The Forest Sauvage
In The Sword in the Stone, White depicts the Forest Sauvage as a wild yet unsullied landscape. This area is technically under Sir Ector's control, yet in truth has a life of its own: "The most of the Forest Sauvage was almost impenetrable, an enormous barrier of eternal trees, the dead ones fallen against the live and held to them by ivy, the living struggling up in competition with each other toward the sun which gave them life" (94). It is here that the plant life carries on its own conflicts, seemingly oblivious to human affairs. And for those humans who do reside in the Forest Sauvage (namely Robin Hood and his companions), the forest provides both a literal and a metaphorical "barrier" between independent modes of living and civilization proper.
Morgause's Domain
After depicting the reassuring and rustic community in which Arthur came of age, White shifts in The Queen of Air and Darkness to the bleak settings that Morgause and her sons call home. The habitation of these new characters, for instance, is described as follows: "There was a circular room at the top of the tower, curiously uncomfortable. It was draughty. There was a closet on the east side which had a hole in the floor" (213). Through this and related descriptions of desolation, White demonstrates that the Orkneys are creatures of a very different world; their hard environment, which is already the basis for memorably brutal descriptions on White's part, is the basis for a tough and clannish mentality very different from Arthur's.
Lancelot's Upbringing
In order to explain how Lancelot evolved into a knight of unmatched prowess, White meticulously describes the site that consumed much of Lancelot's youth, the family armory: "it was only the arms of the troops, and the spare parts of the family stuff, and the things which were intended for gymnastics practice, or physical training, which reposed in the Armoury" (319). The armory is where practical items for "gymnastics practice" and "physical training" can be found; the practical and physical Lancelot would naturally gravitate to this portion of his family castle, a portion that White continues on to describe in more precise detail. By doing so, White gives his reader an image-by-image of the weapons that the young Lancelot learned to master.
Arthur's Civilized England
One of the most stirring descriptive sequences in The Once and Future King occurs fairly early in The Candle in the Wind, when White's narrator offers a survey of Arthur's transformed realm: "For there, under the window in Arthur's Gramarye, the sun's rays flamed from a hundred jewels of stained glass in monasteries and convents, or danced from the pinnacles of cathedrals and castles, which the builders actually loved" (532). The imagery of jewel-like beauty, the references to imposing edifices, and the later references to the knights and officials who make up Arthur's civilized order create a picture of a realm so orderly and majestic that it is, in totality, a thing of beauty. Thus, White gives a unified picture of Arthur's highest political accomplishment before showing, ultimately, how fragile that accomplishment may be.
