Which is to say I’ve read Chretien’s works and the Morte, so I might as well have not read any Arthuriana at all.
I think around the time I got into wrestling in 2018 I finally stopped declaring that I could never possibly be into X genre, medium, whatever – my past several years of getting my brain fried and acting like a complete freak on social media Doing Fandom were about things that I had previously declared I could never possibly get into, so it seemed more that declaring I could never be into something meant it would surely be the next thing to completely ruin my life.
(One should also note that before I got into tokusatsu in late 2014 I had the lifelong-anime-fan resistance to shipping in live action shows and it took me some six months to own up to shipping RyouTaka at all. By the time I got into wrestling, well, RPF is fine.)
I am less doing fandom this time around – for whatever reason, I haven’t really been fandomy about something since Endwalker freed me from FFXIV being my life-ruining fandom in 2021 – but it is, you know, a new thing that I am digging into. I am no great student of history, and though in an ideal world I would be a student of literature I am more prone to my well-worn base habits like talking about shipping and which characters are moe, so it’s pretty unfortunate for everyone remotely associated with me and I have no particularly trenchant insights to offer.
The precursor to this was the Ulster Cycle book club I did with a few friends, which initially started as a joke and then became a real thing and was ultimately orchestrated to make Cat look at Belial (to great success, I might add). I enjoyed it much more than I expected to, and Cu Chulainn is soooo cute. I have posted multiple times about Cu/Fer Diad, but actually what really got me was his backstory parts in the Tain, when he was a child. I am a huge fan of openly murderous child characters in anime and games and can be counted on to be there every time as their most annoying fan, yelling at everyone who doesn’t like them or thinks they’re whiny, etc. Cu’s backstory really struck that appeal for me – that particular exaggerated, remorseless violence only possible when filtered through the purity and idealism of youth. So, you know, I’ve never been any great fan of Fate – it’s just not really my thing – but now I’m very strongly of the opinion that Fate Cu sucks because he isn’t cute and little enough.
Reading Arthuriana was more of an impulse than anything coordinated like that. As is inevitable in a group chat, we liveblog what we’re going through and sometimes this catches other people’s attention. Cat posted some extracts of her reading through Arthuriana that seemed gay as hell, so I was like ok sure I’ll be really annoying about these old stories it’ll be funny. I again enjoyed them more than I expected to! It’s not like I went in expecting to dislike them – I decided to read them based on some extracts for a reason – but prior to reading the Ulster Cycle I had no real experience with very old literature like this, and I had always sort of positioned any modern interest as being far more academic than simply reading for enjoyment. But, pro tip, you can read anything at all for enjoyment. They can’t stop you.
I enjoyed Chretien’s works substantially more than the Morte. I’d be hard-pressed to name a favourite, but maybe Perceval? Reading it certainly makes you understand why the Grail has been such a fixation in literature for the past several hundred years – the poem gives it an incredible sense of gravity and mystery and then Chretien had the gall to die before finishing the fucking thing. Also I love the knight humiliation fetish girl who follows Gawain around everywhere she’s real as hell.
I was also particularly struck by Kay’s rant at Gawain about what a smooth talker he is – it came off as really rather personal! Honestly, other than the obvious inevitable wanting to know what the Grail was all about, I’d really like to know more about their dynamic within this context. Kay is very much Mr Fucks Up Daily by the time he’s Kay instead of Cai (though I only know anything about Cai through Cat’s liveblogging) and largely isn’t afforded any characterisation beyond being a huge asshole, but I don’t know! If I was going to end up staring at any ship I guess it’d be Kay/Gawain. Don’t get me wrong, Gawain keeping an entire civil war going just to try murder Lancelot in the Morte was yaoi as hell, but this just gets to me more.
Speaking of the Morte, I know it’s more of a compilation than its own thing, but god the middle is… chewy? I don’t necessarily want to say it drags – there is a decent amount of good stuff interspersed between the endless tournaments – but it did feel a bit like the reading equivalent of eating an excessive amount of healthy food that doesn’t taste particularly good. This isn’t necessarily a complaint, since I do think you have to get that kind of thing in you, but it was annoying to fluctuate between parts I really quite liked – I enjoyed the parts focused on Gareth in particular – and fairly samey monotony that was also kind of unskimmable since it was still relevant.
That said, its repetitiveness has the cadence of fetish writing to it, so I’m really only half-joking when I say Malory wants to fuck knights more than anyone who ever lived. This isn’t a condemnation, nor a specific declaration about Malory’s own sexuality, but, you know, this is my observation as a pervert in 2025 – it reads like fetish work for the concept of being a knight. Which is doubly funny when there are things that do come across as overtly sexual – the guy who kidnaps knights and strips them naked and whips them – but these are afforded a single-line mention so Malory can get back to very specific descriptions of combat, armour, etc. Genuinely the knightposters on Tumblr need to read this for pointers.
I didn’t get a lot out of the actual Grail quest as I’ve never been religious and so overtly religious theming ranges from uninteresting to offputting, but I was pretty surprised by Galahad’s sudden “fuck living in this twisted world” thing – very bold characterisation that could have produced some amazing stuff! And then he immediately died, so, okay,
That final chapter – the actual death of Arthur – was absolutely fantastic, though. I love Lancelot being enormously bitchy constantly*, I love Gawain’s endless murder drive and him begging Lancelot to finish him off just so one of them can end it. I was kind of disappointed in Gawain not dying during a fight with Lancelot but also what the hell is his problem that he was like ohhh fuck I’m dying I better write a gay ass letter to Lancelot. I love everyone fucking up in every possible way from that point on, I love Mordred pushing himself up Arthur’s lance, I love how shit just sucked for everyone yayyyy. I also understand how this had a stranglehold on literature for hundreds of years (though the Morte was written at the end of that wave of interest etc).
(*Cat mentioned as I was writing this post that she interpreted it as the text being like ohhh Lancelot was so sad and trying to end the war peacefully, which is kind of funny how we came to such different interpretations. I’m inclined to say hers is the correct one since she has more experience with this kind of text, but Lancelot really did read as so passagg to me!)
But to address the inevitable, even if Perceval is maybe my favourite of Chretien’s romances, the real worm that ended up in my brain is a character. Somehow, in 2025, I ended up a Maleagant stan.
He really is such a great villain and is clearly a notable evolution point for the cowardly scheming villain type. He sucks so much it’s really awesome. He’s trying very hard to come off as strong and intimidating and evil, but he fucks up constantly and nobody likes him, not even his own dad. He’s crying and throwing up constantly and still goes to Arthur to be like hey where’s your boy Lancelot he was supposed to fight me seems like he’s a huge pussy. After locking Lancelot up!!! He also, despite kidnapping Guinevere, doesn’t seem to take much interest in her at all, and mostly uses her to lord himself over other men. He’s weird about men in a way that, in my opinion, is definitely easily interpreted as gay, but it’s just not directed at anyone in particular. It’s more generalised, ambient intricate rituals just so he can get male attention in general.
I did like his little part in the Morte as well. I was initially like well he’s not even being weird about men what’s the point, but then he started crying and throwing up over the idea of having to fight Lancelot so all was well. He surely knew that would inevitably happen. Stupid… I also like him showing Lancelot around his castle and just dropping him through a trapdoor. Everyone give it up for the guy who sucks.
But the biggest thing that got to me is that nobody else seems to care about him! There are pockets of people Doing Fandom about the older texts on Tumblr and elsewhere, but what I found through my digging was that if he gets mentioned at all it’s just through someone posting an extract where he’s mentioned or it’s someone saying he sucks. How are none of you people posting about him?! He’s the perfect cringe fail villain! I can see you people doing Mordred angst! Put him down and come shake Maleagant’s jar with me! Please! You can’t do angst with him, he’s not that deep, but he’s fun!
So, you know, now I have to come up with some idealised anime boy design for him and hope that can convince people to read Lancelot. Actually, I also need to make a fixed epub as well – the formatting on the Gutenberg one is really broken.
And if his part in the Vulgate is good, I’ll have to read that too…
As an ending aside, Granblue plays very fast and loose with its adaptations anyway so his Granblue incarnation is a basically unrelated character that happens to share the same name, but can we address how he’s the only playable Dragon Knights orbit character with his pits out? What did they mean by this?
