Arthurian Polls - Blog Posts

POLL 5❤️✨️🐓🌳

It's TIME FOR ANOTHER ROUND OF... Who do you think is Welsh mythology Arthuriana's most sexy man, lady, God or dubious entity (Part 5)

Notes:

Cerridwen/Taliesin: these two go hand in hand. Cerridwen is seen as the goddess of inspiration and healing who looks after the cauldron of Awen (Inspiration in Welsh). She's best known for being the mother of Morfran and Creirwy as well as for being the main instigator of the potion of inspiration debacle. Cerridwen was trying to brew it for her son, Morfran, to offset his hideousness. It didn't quite work because her servant, Gwion, accidentally splashed his finger with the hot liquid when he was stirring it and Cerridwen WENT APESHIT. Long story short she and he have a battle of sorts where they shape-shift into various animals until Gwion eventually transforms into a piece of grain and hides amongst the grain. Cerridwen, not be outdone, transforms into a hen and swallows Gwion-as grain. Nine months later she gives birth to Taliesin. She can't bring herself to kill Gwion/Taliesin so she throws the baby into a river. Happily, he gets discovered by Elffin - son of Gwyddno Garanhir - and is adopted. His name means radiant brow and he's the chief of bards. Is hot shit. He haunts me. Accompanied Arthur on his quest to Annwfn and wrote about it presumably in a fugue state.

Tristan/Esyllt: U know the drill: boy loves girl, girl loves boy, girl is given away to boy's ass-earred uncle. It all ends unhappily right? Right? WRONG!!! Esyllt and Tristan run to King Arthur after being outlaws and are like 'EXCUSE ME CAN U TELL MARCH TO S T O P?' Arthur is like 'okay one of U can have her when the trees have leaves and another can have her when they don't.' March chooses the second option cuz the nights are longer and Esyllt is like 'SUCKS TO BE U. There are three trees that are good of their kind, holly and ivy and yew, which keep their leaves as long as they live. I am Trystan's as long as he lives.' #GETREKTMARCH!!! Also, Tristan HAS INVUNERABILITY and is besties with Gwalchmai.

Finally, King Arthur. Here he is. Portrayed as both a warlord and a noble, level-headed lad in later stories Arthur is many things and one of them is Dumbo. I love him. He's a himbo. Goes on a quest and doesn't do anything, tries to kidnap a lady and his two besties have to drag him off, battles a guy (Hueil) and kills him cuz Hueil has the audacity to try and mack off with his mistress and thus incurs Gildas' wrath. Has a fuckin huge dog (Cafall) and a fuckin huge horse (Llamrei.) His wife is a giantess and Arthur recognises he's punching above his weight with her. Has Caledfwlch - his sword- and Rhongomyniad - his spear - and a fuckin boat that he loves more like his wife. He also fucks off Cai with an englyn so bad it makes me genuinely want to hit him with my shoes. Be nice, Arthur. Cai, by rights, should've lopped off his head. Is probably Wales' best boi after Cadwaladr, also has two gods in his retinue and I will take every opportunity to yell about that until I fuckin DIE.

The two with the most votes go through so vote, vote, vote!!! (Also no poll on Sunday! We chill on Sundays!)

Wikipedia, most definitely.

For several years, nearly all of my Arthurian knowledge came from Wikipedia, because I (rather oddly) decided to try to get a comprehensive idea of Arthuriana as a whole before actually diving into medieval literature. This was probably because, despite having absorbed my very eccentric great-grandfather's belief that we were descendants of Merlin, I wasn't really into Arthuriana before I was given a prompt to write an alliterative paragraph featuring the letter G, started writing about Gawain, never came to a conclusion, decided to make it a novel, decided I needed to do research to write a novel, etc. This led my seventh grade self to a lot of bad takes, particularly about Lancelot, and very random headcanons. On the other hand, the assumptions I made about Agravaine, while based purely on his name, were mostly accurate.

I can spot at least four possible morals to this story and there are probably more, but I'll leave them to the reader.

Anyway enough King Arthur flour asks time to talk about Ragnelle.

Less than a day left. Wow, this blew up (by my standards). I guess a lot of people have opinions about how they’d die if they were knights. As some have pointed out in the tags, Lancelot and Gawain should probably be statistically higher, and (evil) magic ladies should be lower. I find the current highest statistic kind of funny; apparently, I am one of few who would be killed by their own family blood feud instead of someone else’s. Were it a question of my Tumblr namesake, the answer would be different. I’m no expert, but I don’t know of any account of Taliesin’s death, apart from an implicit death in the Battle of Camlann if he’s still alive then. Then again, he’s a bard, not a knight, unlike his son, who is definitely set to die at Camlann.

Camlann. I forgot to include being killed at Camlann (or in any battle against people other than Lancelot, Breuse, and the Orkneys) as an option. Despite the fact that that’s how a very large number of the knights die.

Darn.

I don’t put my own propaganda on the poll blog, but this is technically a separate blog, so I think I’m allowed to show some bias here. 

I think it would be excellent if the neglected siblings won. Some of them are awesome and powerful, like Ganieda, Merlin‘s clever seeress sister. Others never get a break, like Lucan, who worked hard to keep things running in the castle while he lived and died in the most selfless and/or ridiculous way. Some of them are just sort of there in the corner, hoping for a scrap of attention. I know nothing about Daniel, but he might be interesting if I got to know him. 

Then there’s this:

Arthur has a biological (half?) brother who is known for his battle skills and excellent sense of humor, swears some sort of cryptic oath before dying, and is not featured in any adaptation I’ve heard of. Why isn’t he in adaptations? Because almost no one has heard of him.

In conclusion, these characters are fascinating, and I think it would be great if they got a moment in the spotlight and some symbolic comeuppance on their attention-hog siblings. If they do, then it’s been several centuries in coming.

Alleged A-Listers: Arthur, Bedivere, Galahad, Gawain, Guinevere, Kay, Lancelot, Merlin, Morgan le Fay, Percival, Tristan

Neglected Siblings: Aglovale, Agravaine, Clarissant, Daniel son of Brunor, Dornar, Elaine of Cornwall, Ganieda, Gaheris, Hector de Maris, Kay, Lucan, Madog son of Uther, Safir

Propaganda:

I generally interpret Galahad as aroace. That being said, if he wasn’t and Galadred were a thing, I think it could save the Round Table. Being in a relationship might stop Galahad from going on the Grail quest, which would stop a great number of people from dying, and having a very Catholic boyfriend might stop Mordred from participating in some of his more dubious hobbies, like plotting murder.

It was supposed to be Mordred as he’s described in my writing. A friend and I couldn’t find any art which matched our headcanon of his appearance, so I decided to try to draw him myself, but my attempts to make him stop looking like me just made him look like an elven version of my mother. There are several characters who this sort of looks like it could be depicting, especially if you ignore the pointy ear (not quite sure where it came from), but I don’t think it quite fits anyone in particular.

Ah, well. At least it’s clear to everyone that it’s not Lancelot. I think Mordred would hate people mistaking him for Lancelot and kill anyone who did or vastly abuse (and maybe destroy) his borrowed reputation.