start going, oh, now I'm interested. Although, having said that, there's some weird sex stuff that comes up even in the history is where you're like, really? Okay. Yes. So rather a lot of Merlin, like, disguising Arthur's dad as somebody else so he can go like bang that somebody else's wife. That's a fucking weird origin story, that one. The thing about The Itherian legends, like you're alluding to there, is that there isn't really one authoritative, this is the original. It's a hodgepodge of so many different people telling the story. But at some point, it gets decidedly weird. Arthur's origin story.

I'm not sure if that's, is it French or where this one comes from. But you tell me the story of how Arthur was conceived, because it's fucking weird. Yeah. So you got your boy, Merlin. And Merlin is a wholesale invention by J. Jeffrey of Monmouth, right? So Jeffrey of Monmouth is the one who comes up with Merlin. And he writes a series of prophecies about Merlin. And he's one who comes up with the story. And so you've got Arthur's father, Uther Pendragon. And Uther Pendragon is at war with a neighboring king.

And he also has the hots for said king's wife. And so Merlin is like, all right, buddy, the thing that we're going to do is I'm going to magic you. So he puts a glamour on Uther Penrose and so that he looks like his enemy, the other king, and then he goes and sleeps with that guy's wife. The one he really fancies. Egrane. And to me, I would classify this in non-consensual territory. And that's how Arthur's conceived.

So Arthur, it's like a cuckled job to use an old term. What year is this that Jeffrey is coming up with this story about Arthur's conception? Because what I really like about the Arthurian myth is it doesn't matter which one you're looking at. It doesn't matter how old it is. They all place it in a time, a long time ago. Yeah. Even when you're reading the text that is from a long time ago, it's still going, it was really long before this.

Oh, yeah. And that's what's really interesting is because, like, Jeffrey Omanman, so he's writing in the late 11th century, 12th century, like early 12th century, right? That's when he's doing all of this. When we think about Arthur now, we go, oh, yeah, these are medieval people, but they kind of place Arthur in the early medieval period. So this is not even what some people quite incorrectly would call the Dark Ages. Because Rome hasn't collapsed yet.

Rome still exists, but it's retreated from Britain, which is also cast as a good thing. They're like, Rome ought not be here because Arthur should be ruling, right? So it's like this time when you have the contraction of the Roman Empire, but it still exists. So late antiquity in general, if that makes sense. Okay. It's people in what we would call the high medieval people. period writing about people in late antiquity. So 500 years ago, something like that.

Yeah. It's always like once removed from whoever's writing it, right? It's just in this kind of mythical once upon a time type of area. Okay, Jeff of Monmouth, 11th century, very early, writing histories with a lot of creative license involved. That would be fair. The bits that he wasn't quite sure about, he just went, no, I'm going to make this up. he was the one that came up with this weird story about Arthur's conception,

which is basically it's rape, isn't it? There's no other way of dressing that up. To have Merlin make Uther look like this woman's husband, so she has sex with him. But there's a lot of weird birth conceptions in the Arthurian myth. Yeah, eventually Merlin gets his own weird conception as well, which is like a demon goes and has sex with a princess. It's like an incubi by story.

There's like a shadowy group of demons. they're essentially making Merlin a type of antichrist is the idea where they're like, we're going to go and we're going to put a half demon out in the world and then he'll do all kinds of like terrible things. But because Merlin's mom is like a nice lady, she then names Merlin after her grandfather. And by virtue of naming him after her grandfather, it's this dispels the power of the demons. And then Merlin just becomes like a magic guy. And this does a couple of things. Like it explains how Merlin can be magic.

but it also is a Christian story about the power of nurture versus nature. But it's another weird conception, right? And a lot of the conceptions are all criss-crossed up. You have Arthur having sex with the mothers of various members of the roundtable. You have various members of the round table having sex with, as we'll get to, you have Lancelot has sex with Guinevere. Sometimes, depending on who you ask, Guinevere is having sex with Arthur's sons.

It's a mess. Wow. The entire thing is incredibly, you know, like in high school, when everyone would just make out with each other's friends because it's like six people and you just... I thought you could still remember in high school when a wizard turned you into the likeness of someone you were waging war on and then you're going to go, fuck, Ella, what school did you go to?

Yeah, it's wild out here in America, what can I say? What's interesting about the Arthur Conception story is all kinds of weird, but then it gets picked up and then it's written about by autism it becomes established as like this thing that happened until it got to the 19th century when the very... Victorians went, we can't talk about that, and they stopped. But what's interesting in the story is that it's not viewed as a sexual assault. The issue that arises from it is whether or not Arthur is legitimate. Yeah, and this is the thing that's quite interesting, because it gets back

to what I'm always bagging on about, where women quite often, and especially wives, they're not people, they're property. They're not people. And now. And so this is part of why this is acceptable, because I'm at war with this guy. So obviously, like, Shag and his wife is on the table as part of it. Damage in his castle, damage in his wife. What's the difference, right? And the big question is always going to be succession. Because with rich people, the thing that matters is always this question of succession and what gets

passed down to who. So it's this very troubling thing, which we often see in terms of medieval attitudes towards rape, where rape is not a crime against a woman. it's a crime against another man who is seen as having charge of the woman. It's more of a property dispute. If a woman is unmarried, you've damaged her father or her brother, if her father's dead. If a woman is married, you've damaged her husband. You haven't damaged her.

It's so difficult from a modern perspective to read it and to make sense of it. But that's absolutely what happens in this story, because Uther then marries this woman that he's basically tricked into bed. And he kills her husband as well. That's like the other really shit thing. It's not just a sexual assault, it's a murder as well. He marries her. She then gives birth to Arthur and sobbingly confesses,

oh God, I think the baby might be illegitimate, at which point he goes, no, it was me. I tricked you. And now we're married, so it's fine. Tata! It's just fucking hell. And you see this a lot in like various Arthurianus stories about other knights as well,

where there is a super common theme, less of the glamour and the rape and then the retrospective. marriage, but it's incredibly common for a night to be out in the woods, get challenged by another night, kill that night, then subsequently find the castle that night owned and then marry the wife. Wow. Over and over again, you have within Arthuriana, basically widows marrying the murderers of their husbands.

And that's treated as a completely normal way of doing things. And it's almost like a fait de complete. If you murder a guy, then yeah, you get his wife, obviously. as like a trophy prize. It's like how you get his horse or his armor, his wife and his castle. Like, off you go. Oh, man. The number of the women who are, yeah, sure, I guess that to a certain extent, I'm like,

I guess that these men are all trash. So you're kind of one or the other fine. What can I say? I don't have a whole lot of nice things to say about a lot of these guys. Let's just put it that way. Which is funny because when you talk about the King Arthur myth, It's very much presented as, oh, God, King Arthur, Camelot, the best of the best, the most noble, the most chivalrous, when knights were out charging and damsels needed rescue in. But when you actually unpick the origin stories of this stuff, it is some serious Jerry Springer shit that is going on.

Yeah, exactly. And part of that whole, oh, it's blah, blah, blah, chivalry and all that, that's Victorians. It's Victorians being like, oh, we're going to rewrite this. Because medieval people, there's no such thing as a code of chivalry. It's like chivalry is, yeah, you need to be nice to other guys who have horses. Yeah. That's where the chivalier comes from. And also, I don't know, there's some women in there.

Maybe Shagham if you kill their husbands. I don't know. For medieval people, it's not the same understanding of the way that things worse. And indeed, their idea of romance is really different. Yeah, you do have marriage within this. And occasionally, you see marriages of people who are in love. Like, Eric and Aninid get married and they're very much in love. But hilariously, the entire plot line of that is,

fellows isn't gay to love your wife, essentially, where it's like he gets married and loves his wife and is like at home, and everyone's, oh, what are you some kind of wuss? Ditch your wife and go on a quest, and everyone to stop loving your wife and go to the forest. Like that's, yeah. Yeah.

And everyone else, like, for the most part, you don't necessarily marry people that you're in love. Like sometimes, some of the more minor characters do. It's courtly love, right? When we say courtly love, it's reflecting the conditions of court life. You get married because it makes good business sense and there are important contracts to be made and you fall in love with the hot guys who are hanging around. It's not about love when you get married and that's what our theory on a from the medieval period

reflects. I'm always trying to explain this to the students that I teach the medieval literature to courtly love, not Courtney love, that's something very different. Cortly love, it's not fancying somebody. It's not even necessarily being in love with somebody. It's chivalric conventions of a knight must have a lady love. That thing that Shrek rips off where they're like, oh, I drop this knight and you accept my favor and she drops the handkerchief.

All of that shit's courtly love, isn't it? It's a performance to a certain extent. Right. Having someone to say, oh, I'll wear your favor at the joust. Yeah. Okay, do they shag? Yeah. Do you think, like, for your money?

like that's the handkerchief is foreplay. But not all of them do. So it's one of these things where it's very difficult to know. How much of this is just, oh, we're playing a weird ritualized game involving handkerchiefs. And also sometimes we shag, right? Because obviously no one has had a big affair with the guy I gave my handkerchief to. No one's going to write that down. But we know the conditions are such that it wouldn't be unusual.

But having said that, this is where Arthuriana is interesting because it functions in that troubled place. where you have all of these affairs. And sometimes it's, oh, isn't that romantic? Especially with Guinevere and Lancelot, everyone accepts that's terribly romantic. But at the same time, it contributes to the downfall of Camelot. So there's always the thing about how it is terribly romantic to be in love with someone outside of your marriage. But there's that warning, like, probably you shouldn't shag, which is basically code for do hand jobs. Because they have the kinds of sex where you're not.

not going to like trouble the lineage. Right. Yeah. You're not going to bring into question whether or not anyone's air is legitimate. Don't get knocked up. Mm-hmm. Which is great advice, actually. Very sensible advice.

But speaking of bizarre conceptions, so Arthur's own conception is frankly, fucking weird. But one of the things that is often downplayed, especially when we're talking about Disney and kids' versions of this myth, is that Arthur has a son of his own. as a couple, but Mordred. Tell me about his son Mordred and how Mordred was brought about. Mordred is born as a result of a brief affair between Arthur and Morgose. And Morgose is the wife of King Lott of Orkney. And so this is a really interesting story from the standpoint of courtly love, because King Lott of Orkney and Arthur are friends, their homies.

And also Morgose is the mom of Sir Gwain. So she's Dev Patel's mom, all right? God bless her. Thanks for that. And Arthur's half-sister. Yes, but he doesn't know that. But I think we should lead with that, Eleanor. I think that's quite a criminal.

But he doesn't know that because his dad knocked his bum up in the guys. Anyway, she is his half-sister because she's the daughter of Egrane and the Duke of Titagel, who's the legitimate guy. The guy that, like, Arthur's dad was pretending to be. Yes. When Uther Pen-Dragon knocks Arther's mom up, he's pretending to be the. this guy. And she's like, they're half-brother and sister, right? But he doesn't know this. He doesn't know this. Oh. In one of the tellings, so this is Thomas Mallory's version, the Limort de Arthur, which is like 15th century. And it's the one that people, real heads are very much into

the more to Arthur, right? And what he writes about this is Arthur comes to court. He's just hanging out and he sees Morghose. And she comes in with all of her ladies and says that she's richly besieen with her four sons, Gawain, Ghaeris, Agravon, and Gareth. And he says, and she's, and and lots of knights and ladies, and he's, ooh, hot lady with a big entourage and four sons. I love it. And apparently, quote, the king cast great love unto her and desired to lie by here. Now, Morgose seems to be like, whatever. What does she know?

She doesn't know. She didn't know. Right. Okay. So she doesn't know. And weirdly, everyone is all, come on, sleep with Arthur. And her husband's two thumbs up. It's some kind of swinging scene or something like that where it's, yeah, come on.

everybody, it's a feast. Time to shag Arthur, married lady, and she's whatever. And everyone's pretty chill about it. It is not presented in the Marta Arthur as a problem other than the fact that they are half-brother and half-sister. It's like the fact that she's married to King Law is like neither here nor there, whatever. They have a one-night stand at this feast as is traditional, I guess. As you do, right? As you do. Then Morghose is knocked up. And she's, gives birth to their son, Mordred, right? So for those counting, that means that Mordred is both his son and his nephew, normal. Nasty. Very normal. But it also means that, like, Merlin is, I thought I told you not to, like, knock your half-sister up, and he's, what? Oops. And so there is

this prophecy that this is the person who's going to bring down Camelot, right? And so Arthur's, uh-oh, knocked my half-sister up and have this bastard son. So he has this really messed up. plan, which is just like, all right, what we're going to do is we're going to round up all the children that were born on May Day, because the prophecy is also like, he's going to be born on May Day, that any lords and ladies had. And he then puts all these little kids on a boat and puts the boat out to sea, and the ship sinks. And all of the babies who are about four weeks sold or less die except Mordred. And everyone's, there you go. So it's, this whole story is kind of part of the why you have to

understand that Camelot falls because it's like, it's not just the knockin your half sister up, which is of course bad. But it's like probably all the infanticide that maybe Arthur deserves to lose his kingdom. So glossed over that little bit. Nine babies die. Right? That's some proper herod shit. Yeah, it is. Right. And anyone else, you would be like, This man is a villain, right? He's going around shagging his friend's wives, who are his half-sisters, and then he kills other people's babies about it.

Doesn't seem like terribly kind. No. So that's how you get Mordred. The problem isn't the shagging your friend's wife. The problem is shagging your half-sister and then killing everyone's baby about it. Fuck. Very messed up, and Disney missed that one out of the sword in the stone.

You'd think that Arthur would have learned his lesson from accidentally shagging your half-sister and then begetting the child that will doom the kingdom as you know it. But he has other affairs. Oh, yeah, yeah. So, like, he also shags at one point in time a woman named Leonor's, I think, L-I-O-N-R-S, which I think is probably one of the early forms of Eleanor,

which is fine, great. And she's hot. That's what we know about her. Again, like Mallory describes her as a passing fair damsel. And she is the daughter of an Earl named Sanam. And he basically has some big battle. She gets sent to do homage to him as a representative of her father. And they basically look at each other, their eyes bug out of their heads and turn into hearts.

Mallory says about that is King Arthur set his love greatly on her. And so did she upon him. And so the king had a do with her. Wow, a do. A do? Fuck. Is he the king at this point or is this so in his wild oats? Yeah, no, he's the king.

Yeah. Fuck, ma. Yep. No, right? But this is treated as completely fine and above board. And everyone is like, oh, yeah, and she gets knocked up. And everyone is like, oh, yeah, King Arthur's bastard son, whatever, that's fine. And she gives birth to a son called Boar, and he becomes a night of the round table.

That's the whole story. There isn't a message to this one or any kind of lesson to be learned. It's just, I don't know, sometimes King Arthur knocks chicks up. But at least with this, as opposed to Morgose, Morgose is like really indifferent and gets peer pressured into shagging Arthur. At least with this one, Lenore's is, oh yeah, I'm about that life. Let's get down to it. So at least you have one lady who's really into it. And no one really gets on her for giving birth to a son out of wedlock.

And King Arthur treats Boer very well and hey-ho. So it's like a happy ending story. And I guess like maybe it's just like introducing the possibilities of life if you're the king. So we've got a king who's for laundering in the medieval versions of this myth, but no one seems to mind too much. Let's talk about the introduction of Gwynnevere, because her relationship with Lancelot tends to be the one that everybody focuses on. But Gwenevere wasn't always part of the Arthurian myth.

She was not a later edition, but she certainly wasn't one of the original cast. No, not at all. The original cast is a dudes rock kind of moment. It's here's Arthur and his boys. Sometimes they shag chicks. Fantastic. And Guinevere comes into that. And Guinevere's introduced as a bit of a prize to be won.

Everyone agrees she's a big old babe. And his marriage to Guinevere establishes him as king when he eventually consolidates all of England under his power. And Arthur is, this is a person to marry for reasons of esteem. It's not necessarily like a romance. This is a done thing. So he sends Merlin off to go do marriage arrangements for him. which is standard.

That's what you would expect to see from a king at the time. And so then King Lodeguerance accepts, and Guinevere gets sent back down. And in Mallory's version, he also sends as her dowry the roundtable. Wow. And 100 knights along. So establishing why you do this marriage is that there is a real kind of bevy of knights that come along with it. and it's establishing that this is a consolidation of military power.

Not everyone agrees with Mallory on this one. Oftentimes, the roundtable is set up before Guinevere ever came along, but hey-ho, right? So then we have a bit of a marriage, and in the medieval ones, it's not very interesting, right? They get married in the Church of Stee Stevens, which is funny. That's about it, right? And so, hey-ho, you've got a diplomatic marriage, standard king stuff, right? It's not until you get to surprise the Victorian period that this gets played up as a more of a romance, as though they are actually in love. And we have all of these things. So Tennyson

writes his own piece of Ethereum called the Idylls of the King. And he's, they had a big wedding. Ooh. Arthur wears all white to the wedding, which is quite funny, which is like a symbol of his purity. And I'm like, yeah, sure, bro, definitely doesn't have like several bastard children running around. Uh-huh. Cool. He doesn't in Tennyson, though, because Tennyson deletes all of that. He got Malo his text and he just went, no, delete, delete, delete. Like, nobody is shagging anyone that they shouldn't be apart from Guinevere, who he is awful to. He is such a twat to her.

Yeah. And it's interesting because he uses all this weird kind of Victorian symbolism around their wedding. So, for example, they get married in May. And like, Victorians are like, no, no, one gets married in June. One doesn't get married in May. And so you're supposed to understand this means that, oh, this is going to cause, like, bad luck or whatever. Oh, wow. Which question mark.

Okay, Victorians, sure. And then there's like a big wedding. He talks all about the flowers that they bring and the big bouquet that she has. And so this is quite interesting because you start to see, like, in Tennyson, that's the stuff that people grasp on to right now. And they're like, oh, romance and all of these things. But for medieval people, this is a business contract that was conducted. They get married for very good reasons, according to medieval people, but it's not about love, which opens you up to the love triangle. Enter. Lancelot and Guinevere.

Ooh, he's sexy. Oh, he's French. Of course he is. That's a very French-sounding name. He just, he saunter's in. Cretti and de Trois, who first wrote about Lance. Yes. So, of course, he's French.

Tell us about Lancelot. Who is Lancelot? And why is he the bestest of the best? He's the bestest of the best because a Cotting de Trois says so. Within Arthurianna. until you have whoever's the best knight changes. With the Welsh ones, it's K. And then it becomes Gawain for a while.

And then it changes to Lancelot. So Lancelot is essentially like sexy Superman. And Quentin de Troyes introduces him in this very great piece of Arthuriana, which is called the Knight of the Cart. Basically, the story goes like this. There's an evil knight from far away, of course. And he says, Arthur, you should send your best knight out for a joust. and if whoever fights him wins, then he gets Gwynnevere.

But if he loses, then he's got all these hostages that he'll send back to Camelot. Basically, Kay, who by this time becomes a bad guy, so he was originally the best night, but Kay eventually becomes like a guy that everybody hates later on. He loses the joust. Guinevier gets taken off. And then Gawain is, okay, I'm going to go out and rescue him, and he gets joined in this by an anonymous night. And this new anonymous night is like,

Oh, my gosh, we've got to get Guinevere. Guys, we got to go get Gwen to say, who are you? And it becomes clear that it's Sir Lancelot. And it's called the knight of the cart, because there's a scene then when he's riding his horse so hard to go find Guinevere that his horse dies. And then he comes upon an evil dwarf. There's a lot of them. Yeah, there's a lot of them in Arthiriana.

Loads and loads in Arthiriana. And so he's basically, he's got this cart and he's, I'll take you to Guinevere, but you got to get on the cart. And now you got to understand that being on a cart is bad because in the first place, if you're a knight, you're on your own horse, right? But also being in a cart might indicate that you're a criminal who's being taken somewhere but it certainly means that you're common and it maybe means you're a criminal. Yeah.

And so Lancelot's willingness to debase himself is, oh, that's quite sexy. He's willing to do anything for Guinevere, who he possibly doesn't even know. then Lancelot gets taken to a crossroads and it's like both of these roads will lead to Guinevere but one takes a much longer time and the other one you have to go over the sword bridge which is bad

and Lancelot doesn't know I'll go over the sword bridge which is like a big sword and you get all cut up but anyway many adventures ensue there's a big battle Guinevere finally gets back to court Lancelot goes back to court he kills everybody and whatever

This then leads to the fact that Guinevere and Lancelot shag about it. And they do that quite a lot, don't they? And they do seem to be quite in love? Yeah. They are presented as very much in love in all of these things where it goes. And for a while they try to resist in a lot of the versions where they're like, we probably shouldn't shag. But then it's like Arthur goes out of town and they're like, what can I do?

It's a deal. And it's an interesting one because there is that tension. Where they are presented as being deeply in love, Lancelots will. to put himself through all kinds of stress for her is a big deal. But then sometimes it gets portrayed as a bad thing. So later on, when you start getting the grail quests, it'll become a thing where Lancelot can't find the grail because he's Shagging Gwynnevere. And it is a sin. Even if it's romantic, it's a sin. You might need to explain that because that sounded a little bit like he was too busy shagging Gwenevere to bother trying to find the grail. Very good point. We have these things.

There's the grail cycle and the post-Grail cycle. You got to understand that these guys are just making new Arthurian. It's like Spider-Man movies, right? If one bit gets made and they're like, okay, time for a new one. And then they retell them over and over again. So then you get this thing introduced later on, which is called the Grail cycle. And around that, you have a cluster of the fact that everyone starts to go look for the Holy Grail. The Holy Grail at this point in time, it isn't even decided that it's the cup from the Last Supper or anything like that.

It's something magic that grants you eternal life. And it's holy. Eventually it becomes the cup. up. But in order to find it, you've got to be incredibly holy and pure. And so they introduce a new cast of good night. Now, Lancelot then becomes not the best night. And the new best night is Percival, who is a loser virgin. He's never shagged. So, like, eventually he's able to find the grail because he's pure and you can't tempt him with sexy ladies. And he eventually ascends bodily into heaven. And he then becomes the best night. And so there's a, it's a,

that's introduced in that between Percival, who is the ideal Christian, who doesn't shag around and who's focused on doing this holy thing, and Lancelot, who is a great knight. Everyone agrees that he's very talented, but he doesn't have the moral fortitude to not shag Guinevere. So you do have this introduction of the fact like, oh, and it's probably bad, but everyone agrees that Lancelot and Guinevere are in love, one way or another. And what happens to them? How does this story play out? Because it really depends who you're talking to and in what time. It basically maps onto the same ending for pretty much everyone. Depending on who's telling it is the angle being taken.

But Lancelot and Gwenebid, it all goes to shit. It all comes crashing down. They don't get a happy ending. Yeah, because it turns out you shouldn't shag your boss's wife. No. Basically is what it comes down to. And depending on what version you have, people are meaner to Gwenevere in various ways. So Mallory, again, in Lomor's Arthur, it's very specific. about how their affair basically leads to the downfall of Camelot.

It's not just Mordred and everything. So basically, in that, Mordred and another one of the knights, no. They know Gwynnevere is shagging somebody. Okay. And they come up with a plan to catch Lanselot shagging Gwenevere. And Lanselot fights his way out of Guinevere's chambers after they, like, find them having shagged, and runs away from court. And so as a part of this, he kills 11 people, two of whom are Gwain's brothers.

That's not good. Which isn't great. That's not good. Yeah. And Gwain and Arthur are basically forced to avenge this. And so they go pursue Lancelot and his buddies while they're away. And in that absence, Mordred betrays his dad and takes over the kingdom. So that means then that Arthur is forced to come back to take Camelot again.

Gawain gets killed in battle with Mordred's men And then Merlin's big prophecy That Mordred is going to kill Arthur comes into play Gawain's ghost comes back from the dead And it's call a truce It's blockbuster stuff And then eventually war breaks out Mordred is killed but King Arthur is fatally wounded

And Guinevere goes and joins a nunnery Of course she does Of course she does Yeah man So what happens to Lanselot? Where does he go? Away Just away No nunnery equivalent for him.

Yeah. The equivalent for him is like, it's shameful. Okay. Shouldn't have killed all those people. You started a war. Sometimes he gets killed. Often he's just basically a cast out. He is shunned, is the deal.

But Guinevere, by virtue of being the woman, is more at fault because, duh. Tennyson is vicious with Guinevere. His final scene is her groveling on a convent floor with King Arthur shouting at her, telling her that I was ever a virgin safe for thee, I think, was what he's. says, which is absolutely horseshit, because Tennyson should have read those legends. But Mallory, the medieval versions, they give her a bit of wiggle rim. If I remember correctly, Mallory says, I can't remember the exact phrase, but he pretty much signs it off as whatever you can say about her, she was a true lover.

And that's, so at least she loved well. He gives her that. Like, she's in a nunnery, presumably going, oh, it's just, shit, I didn't want it to end up like this. But he gives her that little bit. She was a good lover anyway. Because there is this kind of, like, understanding within the medieval context. Like, well, what's she supposed to do?

If you fall in love with people, what are you supposed to do? Just, like, completely ignore that forever. So medieval people are a little more understanding. Gratity at least is a downfall of Camelot and blah, blah, blah. And they're like, yeah, but I don't know, Lancelot was quite sexy, though. Yeah, like a deal. That's fair enough as far as they're concerned. I love that.

Yeah. It's so fascinating to look into the origin of these myths because it has become so sanitized since the Victorians got their hands in it. And it's become the stuff of, like, children's stories. and it's endlessly being retold, but when you actually look into it, the sexuality and the behavior of the early medieval stories are so fucked up.

But would they have been viewed as that within the context of the time, do you think? Or is this just something that they were just happy? This stuff happened. Yeah, I think with all of this, a lot of times what we are being presented with is a worst-case scenario when things goes wrong. And there are a lot of tragedies.

So, for example, in the Arthiriana universe, Tristan and Esauld, that is a tragedy where she's married to someone else. He marries like another Esauld and doesn't love her as much. Like everybody dies. It's very sad. For the most part, there aren't really happy endings about love, except for Eric and Anid. Like, we get that one. But everything else is, yeah, in this world, love is a problem, which is, I think, a fair reflection

of what life at court really is. Very few people are in a marriage because of a romantic reason. Love and sex are always going to be incredibly fraught within that. So it is a reflection of a particularized milieu that we can understand. They don't think that some of the things that we think are incredibly messed up are messed up. They don't see a problem with disguising yourself as someone else and shagging someone else's wife. That's just Jolie Japs. That's just very clever.

Yeah. That's basically how it's played. as well, ho ho ho, ho. Like, he got the better of him where you're like, all right, bro. You sneaky thing, you old dog. And they don't think it's messed up. They don't think it's a problem to kill some lady's husband and then marry her. They're like, yeah, all in a day's work.

Like, all of that is fine. But they also have this real kind of sensibility that's a little bit different between sex and love, where King Arzer has all these one-night stands and everyone is, yay, one-night stand, okay, whatever. It's not a big romance. Gwynnevere and Lancelot, that's a big romance. Tristan and Esol, that's a big romance. and they're usually tragic. If you're genuinely in love as a true lover,

it's probably going to end badly for you. And that's because they don't really have a whole lot of options. They've got tons of privilege and no freedom. That's the deal. Final question on the sex life of King Arthur and all his courtiers. Because it's endlessly retold this story. It's movies and TV shows and books and endlessly being retold. Do you think that we are due a retelling of the King Arthur myth

with all of the nasty sex stuff left him. I would love it. I think that we're ready for it now. I think we are. Because I think that we're at a point where we can deal with complex characters. If we've learned anything from the era of blockbuster television that we're living through, we can deal with flawed characters now.

Yes. We can understand that there's moral ambiguity and that weird things happen. I think that we could deal with it more. We don't need knights to be unblemished, perfect superheroes, like the Victorians do. we can be like, that's weird. Yeah.

You know about stuff, basically. So I think it would be a quite interesting thing to see a really well-done version of Arthuriana that puts these stories out there, warts and all, and is, what are you going to do with that? And talks about the moral quandaries. Yeah, and what happens when then you kill a bunch of babies because you messed up? These are interesting questions. And it's interesting to think about what that means for humanity. Our theory on I think often reflects the needs and desires of whoever is writing it.

But perhaps we are at a place where we can be a bit more historically accurate about things because our society is able to do that and values that now, whereas Victorians didn't quite so much. Elder, you have been amazing to talk to it, as you always are. Thank you so much. You have been fabulous. I'm only trying to live up to your example, Kate. Thanks for listening. This has been Gone Medieval from History Hit. And if you liked what you've heard,

don't forget to rate, review, follow the podcast, and tell your friends about it. As always, Matt will be back on Friday, and I'll see you again next Tuesday to do the same.