Thanks for reading.

7/5/07

Arthur made his promise to Ygraine here. As noted in previous newsposts ... Are the text pieces I put in this space really "newsposts"? That's what they're ususally called on webcomic sites, that or "rants", and that's what the navigation above says. But the things I say here don't really fit the definitions of news or rantings. Anyway, as noted in previous discussions, my source for the events of the Saxon Rock campaign isn't Malory's Morte d'Arthur which leaves them out, but the Old French Vulgate cycle of romances (as translated and abridged in The Lancelot-Grail Reader, Lacy ed.). The Morte leaves it ambiguous whether Arthur is aware of the Guenevere-Lancelot affair till the end, but in the Vulgate cycle his ignorance is definitely established when, at the end, he learns of the affair from a mural on Morgan's wall that Lancelot painted while he was being held prisoner. From that point on Arthur is a prime mover in the effort to expose the affair - quite a contrast with The Once and Future King (in which White claimed the characters to be the same as in the Morte) in which Arthur loves both Guenevere and Lancelot too much to expose them and have medieval justice served on them. Arthur's behavior in the Vulgate seems awfully hypocritical to contemporary sensibilites: persecuting and prosecuting his queen for treason on account of her affair with his most loyal and accomplished retainer, when his extramarital affair was with an enemy of the state and placed the kingdom in clear and present danger. Maybe that's why Malory left it out. Given what little we know about Malory, at least according to Robert Graves in the introduction to Baines, Malory's sympathies were most likely with the knights having the affairs, describing the adultresses involved as the truest loves there could ever be. Mark is an unremitting bounder in the Morte but, in aid of presenting Arthur to be almost as great a hero as Lancelot, Malory seems to selectively leave out all the most foolish and petty things he does in the Vulgate. Perhaps that's why he left out the origin of Lancelot's affair, tied in as it is with Arthur's affair with Camille. AKOTAS, in its post-Malory post-White environment, is in a position to put the Battle of Saxon Rock back in, but have Arthur use it as a lesson. Even if Guenevere and Lancelot don't. Which is all the apology I have for myself and anyone else who thinks I may've glossed over the actual battle part of the battle, or over Camille herself. Though actually there's not much more in my source.

Webcomics I read mornings: Kevin & Kell, For Better Or For Worse, I Draw Comics, Scary Go Round, Tux & Bunny, Sluggy Freelance, Irregular Comic, Real Life, Peanuts

Webcomics I read M-W-F mornings: El Goonish Shive, Theater Hopper, General Protection Fault, Nukees, Newshounds, Girl Genius, Pibgorn, Ctrl+Alt+Del

Webcomics I read Tu-Th-Sa mornings: AppleGeeks, Achewood, Kismetropolis, Malfunction Junction, Striptease, Punch an' Pie, Digger

Webcomics I read middays: Calvin & Hobbes, Least I Could Do, User Friendly, Questionable Content, Starslip Crisis, Devil's Panties, Narbonic, Schlock Mercenary

Webcomics I read evenings: LuAnn, Count Your Sheep, Goats, Pearls Before Swine, American Elf, The Angriest Rice Cooker In The World, Sinfest, Little Dee

Webcomics I read M-W-F evenings: Reasoned Cognition, Two Lumps, Zortic, Order of the Stick, College Roommates from Hell!!!, Home on the Strange, Penny Arcade

Webcomics I read Tu-Th-Sa evenings: The Adventures of Dr. McNinja, Get Out of My Head, Megatokyo, Buck Godot Zap Gun For Hire

Webcomics I read bedtimes: B.C., Something Positive, Girls With Slingshots, Station V3, Dinosaur Comics, Shortpacked, Wapsi Square, Help Desk, Sheldon, PvP

Webcomics I read Sundays: xkcd, Minus, Smithson, Something Happens, Three Panel Soul, Butternut Squash, Perry Bible Fellowship, Breakfast of the Gods, The Non-Adventures of Wonderella, Ctrl+Alt+Del

Webcomics I hope will start updating again: Boxjam's Doodle, Casey & Andy, 13 Seconds, Crap I Drew On My Lunch Break, Li'l Mell, The Magnificent Adventures of Hieronymus Bosch, esquire, Dandy & Company, The Green Avenger, No Room for Magic, Anywhere But Here, The Whovian Observer, Gossamer Commons

See also The Daily Grind Iron Man Challenge, Talk About Comics, The Living Comic, Online Comics Day, The Belfry Comics Index, The Webcomic List, Mister Bloo, Nth Degree, 100% Originality Theatre, Girls Read Comics (And They're Pissed), Fleen, Mr. Myth, Comixpedia and Websnark.

Arthuriana sources I use or recommend:
Arthurian Legend
Arthuriana - the Journal of Arthurian Studies; the website of the quarterly journal of the North American Branch of the International Arthurian Society.
The Camelot Project at the University of Rochester.
Camelot In Four Colors: A Survey of the Arthurian Legend in Comics
Mystical-WWW - The Arthurian A2Z knowledge Bank which has encyclopedically-arranged entries on the characters of the Arthurian legends.
Early British Kingdoms - Arthurian Bios
. Le Morte Darthur: Sir Thomas Malory's Book of King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table, Volume 1 and Volume 2.