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King Arthur: Difference between revisions
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* [[Adaptation Expansion]]: Oh. Dear. Christ. To call this the greatest example in history is an understatement. As stated above, Arthur (may have) started out as a prominent <s>Celtic chieftain</s> [[The Remnant|Romano-British]] warlord and leader of a band of warriors. Think [[Jason and The Argonauts]] in fur with Welsh accents. Several centuries and several foreign conquests later, Arthur has ''his own entire extensive mythology named after him!'' Also before Malory, come to that.
* [[Antagonistic Offspring]]: Mordred in some adaptations. The trope's alternate name is [[Arthur and Mordred]] for a reason.
* [[Bastard Bastard]]: Mordred, who may be the Ur-example. The illegitimate son of King Arthur and [[Brother
* [[Because Destiny Says So]]: The sword in the stone and the rise of Camelot
* [[Bed Trick]]: Both Arthur and Galahad are conceived this way.
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* [[Bittersweet Ending]]: Arthur's power is broken at the Battle of Camlann and he departs for Avalon to [[Ascend to A Higher Plane of Existence]] [[King in The Mountain|from which he'll return when Britain (or France) needs him again.]] Can be a straight [[Downer Ending]] if this note of hope is downplayed.
* [[Breakout Villain]]: Mordred, Arthur's nephew/son, and Morgan Le Fay, his half-sister, remain the only villains that are well-known in the Arthur legends, even though there are loads of others. To this day, they are thus considered the biggest villains, with the only one coming a ''mite'' close to their status being Lucius, the Emperor of Rome and [[Big Bad]] of Book V of ''Le Morte De Arthur''.
* [[Brother
* [[The Call Left a Message]]: The Sword in the Stone and the Siege Perilous.
* [[Celtic Mythology]]: Has its roots in Welsh legends.
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* [[Defeat Means Friendship]]: Lancelot and Galehaut ([[I Am Not Shazam|no, not Galahad]]).
* [[Depending On the Writer]]: Pretty much ''the'' textbook example. Arthur and his court have been re-interpreted by generation after generation over the centuries, to the point where any given Arthur would have great difficulty recognizing any of his counterparts.
* [[Double
* [[The Fair Folk]]: Usually present to some degree.
* [[Fisher King]]: Particularly in stories concerning Perceval.
* [[Five
** [[The Hero]]: Arthur
** [[The Lancer]]: Lancelot
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* [[Give Me a Sword]]: Arthur sometimes pulls out the sword without noticing, because Kay sent him to get him a sword.
* [[The Good King]]: Arthur is the [[Trope Codifier]]
* [[Half
* [[Heroic Bastard]]: Most prominently, Galahad, son of Lancelot. Sometimes Mordred, [[Depending On the Writer]]. Though he is conceived out of wedlock, Arthur himself is not technically a bastard since his father marries his mother before his birth. In Malory, Arthur also fathers a son named Borre before he meets Guinevere - later a knight of the Round Table.
* [[Heroic Lineage]]: [http://www.maryjones.us/ctexts/mostyn117.html Mostyn MS. 117] and ''Bonedd y Saint'', Welsh manuscripts dating from the 12th-13th century, describe Arthur as a direct descendant of Llŷr Lledyeith, who also fathered the heroes of the [[Mabinogion]].
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* [[Historical Villain Upgrade]]: Possibly Mordred. He is first mentioned (as Medraut) in the 10th-century ''Annales Cambriae'' (Annals of Wales) as having been killed in the battle of Camlaun along with Arthur, but the entry is ambiguous as to whether they were fighting on opposing sides.
* [[I Call It Vera]]: Not just [[Cool Sword|Excalibur]]. Most of Arthur's equipment has names, such as his dagger Carnwennan and his spear Rhongomyniad [[The Unpronounceable|(we told you he was a bloody Welshman)]].
* [[Kill
* [[King in The Mountain]]: Arthur sleeping until his hour comes again.
* [[Knight Errant]]: Particularly Gawain, Lancelot, and Galahad. ''[[Gawain and The Green Knight (Literature)|Gawain and The Green Knight]]'' is the [[Trope Namer]].
* [[Knight in Shining Armour]]: The extent, as with just about every trope associated with King Arthur, depends on the version.
* [[The
* [[Last of His Kind]]: Merlin is revealed as the last of the shape-changers in his childhood, before Arthur's birth.
* [[Lawful Stupid]]: Arthur. So determined to bring about this new Rule of Law idea that he lets himself be used by evil people in the guise of upholding the law.
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* [[Merlin and Nimue]]: The trope maker and namer, as Merlin's relationship with the pupil that betrays him sets the pattern for the relationship between many future mages and their younger, opposite sex pupils.
* [[The Middle Ages]]: Nearly every version of the story is set in a ''mélange'' of centuries stretching from about 500 to about 1,000 years (or even more) after Arthur's time. Very few are set properly in the period of the late Roman Empire.
* [[Moses in The
* [[Multiple Choice Past]]: Everyone.
* [[Names to Run Away From Really Fast]]: Arthur himself, depending on where you believe his name comes from. There are some who have linked it to the old Indo-European word for "bear", whence also Ancient Greek ἄρκτος and Latin ursus, though it was replaced in most northern languages<ref>That is, the ones spoken by people who would have run into bears quite often</ref>, including English, Old Norse and Russian, by euphemisms (for more details, see [[Everything Is Worse With Bears]]). Oh, and as if being named after a bear wasn't [[Badass]] enough, that same root word was probably connected to the Proto-Indo-European word for "harm".
* [[Nice Job Breaking It, Herod]]: The massacre of the May Day babies.
* [[Odd Name Out]]: The Orkney Brothers are Gawain, Gaheris, Gareth, Agravain, and Morded. Want to guess which two put the fall of Camelot into motion by demanding Arthur punish Guinevere and Lancelot for their adultery?
* [[Offing the Offspring]]: Arthur tries to do this to baby Mordred, and succeeds years later. In earlier Welsh tradition Athrur kills a son named Amr.
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* [[Sole Survivor]]: Only Sir Bedivere survives Arthur's last battle in Malory. Earlier Welsh legends also have just a few survivors: one warrior was [[Pretty Boy|so beautiful that he was mistaken for an angel]] while another was [[The Grotesque|so ugly that he was mistaken for a devil]], and thus they escaped harm.
* [[Space Whale Aesop]]: The origin of [[Child of Rape|Merlin]]: Don't forget to say your prayers, and don't argue with your siblings, or else you'll be raped by [[Horny Devils]] while you sleep. [[Sarcasm Mode|Hmm...right.]]
* [[Spell My Name With an "S"]]: Every character's name has multiple spellings.
* [[Supernatural Aid]]: The Lady of the Lake giving Arthur Excalibur. In versions of the mythos where this actually happens, anyway.
* [[Stab the Sky]]: Many depictions of Arthur after pulling the sword out of the stone show him standing like this.
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* Galahad: [[The Messiah]] and an early [[Marty Stu]].
* Guinevere: [[The Chick]], [[Distressed Damsel]].
* Gawain: [[Badass|Originally]] [[The Lancer]], then [[Badass Decay|wimpified]]. [[Cheese
* Percival: [[Kid Appeal Character|The young, naive fool]] who became a knight and saw the Grail... until later stories had Galahad see it instead.
* Lancelot: [[The Lancer]], The [[Tragic Hero]], The [[Sixth Ranger]], [[Sailor Earth]] (He is a latecomer in two senses: first, in that he first appears at the Round Table long after the vast majority of its membership has assembled; and second, the character entered the myth cycle several hundred years after it was first compiled.)
* Morgause: Arthur's half-sister, Mordred's mother, sometimes blended with her sister Morgana.
* [[Merlin]]: [[Ur Example|The original]] [[The Obi
* Morgan Le Fay: Sometimes [[The Man Behind the Man]] and would-be [[God Save Us From the Queen|Queen]], sometimes a [[Trickster Mentor]], almost always an [[Evil Sorcerer]]. Except in certain feminist and/or neo-pagan retellings of the stories, in which she's usually the hero and Arthur is an evil patriarchal Christian bastard, or the pawn of same.
* Nyneve/Nimue: Merlin's pupil, and lover. She eventually goes [[Deceptive Disciple]] on him and, in the classical version, places him under an enchantments and [[Sealed Good in A Can|seals him in a tree or rock]]. Whether or not this is justified [[Alternate Character Interpretation|depends on how she and/or Merlin are portrayed.]] Frequently blended with Morgan for the convenience of having a [[Composite Character]] be responsible for all of Arthur's woes.
* Mordred: [[The Dragon]], Arthur's illegitimate son [[Brother
* The Orkney Brothers (Gawain, Agravaine, Gaheris, Gareth and Mordred): [[Five
** [[The Hero]]: Gawain
** [[The Lancer]]: Agravain
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** [[The Chick]]: Gareth
*** This troper finds the Orkney brothers are rarely presented as a "well oiled" team. When they are (chiefly in French cyclical literature), they are sans Gareth and a [[Goldfish Poop Gang|pesky, relatively harmless band of dishonorable murderers]] who have to rely on attacking as a group to do any real harm and are usually just tourney-fodder for whatever hero the author is currently espousing.
* Tristram and Iseult: [[Star
* [[Monty Python and The Holy Grail|Sir Not Appearing In This Film (or Epic, or whatever)]]: Obviously.
There are many other [[Knight in Shining Armor|knights of the round table]], each with their own complex storyline, and, just in case you thought that wasn't enough, most of the names [[Spell My Name With an "S"|also have other, wildly different spellings]]. The worst offenders are probably 'Guinevere', 'Mordred', and 'Iseult', with special mention going to 'Nyneve', who sometimes gets entirely new names such as 'Nimue' and 'Vivien.' (Then again, try telling those names apart in cramped Gothic handwriting.) It's pretty much [[Depending On the Writer|up to the individual]] what you chose to call them.
=== The Main [[Public Domain Artifact|Public Domain Artifacts]] Are: ===
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* T. H. White's ''[[The Once and Future King (Literature)|The Once and Future King]]''
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{{tropelist}}
== Anime & Manga ==
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* ''[[The Fisher King]]'' sets a semi-symbolic Grail Quest in modern Manhattan.
* ''[[First Knight]]'' deals with the whole Arthur/Lancelot/Guenevere love triangle.
* ''[[King Arthur (Film)|King Arthur]]'' (2004), in the Dark Ages setting. A bit of a flop, it was infamous for a poster that gave flat chested [[Keira Knightley]] [http://badtaste.it/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/alg_keiraknightley_3.jpg what can only be called Photoshop surgery on her breasts.] It's unusual among popular portrayals for having Arthur as a Roman officer. It was also unusual for [[Dan Browned|claiming]] to be [[Very Loosely Based
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* ''The Weirdstone of Brisingamen'' by Alan Garner conflates Norse and Arthurian myth with real places in England. The cave with the sleeping Knights (and their horses) is a local legend in Alderley. Well worth reading.
* ''Sword at Sunset'' by Rosemary Sutcliff takes the legend back to its roots, including partly Romanized Britons fighting off invading "Sea Wolf" Saxon raiders, the difficulty in gathering and maintaining mounted warriors, horses barely big enough to carry large men and saddles without stirrups, near-starvation every winter, ambiguous mysticism and superstition regarding both curses and the Hill Folk, rare chainmail armor stolen from enemy war chiefs in place of "shining armor", and a dilapidated ex-Roman hill fort replacing "Camelot".
* ''[[The Dark Is Rising]] Sequence'' by Susan Cooper. Most specifically ''The Grey King'' and ''Silver on the Tree'' the fourth and fifth in the series, respectively. Arthur, himself, makes only minute appearances in the series but many aspects reveal a heavy Arthurian influence (with a few events being direct consequences of the Arthurian Legends). And, of course, there's [[The Obi
* Mary Stewart's ''Crystal Cave'' (and its sequels) tell the story of Arthur from Merlin's perspective.
** The point of view changes to Mordred for ''The Wicked Day.'' There is also a "side story," ''The Prince and the Pilgrim.''
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* ''[[The Legend Of Prince Valiant]]''
* ''[[King Arthur and The Knights of Justice (Animation)|King Arthur and The Knights of Justice]]'' had a modern professional American football team transported back in time to fill the roles of the knights of the round table.
* ''[[Gargoyles]]'' was a series where [[All Myths Are True]] - including King Arthur. A proposed [[Spin
* ''[[Blazing Dragons]]'', series created by Monty Pythons' Terry Jones stages a parodic re-enaction of the Arthurian myth where all the characters are replaced by Punly-named Dragon (King Allfire, Castle of Camel-hot, Sir Loungelot and so on and so forth)
* ''[[Dragon Booster]]'' features a hero called Artha Penn (and his brother Lance) whose arch foe is named Moordryd Paynn.
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[[Category:Oral Tradition]]
[[Category:King Arthur]]
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