King Arthur/Characters

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Multiple Character Tropes

  • Badass: Several knights warrant this one, doing things such as fighting in single combat for hours at a time.
  • Badass Family
  • Defeat Means Friendship: Not always, but pretty frequently.
  • Depending on the Writer: Who appears,who has major and minor roles, who is related to whom, how characters act... and pretty much everything else.
  • Odd Name Out: The children of King Lot and Morgause are Gawain, Gaheris, Gareth, and Agravaine. Guess which one is evil.
  • One Steve Limit: Averted. There are several women named Elaine, and there are several different women who occassionally share the title "Lady of the Lake". There are also two Ectors, Arthur's foster-father Ector and Lancelot's half-brother Ector de Maris, and two men named Bors, King Bors and his son Bors of the Round Table.
  • Sir Not Appearing In This Book: Merlin's liege, Master Blaise is mentioned once in passing but never appears nor does anything to affect the plot.
  • Spell My Name with an "S": Variant spellings of names abound.

King Arthur's Court

King Arthur

Merlin

Guinevere

  • The Chick: Trope Codifier.
  • Damsel in Distress
  • Evil Identical Half-Sister: On the same night Leodegrance fathered Guinevere, he also begat another girl on the wife of his seneschal. This "False Guinevere" was born on the same day, looked exactly like her half-sister and even had the same name (Leodegrance had strong genes, but it looks like he wasn't very imaginative). She managed to trick Arthur into thinking the was the real deal, and tried to have Guinevere mutilated and banished (with Lancelot's help, she escaped). "False Guinevere" kept the charade up for years until the Pope himself stepped in and demanded Arthur take the real Guinevere back. He refused, and the Pope interdicted Britain for twenty-one months. After ten, "False Guinevere" had a stroke, lost every sense but sight and hearing, then began to rot alive, until she finally confessed and perished.
  • Gray Eyes: according to Sir Gawaine And The Green Knight.
  • The High Queen
  • Smart People Play Chess: Apparently one of the most skilled players in the court.
  • Spell My Name with an "S": Too many alternate spellings to mention here. Gwynyvere, Guenevere, etc. The most common modern version is Jennifer.
  • Tsundere
  • World's Most Beautiful Woman
  • Your Cheating Heart: Her affair with Lancelot is usually kind of a "bad move" for the round table's morale.

Knights of the Round Table

Lancelot

Gawain

  • Alternate Character Interpretation: In some stories he's Arthur's best knight and the ideal of chivalry. In others he's a flawed but principled hero. In other ones he's a boorish, impulsive Ax Crazy Antihero
  • Anti-Hero
  • The Big Guy: Trope Codifier.
  • Clear My Name: One of his adventures in Parzival has him doing this.
  • Family Honor: Gawain's main motivation, at least in Le Morte Darthur.
  • Henpecked Husband: he plays this role to Lady Orgeleuse in Parzival.
  • Indy Ploy: One episode in Chretien De Troyes's Perceval and Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival has him holding off an angry horde of townspeople while using a chess board as a shield.
    • Of course, the chess pieces are described as being ten times as large as normal ones, and are also used as impromptu missile weapons at one point, so (assuming a board of equivalent size) that's actually not too impractical.
  • The Power of the Sun: Some versions of the legends have him gain strength as the sun rises in the sky and lose it when it sets.
  • Spell My Name with an "S": Alternatively spelled Gawan, Gauvain, Gavan, etc.
  • You Killed My Brothers: The cause of his feud with Lancelot that brings down the Round Table.

Gareth

Gaheris

Percival

Galahad

Bors

Kay

  • Alternate Character Interpretation: His furious, hot-tempered personality is explained away in Parzival by Wolfram von Eschenbach as a function of his job as Arthur's bouncer. Tons of people showed up to the castle every day claiming to be worthy knights when they really weren't, and it was Kay's job to sort out the bad ones from the good. This explains his really jerkish behavior when Percival arrives at Camelot.
  • Blood Brothers: With Arthur. They were raised as brothers before Arthur found out his true heritage.
  • Boisterous Bruiser
  • Butt Monkey: In later versions where he merely exists to get beaten up.
  • Demoted to Extra: His role in later stories is severely reduced.
  • Hot-Blooded
  • Magic Knight: In his earliest incarnations.
  • Never Live It Down: When Percival first showed up to Camelot, a woman who had previously sworn never to laugh unless she saw the man who would be the best knight in the world. When Percival arrives, she laughs. Kay is so insulted that he slaps her. Throughout the rest of the story, Percival's defeated foes keep coming back to Camelot to tell of how Percival was still trying to avenge her honor (basically to rub in how much of a douche Kay was).
  • The Nicknamer: An example being Sir Gareth, who he dubs 'Beaumains' after the former refuses to reveal his name.
  • The Worf Effect: He seems to have a habit of getting the crap beat out of him to show how much better the new knight du jour is.

Bedivere

  • Bash Brothers: Often paired with Kay in the oldest Welsh material.
  • Battle Butler: Arthur's cup-bearer in later versions. Sometimes has a brother, Lucan, who is Arthur's designated butler.
  • Composite Character / Expy: In several modern Arthurian retellings favoring the older traditions as opposed to Malory et al, Lancelot does not appear. Instead, Bedivere is often made Guinevere's lover. It helps that many of Lancelot's usual traits apply to Bedivere also. This was first done in Rosemary Sutcliff's Sword at Sunset (1963) and a number of other works have followed suit.
  • Demoted to Extra: Just like Kay, his role was much reduced as the mythos grew and developed.
  • Handicapped Badass: In the oldest Welsh material, he is one-handed.
  • Hunk: In Welsh material, said to be one of the most handsome men in Britain.
  • Number Two: Together with Kay, until supplanted by Lancelot.
  • Power Trio: With Arthur and Kay in early versions.
  • Sole Survivor: May be best known today as the one knight of the Round Table who survives Arthur's last battle, and who throws Excalibur back into a lake.

Mordred

  • Alternate Character Interpretation: Rebellious and treacherous son or victim of fate?
  • Antagonistic Offspring: To Arthur, in the versions where he's his son and not just his nephew. One of the alternate names for the trope is Arthur and Mordred.
  • Bastard Bastard
  • Child by Rape: Medieval versions of the tale have Morgause using magic to get Arthur to sleep with her. Some modern versions have Arthur raping her.
  • Evil Uncle: Inverted. In the early versions of the story, Arthur is his uncle and he's the Evil Nephew.
  • Face Heel Turn: Actually seemed quite promising during the first two years of his knighthood, earning praise from Lancelot himself.
  • Fake King: Yes and no. Arthur leaves him in charge of the kingdom when he goes to fight Lancelot in France, and he does officially have himself declared king, but he isn't the rightful ruler.
  • Genocide Backfire: Survived the May Day massacre.
  • Heroic BSOD: Being told that you're the bastard son of the king and his half-sister, prophesied to destroy the kingdom and do more harm in your lifetime than all your ancestors did good kind of does that to you. He came out of it...uh, pretty badly, actually.
  • Mutual Kill: He and Arthur.
  • Shoot the Messenger: Murdered the prophetic priest who revealed the truth about his life to him. Lancelot was pissed...because the priest was going to reveal his future next.
  • Tragic Villain: Particularly in modern interpretations. Still, it's not as if he asked Morgause and Arthur to sleep together.

Palomides

  • Green-Eyed Monster: Most of the reason he alternates between seeing Tristram as a brother-in-arms and wanting to gut him is because they are both in love with La Beale Isoud. Er, Isolde? Yseult? Whatever.
  • Humans Are White: Not the only ex-Saracen knight, but certainly the most prominent.
  • Kick the Dog: On the receiving end of one. After she convinces Tristram to spare his life following on of their clashes, Isolde makes Palomides deliver a message to Guinevere stating that there were but four true lovers within the land: Guinevere and Lancelot and Tristram and Isolde. Ouch.
  • The Quest: Took over Pellinore's hunt of the Questing Beast.
  • Tsundere: A friendly version toward Tristram.

Marrok


Fair Ladies

Morgause

  • Brother-Sister Incest: Though neither she nor Arthur were aware of it at the time.
  • Composite Character: Possibly inverted. Some scholars suggest that she and Morgan Le Fay were the same character until some scribe made a translation error and accidentally split them into two separate characters.
  • Grandma, What Massive Hotness You Have!: After five sons and a number of daughters, she still had enough of it goin' on to bed Sir Lamorak, who was at least twenty years younger than her.
  • Historical Villain Upgrade: Modern writers tend to make her a scheming villainess, often by making her aware of her relationship with Arthur when she sleeps with him, or by combining her with Morgan Le Fay. Originally, she seems to have been a generous and friendly person. Very friendly.
  • Honey Trap: Malory states that Lot sent her over to Arthur's court in this capacity.
  • Out Shortly After A Bang: Her son Gaheris, incensed at seeing her in bed with the son of Pellinore (who killed Lot, the Orkney brothers' father), lopped her head off.
  • Spell My Name with an "S": Margawse, Morgawse, Margause, Bellicent...
  • Your Cheating Heart

Morgan Le Fay

  • Arch Enemy: Guinevere's, actually. After a few unsuccessful attacks on Arthur, Morgan mostly devoted herself to trying to reveal Lancelot and Guinevere's affair.
  • Composite Character: Many adaptations fuse her with Morgause.
  • Evil Matriarch: Many versions make her this to Mordred.
  • Evil Sorceress/Wicked Witch: Depending on the version she can lean more towards one or the other stereotype.
  • Green-Eyed Monster: Apart from the incident in Your Cheating Heart below, part of Morgan's hatred for Guinevere may have stemmed from the fact that she herself wanted to sleep with Lancelot.
  • Heel Face Turn: In time she seems to have mellowed out and gotten along well with Arthur, to the point of letting him visit her castle for a week. Of course she still tried to convince him of Guinevere's unfaithfulness, but he didn't believe her.
  • Hot Witch
  • Legion of Doom: At one point King Mark appeals to her to get a bunch of evil sorcerers and known evil knights together in order to ravage Arthur's kingdom.
  • Murder Is the Best Solution: Tried to kill her husband King Uriens, but was stopped by their son Ywain.
  • Spell My Name with an "S": Morgan, Morganna, Morgaine, etc.
  • Your Cheating Heart: Cheated on Uriens with Guinevere's cousin Guiomar. When Guinevere found out she had Guiomar banished. (Understandably, Morgan was rather peeved when Guinevere started her affair with Lancelot.) She then proceeded to take on several lovers without actually getting a divorce.

Nyneve

Other Kings

Uther Pendragon

  • Death by Origin Story: Arthur becomes king because of his death, being his son and all, but he is plucked from a life of obscurity with a foster-family and thrust onto the throne at a young age. Details vary though.
  • Names to Run Away From Really Fast: Pendragon is a Welsh epithet (sometimes treated as a surname or dynastic name by later authors) which translates to "Chief Dragon" in English, "dragon" being a figurative term for warrior. "Uther" itself may come from a Welsh word meaning "awesome" and/or "horrible/terrible" (in the original sense of "fearsome" rather than "bad").