The Knight Of The Lantern - Blog Posts

for the ask game, 💚💛😤🗡️ !!!

I started writing this and realized that my quest/story arc answer could also work for the sibling dynamic one and vice versa, so the first two are both for both.

I’m very fond of The Story of the Crop-Eared Dog—which is to Arthurian lit what Lilly Onakuramara is to the Barden Bellas, only less important—and its weird anticlimax in which the sidekick shows up and reveals that he’s achieved their key goals by killing a vast number of people, including all of the naked monks on the Island of Naked Monks, then defeating but sparing the main antagonist. (The antagonist—the Knight of the Lantern, henceforth known as Lanny—is Alastrann’s—the sidekick’s—younger half-brother. Alastrann’s earlier speeches concerning Lanny can be briefly summarized as, “My baby brother is sooo talented and amazing, but he destroys everything he touches, so I’m going to kill all his friends and steal his stuff and hope that solves the issue.” Somehow, this works). There’s a lot more to unpack there, but it’s a complicated mess. A charming complicated mess.

Arthur’s sudden ascent to greatness, and the barriers that likely creates between the (formerly unwitting) foster brothers, has its own sort of pathos, but their dynamic in Cullwch and Olwen is heartbreaking and seems to get overlooked. (They aren’t referred to as brothers or foster brothers there, but I’ll count it anyway). They have a falling out over an extemporaneous song with which Arthur ridicules Cai’s tactics on a specific killing errand. It might be meant as a joke, but it angers Cai so much that he leaves, never to return or aid Arthur again. The twist is this: it’s already been said that when Cai is killed, Arthur avenges him by killing not only his killer but also his killer’s brothers. Arthur’s vengeance is brutal and unfair and a mark of extreme grief; clearly, he never stopped caring about his friend/brother, even though he was never able to make up with him in life. 

Your Most Specific Nitpick About Your Fave (anything from "Gareth would not have a beard" to "this is basically a different guy"):

One of my faves is Dinadan, and an adaptational/fandom nitpick of mine is when he gets shipped with random people. I personally headcanon him as aroace. There are some texts where I can understand reading him as being gay and having feelings for Tristan, but writing about, say, him and Mordred makes no sense to me and I find it aggravating. Aroaces (and aspec people in general) have such little representation as it is.

Who Are You Betting On In This Month's Tournament?

Assuming that Lanny is out of town, I’ll place a small bet on Dinadan. He doesn’t win often, so I could get great odds for him, and when he does win, it’s very funny. I also really like Dinadan.

💚😏🗡️ <for arthuriana ask game =)

Favorite quest/story arc:

That’s a tough one. Basic as it is, one of my favorites would have to be the Grail quest. It’s been told in so many different ways, it has so much potential for interpretation and reinterpretation, and if you look around, its influence is everywhere in pop culture. I also really like Galahad, Percival, and the Grail Heroine (though reading T. H. White left me with an anti-Bors bias I’ve never been able to shake).

Gawain: 

The way I got into Arthuriana was a seventh-grade GVC assignment where I had to write an alliterative paragraph, drew “G” out of a hat, started writing about Gawain, never got to a stopping point, decided to write a novel, decided I had to do research for the novel…you get the idea. He isn’t my all-time favorite, but I like Gawain. I find his revenge quest interesting when it’s done well, but I think that it’s become too ubiquitous. There are so many stories about him and there’s so much more to him than the man in The Once and Future King whose main traits are “angry” and “Scottish” (though I do love it when he calls Galahad “yon lily laddie”).

Who Are You Betting On In This Month's Tournament?

I think it depends on which canon it is and who’s in town. If I could choose from every Arthurian character I know of, I would say the Knight of the Lantern, hands down. At the start of The Story of the Crop-Eared Dog, he defeats and ties up everyone on Arthur’s hunting trip who he thinks is worth fighting—which adds up to well over seven thousand knights—in one afternoon. Later on, he’s defeated by his older brother Alastrann (who’s in monster-dog form), but when their father dies, Alastrann becomes the King of India, and he can’t very well casually jaunt over to the far end of another continent when he has a country to run. The Knight of the Lantern also returns to India, but he has unparalleled magical powers and less responsibility, so he could probably swing by for a tournament.

Thanks for the ask!

Crop-Eared Dog Quotes No. 2: Lanny beat up over 7,000 knights and Arthur has the healthiest priorities (not)

Like any decent gatecrashing antagonist, the Knight of the Lantern demands battle, which shouldn’t be a problem, because Arthur is (inexplicably) the King of the World and

not more were the plants through the floor of the world, or joints in a human body, or days in the year, than the active warriors and very valiant knights in the household of that powerful king: that is to say, there were twelve knights of valour, and twelve knights of activity, and twelve knights of the Round Table, and twelve knights of counsel, and two hundred and two-score knights of the Great Table, and seven thousand knights of the household…

but…this happens:

{T}he Knight of the Lantern bound them all save only Galahad de Cordibus, who was a young, beardless boy, on that spot. And he goes straight back by the same way, after leaving the king and his people tightly bound in that fashion, and he pours a dark mist of druidry behind him, and they were thus till the setting of the noonday cloud, and to the rising of the sun on the morrow. Then the king spoke to the household, and thus he said:

"A pity is this thing which has happened to us," said he, "for were the ladies and women of the Fort of the Red Hall to know of our being like this, they would make the mischief of a mock and jest of us, and publish our despite and our weakness over the whole world, and to doomsday and the world's end would never again be beside us…"

One knight has just beat up all of his knights, even though there are well over seven thousand of them, and Arthur’s big concern is that the ladies of the court will laugh at them.

Crop-Eared Dog makes the overzealous descriptions in the Vulgate look tame

This is a quote about the villain, the Knight of the Lantern, who should consider getting a job at Vogue if being his brother’s seneschal doesn’t work out:

“And when they were in a pleasant state, drinking and pleasuring, the king arose standing, and he looks to the four broad-bordered quarters on each side of him all around ; and he saw one young champion, armed, accoutred, and equipped, approaching him; and a tunic of fine silk around his white skin; a wonderful gold-threaded mantle above his fair tunic; and a firm, close, well-woven breastplate about his slender, brightly beautiful, well-curved body; a handsome gold-hemmed scapular above that breastplate; and a goldenhilted, ingenious, broad-grooved sword on his left thigh. A beautiful, very firm, jewelled diadem of manifold art about his head; a shapely, studded, flesh-coloured shield on the ridge of his back, and lines of golden letters in the edges of that royal shield, to announce and proclaim that there was not at the back of shield or sword in the world a warrior or champion better than that mighty soldier. Two angled spears in his white right hand; he had a long, narrow, radiant face, and a grey, clear-glorious, fresh, brilliant, joyous eye in his head ; and he had a slender, shapely, handsome mouth, a smoothslow, quiet, kingly raising in his eyelids, springs of love in each of his royal cheeks; and the people of the world were inferior to him. And in this wise was he; a glistening, full-lighted lantern was in his left hand, and the king was watching him till he came to his presence; and King Arthur asks news of him.”

I mean, really. Describing Lancelot’s eyebrows is weird enough, but glowing descriptions of eyelid raising are on another level.