“Do you know what the adventure entails?” he asked him.
“I know nothing about it, truly,” Gadifer replied. “The maiden Pierote died before she could tell me what I was engaged to do.”Perceforest
This is going to be a very short primer for the Arthurian legend, Arthuriana, the Matter of Britain, or whatever else you want to call it.
Meet Arthur
King Arthur is a legendary1 character originally set in Britain in the 5th or 6th centuries, in what’s called the “sub-Roman” period, or what’s often colloquially called the Dark Ages. Many stories, by virtue of being written later, start to blend in a lot of later medieval elements into the storyline, though.
This is a time of great turmoil on the island, as the Romano-Britons2 are giving up ground and riches to opportunistic raiders, conquerors and colonizers - the most notable of which are the Germanic peoples which will become the early English.
Arthur is a ruler3 who is successful in stemming the tide of these attacks at least for a little while. In particular he defeats a great force at a battle called Badon and establishes a degree of peace and power4. Then, at the end of the story, he dies (kinda) in battle with his own bastard son5 Mordred at a place called Camlann.
”Rightwise Born”
Arthur’s surrounded by fantastical events. He is the son of King Uther Pendragon, but is whisked away by the enchanter Merlin to be raised in secrecy without knowledge of his parentage. When Britain needs a ruler, he stumbles into the role by drawing a sword that has been lodged deep into a stone6 - left there to identify the true king.
As he learns about his identity and defeats the other contenders for rulership over the isle, Arthur reunites with his half-sisters7 and mother, marries the princess Guinevere, acquires a second fancy sword8, and establishes new ideals of chivalry and justice.
His rule is emblemized by the Round Table - a… round table, often with magical properties, that he seats the best and most favored knights at.
Meet the Round Table
The meat and potatoes of the legend are often disconnected stories about these knights - names like Lancelot, Gawain, Kay, Palamedes, Perceval. In plenty of stories, Arthur’s merely a background presence if even mentioned, and no knowledge of the wider arc of the history matters.
Some of these storylines have a lot of interconnection - including some which have a whole cast of characters that are mostly just part of their sub-plot rather than the larger ones9 - the tragic romance of Tristram and Iseult, the courageous northern Uriens and Uwaine, and…
The Quest
…the Holy Grail. It comes about almost by accident as authors riff on the unfinished Perceval, but quickly becomes the archetypical long-arc storyline of Arthur’s reign.10
Ostensibly, the Holy Grail is11 the cup Jesus drank from at the Last Supper12. This concept of a chalice has a broader series of legends and stories outside of the Arthurian legend, but they’re vastly overshadowed by the way it’s portrayed here. In Arthurian stories, the grail has to get to Britain somehow - and that’s through a related legend that St Joseph of Arimathea brought it there13, and thus intertwined himself into the island’s myths as well.
The grail then appears mysteriously for knights - sometimes glowing, flying, and/or being accompanied by other miraculous signs - before it disappears, causing them to go seeking after it. Often this happens (perhaps after some knights have had more personal accounts) to the whole Round Table, setting off a spiritual fever for every knight to be the one to accomplish this quest.
This period of questing - especially when everyone seems taken up by the whirlwind adventure - is often surreal and melancholic. It’s often a place to get really literal with metaphors, and usually we find that the journey matters more than the destination. This, tinged with a more modern dash of ambiguous interpretation14, has kept the story very popular.
The Death of Arthur
Of course, Arthur in the end dies. The common story (post Morte D’Arthur at least) is that Guinevere, his wife and queen, has a secret affair with Sir Lancelot - his greatest and most loyal knight.
Festering feuds and personal ambitions start to spiral15 and when the affair is dramatically revealed by Lancelot’s foes, the court ends up taking sides. Lancelot flees to his own lands pursued by Arthur16, while Arthur’s bastard son Mordred is left in charge.
When Mordred tries to take over the realm17, Arthur must leave his siege to deal with the betrayal, and his knights have to fight side by side with Lancelot and company again. Split by all the fighting and stabbed in the back, though, Arthur’s forces struggle against the usurper Mordred - and an attempt to stall for time18 fails when a very thematic serpent causes a knight to inadvertently draw his sword.
Both Arthur and Mordred, and pretty much everyone else, perishes in the fight.
Some legends include later generations of similarly fantastical and heroic knights and the adventures just keep going on. Others tie it more into more historical lines of kings and actual mundane events, which tie into one thing after another until it reaches the modern day. But for the sake of this game, none of what happens afterwards matters.
Footnotes
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And their less Romano- brethren - together they’re effectively “the natives” of the island before it became a relatively distant part of the Roman Empire for several centuries. The richest and densest parts of the island are somewhat more heavily Romanized, and also the greatest target for raids. ↩
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What kind of title he might have may vary in earlier texts, where he’s a leader of a warband or a local king but not necessarily what we’d think of as “King” or “High King” as he’s often called in later works. ↩
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Often involving enormous conquests and being extremely renowned throughout the known world. ↩
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In earlier stories, the relationship is sometimes different. ↩
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And anvil, in the original. Like, it’s driven through an anvil and into the rock underneath. The Sword in the Stone as it’s commonly called tends to drop the anvil aspect in a lot of more modern adaptions. ↩
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“Reuiniting” a little too much with one of them, which is where Mordred comes from. ↩
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This sword is the one called Excalibur and is given to him by the Lady of the Lake, though many stories have only one sword or are vague or even contradictory about which origins (sword-in-stone and sword-from-lake) apply. ↩
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Usually by virtue of being an independent cycle of stories before they got absorbed into the wider legend. ↩
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Or even of all such stories. Saying an unobtainable goal is “the Holy Grail” of some ideal, or categorizing a story as a “Grail Quest” archetype is common outside of Arthuriana entirely. ↩
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After some early-season weirdness as writers couldn’t quite agree where they were going with it. Sure, it may have originally been a plate, and there’s a thread of stories where it’s a gemstone that had a whole thematic reasoning around that - but in modern times the chalice is the dominant concept. ↩
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Sometimes but not always augmented by also having caught his blood when he was crucified. ↩
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Usually with a variety of other relics, both preexisting and invented purely for individual stories. The grail usually isn’t alone in its roles in the medieval texts, but none of the other relics were as consistent or iconic (except maybe the Spear of Longinus, but that’s also tied to the grail legend). ↩
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By which I mean the “was it really real?” that allows the writer to get into the head of the character and let us try on different beliefs about whether or not it was a dream. But I also mean a curious ambiguity in the other direction - that it can take stories that would be usually more cynical or grounded and introduce an element of doubt and mystery - a sudden reversal of the explainable world. The same enigma can challenge both single-color tones, which makes it really vivid for an author to play with. ↩
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Perhaps especially after the devastation of the Grail Quest. At least in Morte D’Arthur it’s extremely deadly, and leaves the knights who went on it kind of scarred. This is a not uncommon take, but it’s not present in all adaptions. ↩
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Often not from Arthur’s own desire for vengeance, but driven by things spiraling out of control. In the earlier chaos, Lancelot kills the wrong people - and once blood is spilled it’s hard to unspill. ↩
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And often to marry Guinevere (who usually survives the previous points, but becomes a nun). ↩
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And usually, Lancelot’s army ↩