Also, it was different not having a father and mother, and Kay had taught him that being different was wrong. Nobody talked to him about it, but he thought about it when he was alone, and was distressed. He did not like people to bring it up. Since the other boy always did bring it up when a question of precedence arose, he had got into the habit of giving in at once before it could be mentioned. Besides, he admired Kay and was a born follower. He was a hero-worshipper.
Here, White gives an overview of Wart's character: the future king is sensitive to his surroundings and aware of his isolation, though he is by no means brooding or resentful. He instead looks up to a more authoritative figure, Kay, even though Kay and Wart are somewhat at odds. There is an apparent irony in White's description of a boy who will become a legendary leader as a "born follower" and "hero-worshipper," though this ironically submissive side of Arthur's character does persist throughout the book. As a king, he is willing to follow guidance (Merlyn's) and promote the heroes around him (Lancelot), yet is also vulnerable to figures who are more boldly assertive (Gawaine) and less trusting of humanity (Mordred) than he is.
He walked and worked among his villagers, thought of their welfare, and could tell the good workman from the bad. He was an eternal farmer, in fact—one of those people who seem to be employing labour at so many shillings a week, but who are actually paying half as much again in voluntary overtime, providing a cottage fee, and possibly making an extra present of milk and eggs and home-brewed beer into the bargain.
White could have easily written Sir Ector as a grudging or antagonistic stepfather for Wart, yet the good aristocrat is exactly the opposite: a careful steward to both of his boys and, as White explains here and elsewhere, of the lands and peasants under him control. Sir Ector is effective because he is sympathetic and involved, innately connected to the welfare of those around him but judicious enough to tell "the good workman from the bad." While the lessons in leadership that Sir Ector has to offer may not be as dramatic as Merlyn's, the virtues of practicality and connection that he teaches should be just as valuable to an eventual king such as Arthur.
I know the sorrows before you, and the joys, and how there will never again be anybody who dares to call you by the friendly name of Wart. In future it will be your glorious doom to take up the burden and to enjoy the nobility of your proper title: so now I shall crave the privilege of being the very first of your subjects to address you with it—as my dear liege lord, King Arthur.
In this concluding passage from The Sword in the Stone, Merlyn marks the change in Arthur's identity by abandoning the young king's nickname (Wart) and addressing Arthur in a more formal fashion. But even though Arthur's status and identity have undergone a remarkable shift, Arthur's personality does not change nearly as quickly. Much of The Queen of Air and Darkness—like much of The Sword in the Stone—finds Arthur enjoying the company of his accustomed family (Sir Ector, Kay) and taking guidance from Merlyn. Nor does Arthur shed his energetic yet trusting personality as easily as he sheds his name; he is stalwart yet naive for much of the early stages of his reign, and perhaps all the way to the very end of his life.
My idea is that if we can win this battle in front of us, and get a firm hold of the country, then I will institute a sort of order of chivalry. I will not punish the bad knights, or hang Lot, but I will try to get them into our Order. We shall have to make it a great honour, you see, and make it fashionable and all that. Everybody must want to be in. And then I shall make the oath of that order that Might is only to be used for Right.
By this point, Arthur has accepted that the battle against Lot will be a necessary evil in instituting a project for the good of the realm—one in which Might is replaced by Right. His view is based, at least subtly, on a optimistic sense of human nature. People are capable of change, and of re-directing the same energies that were once egregiously misused (Might) for a meaningful and morally sound purpose (Right). Even Arthur's unmistakable antagonists, "King Lot" and the "Bad Knights," can be reformed. The real suspense in the battle against Lot is perhaps not whether Arthur will win—since the final two books of The Once and Future King, after all, are devoted to Arthur's mature reign—but whether Arthur's victory will provide a foundation for bringing King Lot and other former enemies into the fold.
The Queen had recognized the impossible. Even in the miasma of her Gaelic mind, she had come to see that asses do not mate with pythons. It was useless to go on dramatizing her charms and talents for the benefit of those ridiculous knights—useless to go on hunting them with the tyrannous baits of what she thought was love. With a sudden turn of feeling she discovered that she hated them.
In The Queen of Air and Darkness, White establishes that the world that produced Arthur, King Pellinore, and the other English nobles is very different from the rough settings that formed the characters and ambitions of the Orkney faction. This sense of incompatibility extends to Morgause herself. With this depiction of the queen's consciousness, the narrative explains just how aware Morgause is of the differences in temperament, upbringing, and desire that separate her from the Arthurian knights. Indeed, while men like Sir Grummore and King Pellinore can take life easily, Morgause thinks in extremes: she considers the possibility of "love," but with "a sudden turn of feeling" veers into hatred.
King Arthur had asked his wife to be kind to the young man. She was fond of her husband, and she realized that she had come between him and his friend. She was not such a fool as to try to atone to Lancelot for this, but she had taken a fancy to him as himself. She liked his broken face, however hideous it was, and Arthur had asked her to be kind.
Here, White's narration sets out some of the fundamental characteristics of the relationship that ties Lancelot, Guenever, and Arthur together. Arthur wants to treat Lancelot with kindness, and encourages a bond between the queen and the renowned knight; even when Guenever's adultery becomes mostly apparent, Arthur continues to treat Lancelot in a close, compassionate manner. Perhaps even more notable is Guenever's attraction to Lancelot, which is based on the "fancy" that she has taken "to him as himself" and which is premised on acceptance of apparent flaws such as Lancelot's "broken face." This quotation describes an early stage in their relationship, yet Guenever's reaction to Lancelot is thoughtful and mature; she regards him in a manner that sets a fine foundation for a durable, honest, and fulfilling romance.
"Look," they would say to each other, "he is laughing, as if her were a vulgar person like ourselves. How condescending, how splendidly democratic of Sir Lancelot, to laugh, as if he were an ordinary man! Perhaps he eats and drinks as well, or even sleeps at night." But in their hearts the new generation was quite sure that the great Dulac did no such things.
Lancelot, as this quotation indicates, is not simply a legend for the 20th- or 21st-century reader of The Once and Future King: the Ill-Made Knight is a legend in his own time, a man whom his fellow knights find virtually unimaginable as a "vulgar person." Yet as a portion of the narrative, The Ill-Made Knight is designed to show the other and perhaps more complex side of Lancelot, his status as a "person" complete with a unique set of flaws and insecurities. The knights in the quotation above understand the heroic elements of Lancelot, but the careful reader of White's novel is granted a perspective more complete than that of the "new generation." Lancelot's deeds indicate unquestionable physical prowess, yet Lancelot himself is notable as a man who struggles against his human flaws—not a man who has escaped into a state of heroic flawlessness.
In the middle, quite forgotten, her lover was kneeling by himself. This lonely and motionless figure knew a secret which was hidden from the others. The miracle was that he had been allowed to do a miracle. "And ever," says Malory, "Sir Lancelot wept, as he had been a child that had been beaten."
Here, instead of depicting Lancelot at the height of triumph, White focuses on the vulnerability and isolation of the "quite forgotten" Lancelot. The entirety of The Ill-Made Knight has established Lancelot as a man who is by no means free of error and imperfection: he is a man who fights beautifully yet has a famously ugly face, a man who finds transcendent love yet does so by carrying on an affair with the wife of his best friend. This climactic moment is similarly a moment of ironic contrast, as Lancelot performs a heroic miracle but feels like a "child that had been beaten," not a hero. The reaction is surprising at first, though ultimately compatible with the rest of White's vision of Lancelot.
He came in, the quiet old man who had done his best so long. He looked older than his age, which was considerable. His royal eye took in the situation without a flicker. He moved across the cloister to kiss Mordred gently, smiling upon them all.
The narrative of The Candle in the Wind becomes increasingly ridden with discord as the book moves along, and this early quotation represents a rare moment of repose in this final segment of White's story. Arthur, "smiling upon" his court, seems either indifferent or oblivious to the intrigues that are in progress around him. From this point, a central question of the book will be how Arthur reacts to the very different political figure—Mordred—who is paired off against him, in this quote and elsewhere.
There would be a day—there must be a day—when he would come back to Gramarye with a new Round Table which had no corners, just as the world had none—a world without boundaries between the nations who would sit to feast there. The hope of making it would lie in culture. If people could be persuaded to read and write, not just to eat and make love, there was still a chance that they might come to reason.
In this excerpt—one of the final representations of Arthur—White gives his readers one last view of the king's ambitions. Even though Arthur is nearing his end, he has not abandoned his ambitions to improve the human condition, or forsaken his father in human goodness and progress. The latter form of persistence is, in context, remarkable: Arthur has just been betrayed by his own son and has once again been faced with the carnage and senselessness of war, but is still capable of believing that "there must be a day" when people will improve. It may be too late for him to put such dreams into practice. It is not, however, too late for White's reader, who has already been persuaded to "read" and can leave The Once and Future King with a deepened sense of political thought and human nature.
