Episode 56: King Arthur (with Christian Madera)
/The Arthurian Canon is sacred to some people—so you know we’ve got a lot of jokes about it. We dive into the nitty gritty with special guest Christian Madera as we talk about why self-insert fanfiction is questionable, even in the Middle Ages; how OT3s can solve all problems; how freaky historians can get; and why “whiskey” is a word that transcends language.
You can find Christian online at Once and Future Nerd, and on Twitter and Tumblr! The fabulous Professor E.R. Udite is on tumblr for your enjoyment, and you can learn more about Marion Zimmer Bradley here. To learn more about resources available to survivors of sexual assault, head over to Rainn.org
We’re sponsored this week by Audible. Get your free audiobook at audible.com/spirits, and let us know if you listen to Vacationland or From A Certain Point of View!
If you like Spirits, help us grow by spreading the word! Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, & Goodreads, and review us on Apple Podcasts to help new listeners find the show. You can support us on Patreon to unlock bonus audio content, director’s commentaries, custom recipe cards, and so much more. Merch is for sale at spiritspodcast.com/merch.
Transcript
AM: Welcome to Spirits Podcast Episode 56: King Arthur with Christian Madera.
JS: You know, Amanda, this is such a, you know, well-loved and, you know, just remains in the canon of human stories so much. So, naturally, we're going to shit on it a little bit.
AM: Yeah. No. It's so well known that even I knew a little bit about it. And we have just a completely new take. There is all kinds of crazy stuff. I quoted a movie correctly. There's a lot of talk about shipping.
JS: There's some real good hot takes in this.
AM: Very hot. The hottest of takes.
JS: The hottest of takes.
AM: Like the hottest of takes on the roundest of tables. That's what we have to offer you here on Spirits Podcast.
JS: Which is ironic, because the hot takes were very hot back in February when we were recording this.
AM: I know. I know. Christian has been so patient. And, and he's a great friend of ours and the kind of proprietor of the podcast, Once and Future Nerd.
JS: Which is definitely worth checking out.
AM: Fantastic. But, before we get to that, I would love to thank our newest patrons; R and Meagan for joining us as well as our supporting producer level patrons; Neal, Chandra, Philip, Julie, Sara, Josh, Eeyore, Mercedes, Sandra, Robert, Lindsey, Phil, Catherine, Ryan and Debra.
JS: Each of you is in an OT3 friendship with Amanda and I.
AM: Oh, my gosh, that's adorable. As are our legend level patrons; LeAnn, Erin, Ashley, Shannon, Cammie, and Cassie.
JS: You're all the knights of our round table.
AM: Awww. So sweet. And we were drinking, in this episode, something that I really want to reprise now that it's cold again.
JS: Yeah.
AM: We've lasted so long before putting out this recording.
JS: I think Christian actually suggested this recipe.
AM: Yes. He brought some beautiful mead with us or to us for the recording. And it was very cold. So, we made hot toddies with whiskey and lemon. It was so good.
JS: You guys had whiskey. I don't drink whiskey.
AM: Yes. So, Julia just had mead and more for me.
JS: It was delicious.
AM: We are sponsored this week by Audible. We have talked about it before, but Audible brings you an unmatched selection of audiobooks, original audio shows, news, comedy, and more.
JS: And you can get your 30-day free trial at audible.com/spirits. Also, you guys might have heard us mention something about Patreon changing their fee tiers and stuff like that during our last episode. They are not doing that anymore. There was quite a backlash especially for the podcasting community. And they have resolved to keep it as it is.
AM: Yes.
JS: So, if you were a patron and you dropped off because you were worried about the new fees or just you weren't happy with the way that Patreon was handling things, welcome back nothing's changing. Join the ranks again.
AM: And we really truly appreciate your support there. Every dollar that you pledge brings us closer to Akron, Ohio, which is a sentence I never thought I would say.
JS: Spaghetti gettin’.
AM: Spaghetti gettin’, y'all. It can happen as soon as – I don't know – late January I suppose --
JS: Yes.
AM: -- with your support on Patreon. So, help us get there. Help us get to our goal. Julia just realized, in her eyes, that we should actually have to go to Ohio when this happens.
JS: Oh, no. Sorry, Eric.
AM: So, bring us – bring us closer to the Spaghetti gettin’ and, and pledge at patreon.com/spiritspodcast.
JS: And, if you're already a patron or you're considering becoming a patron, every episode we rant about something ridiculous. And editor Eric has to cut it for time. But, if you are a patron at any level, $1 or more, you get to hear us talk about, in this episode, the weird, dark timelines of Sonic the Hedgehog.
AM: Yeah. Every single episode, there is some kind of rant that Eric texts us like, “Why are you saying this?” as he's editing and excerpts, you know, a few minutes worth of rant up to I think probably nine. It was our longest one on record. Probably by Gilderoy Lockhart.
JS: The last one was 420 blaze it.
AM: Blaze it. So, we are going to be sharing those with our patrons because, listen, if anyone's gonna appreciate my stupid jokes, it's gonna be you guys.
JS: That is sure.
AM: So, without further ado, please enjoy Spirits Podcast Episode 56: King Arthur with Christian Madera.
Intro Music
AM: We are so pleased this week to welcome Christian Kelley-Madera, the co-creator and director of the Once and Future Nerd podcast that we love.
JS: Thank you for coming.
CM: Thank you so much for having me, guys. I'm like really excited to geek out with you.
JS: We're excited. We're always excited to geek out. Let's be real here.
AM: Yeah. And I'm particularly pumped that you have brought several pages of typep notes.
CM: Yeah, I did. I, I was kind of extra with that.
AM: No.
CM: I still got that overachiever.
AM: You, you can't be too extra. You can't be too extra with your notes.
JS: You can’t be too extra with your nerdome.
AM: No, you can’t.
JS: Unless, you are actually, and then we're not okay with that.
AM: No.
CM: You know, honestly, this entire spiel was like a long I'm actually about what --
JS: To every single one of our other episodes?
CM: No.
JS: Okay.
CM: Just to what everyone thinks about King Arthur.
JS: Listen, we're totally okay with that part.
AM: That we're here for.
CM: So, we're gonna talk about King Arthur.
AM: Yes.
JS: Awesome.
CM: And, specifically, kind of how the Arthur myth has evolved in over the last like 1500 years. So, I kind of want to start by asking you guys what you think. Just kind of like Family Feud style --
AM: Yeah.
CM: -- when you hear King Arthur, what do you typically think?
JS: Monty Python and the quests for the Holy Grail.
CM: Sure,
AM: Yes. That definitely might – that was one of the few pop culture references that made it into my childhood.
JS: That's why I had to steal it from you before you could say it.
AM: Thank you. I can recite pretty much the whole thing in my memory. I actually have the, the recording of the movie as an mp3 on my phone.
CM: Right. Right.
JS: I’m not surprised by that.
AM: We had the record as a kid. Anyway, it doesn't matter. And he's played by a blonde kid on TV currently, right?
JS: The show Merlin?
AM: That – oh, it’s Merlin.
JS: Okay. That's over. But, yeah, that is a thing.
AM: Okay. All right. Not so current. Not so current.
JS: Congratulations.
AM: And he had a roundtable with knights at it.
JS: Good job.
AM: It's all I got.
JS: There’s a song about it.
AM: There’s a sword in the stone. Is that – was that him?
JS: Yes.
AM: Okay.
JS: And there's a lady in a lake.
AM: Yeah.
JS: And there's --
AM: Strange women lying in ponds just [Inaudible 5:31]. So, is that the basis of the civil government?
JS: Thank you. That was actually fantastic. Good job.
CM: We're gonna come back to Monty Python like a couple times in this.
JS: I'm ready for it.
AM: How is the Monty Python [Inaudible 5:35] farcical the classic ceremony?
JS: Goddamn.
AM: All right. I'll stop there.
CM: Yeah. No, I can – I can – yeah. We’re on the same wavelength.
JS: I'm trying to think if there’s any other stuff. He gets cheated on him by his wife.
CM: Do you remember with whom?
JS: Guinevere, but it's with the Lancelot. And then Galahad’s hot I think maybe.
AM: Yep. Yep.
JS: Okay.
AM: Welling lots of some kind.
JS: Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool.
AM: I don't know.
CM: Yeah.
JS: That's it. That's it.
CM: I mean that's – I think that's generally the bullet points. I've written down my kind of like --
JS: Oh, there's Morgan Le Fay. That’s a thing too.
CM: Yes, Morgan Le Fay exists.
JS: There we go.
AM: Julia got really excited.
CM: So, like the, the point I'm going to drive up this whole time is that there isn't really an Arthur canon so to speak.
JS: Sure.
CM: There's no one defining Arthur text. But --
AM: You know, we love multiplicity of myths.
CM: Yeah. But, if we were gonna do like an electron cloud graph of the key points of Arthur, I'm gonna run through those really quick at the top, and then I’ll go through how we got there. So, --
AM: Nice.
CM: -- at the beginning, he acquires a sword through some kind of worthiness test. Often, the sword is called Excalibur. And, often, he pulls it out of a stone.
AM: Framing question?
CM: Yes.
AM: Was he a king beforehand? Or does – or does just finding the sword make him king?
CM: He – that's the, the, the worthiness test. That is the sword signifies him as King --
AM: Which makes – ahh, I see.
CM: -- is usually – yeah – is usually how it goes.
AM: Like Thor's hammer.
CM: Right. Although there are very – like, again, multiplicity of like sometimes he was just a random kid who did this and now he's king.
AM: Right.
CM: Or he was already the king, and he didn't know it or nobody else knew it. And that was how he proved it.
AM: Cool. Cool. And, finally, what time period are we talking?
CM: Okay. So, we're talking about nearly any time in, like the pre-Renaissance history of England. Arthur first shows up in like the 500 or 600s. And that's when he's reported to have lived throughout all the myths. But it gets very, very, very anachronistic as the myth goes on.
AM: As it does. As it does in almost all myths.
CM: Yeah. Right.
AM: Let's, let's get messy.
JS: Yeah.
CM: Yeah.
JS: I want that as a t-shirt now.
CM: That's good.
JS: As I said it, I was picturing the way it would look on the tote bags.
CM: It's good. It's like A + merch. Yeah. So, often, he pulls the sword off the stone. Sometimes, he’s given the sword by the Lady of the Lake. Sometimes, both of those things happen, and there are different swords. But, in any case, there's a worthiness test of some sort that signifies him as the King of Britain. He fights the Saxons and does other grand acts of war. At some point, he assembles his Knights of the Round Table. They are called by God to seek the Holy Grail. In some versions, one of the nights succeeds. It's almost never Arthur.
JS: That sounds about right.
CM: His favorite knight, Lancelot, has an ongoing affair with his Queen Guinevere.
JS: Nice.
CM: At some point --
AM: Why can't it be an OT3, y’all? Why can't it be an OT3?
JS: We’ll talk about that
CM: Well, you know, we’re gonna get to that.
JS: Are we? Ooh.
AM: Nice.
JS: I feel like Lancelot is a hella gay name. So, let's go for it.
AM: It is. It is.
JS: Yeah.
AM: At the very least, hella bi.
JS: Yeah.
CM: Yeah. We're gonna – we're gonna get there, because you're not the first to have thought --
JS: I'm not surprised by that. On the internet, I am not surprised by that.
AM: Historians are freaky.
JS: Historians are freaky.
CM: So – and then, at some point, Mordred shows up. Mordred's name means evil council in Anglo-Saxon. Often, Mordred is Arthur's illegitimate son via incest with his half sister, a sorceress, who is usually either Morgan Le Fay --
JS: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
CM: -- or Morgause. Sometimes, they’re the same characters. Sometimes, they are different characters. And, so, as a result, Mordred hates his father, Arthur. And, at some point, while Arthur is out of Britain on one quest or another, Mordred usurps the throne and marries Guinevere either consensually or not depending on the version of the myth. And, so, Arthur has to come back to fight Mordred. He usually kills Mordred, but is himself mortally wounded. So, he then gets taken to the mythical island of Avalon.
JS: Avalon.
CM: -- to heal his wounds.
AM: So many words that I know are coming together.
CM: Yeah, exactly. Right. So, he gets taken to Avalon for his wounds to be treated never to be seen again. However, there's often a messianic component of this myth where Arthur will one day return to save Britain in some great hour of need.
AM: Sounds like a myth that nationalists can use.
CM Yes. It also seems like he may have shit the bed during World War II, because you think he might have showed up then.
AM: Yeah.
JS: Maybe that wasn't their greatest time of need.
CM: Maybe.
JS: Maybe Brexit is the greatest time of need.
CM: Yes.
JS: And Arthur's gonna show the fuck up and be like, “What are you all doing?”
CM: Right. Right.
AM: Maybe – or maybe he came briefly to possess the body of the king in ingsman. What was his name George IV or something?
CM: The one --
JS: Kingsman?
AM: Oh, not King.
CM: The King’s Speech.
JS: The King’s Speech.
AM: The King Speeches.
JS: There we go.
AM: That's the other Colin Firth movie.
CM: Yeah.
JS: Is it the other – there's more gun shooting in that one though.
CM: Yeah.
AM: And a lot more shooting.
JS: Yes.
AM: Anyway. Maybe --
JS: It’s hella good.
CM: Yeah.
AM: Maybe he came briefly --
CM: Yeah. Yeah.
AM: -- to possess the body of that King.
CM: King who had to take over.
AM: And then he like noped right out of there.
CM: Yeah.
AM: And, oops, sorry, World War II.
CM: Yeah. That's, that's plausible. Although, we'll come back to T.H. White, who did want Arthur – who, in a way, did want Arthur to show up for World War II.
AM: All right.
JS: That sounds right.
CM: Anyway. But – so, that's kind of the broad strokes of the Arthur “canon”. But, in reality, very, very, very few of those elements were there in the earliest days of the Arthur myth. And it was – there were – or most of them were added as the myth evolved over time. And, so, my – the point I'm gonna drive at – and I'm trying to state this in the most provocative way that I can – is that much of what we think of as the Arthur canon is actually self-insert romantic fanfic.
JS: Yes. My favorite kind.
AM: Yes. Spirits hot take.
CM: Yes. That's, that's my Arthur hot take.
JS: We're all about those angry hot takes, where everything is bullshit and we're right.
AM: Yeah.
CM: Yeah.
AM: And like character’s last meter fanfics --
CM: Yeah. That’s the best kind
AM: -- second person fanfic, not a fan.
CM: Yeah.
AM: But like respect.
CM: Right.
JS: Second person fanfic is perhaps the most ridiculous kind of fanfic.We don't yuck any yums, but --
AM: Listen, I've seen it done well like twice, but I --
JS: But --
AM: -- do indeed --
JS: -- compared to how many different second person fanfic there is in the world.
AM: I, I do have an email filter to “block/reader” from my email alerts on the fandoms that I follow.
JS: I'm not surprised by that.
CM: I want to give a quick shout out to the actual Arthurian scholar who goes by Professor Erudite on Tumblr, who I --
AM: Subscribed immediately.
CM: -- I, I, I pitched them my, my thesis. And they're like, “Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's defensible.”
JS: Wooh.
AM: I think that’s some academic like citation --
CM: Yeah.
AM: -- endorsement here.
CM: Yeah. Well, I didn't send them the whole thing. But they said, generally, the thesis was defensible.
JS: The two-line thesis that you said.
CM: Yeah. The, the self insert --
AM: I, I hope – I hope, Professor, if you end up listening to this episode, A, thank you; B, I just hope that we didn't get it too wrong.
CM: Yeah, I mean it's all on me if you did. So, that's, that's fine. Okay. So, in order to walk us through that, I gotta back up and give a partial and sketchy history of the British Isles.
JS: Cool.
AM: Beautiful.
JS: My favorite kind of history.
AM: Beautiful.
CM: It's gonna be real, real broad strokes here. So, if we go back like as far as we can reasonably trace, Britain was inhabited by various Celtic tribes for whichever – you know, for people who don't know, when we say they’re Celtic, it's like a family of cultures and languages. They would have seen themselves as distinct tribes from one another, who traded and, you know, competed or fought over lands and resources. But their languages were all linguistically related and their religion, mythology, cultural practices would have been recognizable to each other.
AM: Yeah.
CM: Like they would have said, “Oh, yeah. I know that story,” you know. And, so, in Britain, it was, you know, the Britains, and the Scots, and the Pécs, probably a few others that I'm missing. Sorry to all those people --
JS: It’s fine.
CM: -- from 5000 years ago who are living out. And we should note that, for like most of the Bronze age and going into like the Second and First centuries BCE, Celtic tribes dominated most of Northern Europe. That was just – yeah. That was their jam. So, then we move into the period of Roman Britain, which is starting in like the First century CE. The Rome --
AM: Which – that is fucking crazy to me that people made it from Rome to the UK.
CM: Yeah.
AM: What?
CM: Yeah.
AM: That’s so far.
CM: It's very far.
AM: They built aqueducts and then left.
CM: Yeah. I think – I think --
AM: That’s all I know about Roman thing.
CM: I, I think a lot about how far --
AM: Build aqueducts and then leave.
CM: Right. Yes. I think a lot about how far things were when I --
AM: Yeah.
CM: -- when I like, like for --
AM: That’s like never see your family again far.
CM: Right. Or, also, like, yeah, I'm gonna take – like, in the Viking Age, like, yeah, I'm gonna take a sailboat across the English – across the North Atlantic.
AM: Yeah. Yeah.
CM: Like you have to be – you have to not value your life, or be very, very desperate, or very, very, very, very brave, bordering on psychosis to do that.
AM: Yeah. Or like --
JS: I think most Viking people would be like, “Oh, it’s the last one.” Probably the last one.
CM: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
AM: Or like Pacific Islander and Polynesian --
CM: Yes. I --
AM: -- like people. Incredible.
CM: We're in the First century CE.
AM: Cool.
CM: And the Roman Empire begins its conquest of Britain. And this involves a lot of events that you've probably tangentially heard of. So, they establish --
AM: I think you’re giving us a lot of credit.
CM: No, no. You --
JS: Whoa. You’re giving Amanda a lot of credit in the situation.
CM: You’re not doing that. You’ll – you’ll – all right. I'm gonna list three things, and you'll probably have heard of like a few of them. I will not --
AM: Yes. What is it? 10, 10. What is it? 1055.
CM: ‘66.
AM: 1066 is a very important year.
CM: Yeah. Roman conquest.
AM: I'm so sorry, Professor Brown.
CM: So, they established a major trading port on the eastern coast called Londinium, which you might guess becomes modern day London.
JS: Got that one. .
AM: Got that one. Got that one.
CM: Yeah. We’ve heard – we've heard of London. You may have heard of Queen Boudica, who is a --
AM: Negative.
CM: She's like this badass Celtic warrior queen, who had --
AM: Cool.
JS: You know, I've heard of her then.
CM: And the, the story usually goes that, after her husband is killed and her daughters raped by Romans, she leads a revolt and burns down Londinium.
JS: Yes.
AM: Love it.
CM: Yeah. Which is a pretty dope thing to do. And you also may have heard of Emperor Hadrian – Emperor Hadrian --
AM: Hadrian’s Wall.
JS: Yeah. Yeah.
CM: Yes. He built the wall --
JS: Good job.
CM: -- along the Northern border of Roman territory. And we should say that, in case any deranged modern day heads of state happen to be listening, walls are and have always been trashed at stopping the movement of people.
JS: That is true.
CM: But they are very good at stopping livestock. So, they're effective in a completely agrarian society.
AM: Nice.
CM: Not so fucking much in 2017.
JS: We can get avocados over walls, man.
CM: Yes. Right. It's a very different time than Roman Britain. The Roman conquest of Britain was eventful. But, by about like the mid-second century CE, it's kind of like an easy – an uneasy day time to kind of settle in. And we should --
AM: Right. They govern from afar.
CM: Yeah.
AM: They did their thing on the Isles.
CM: Exactly.
AM: Pay taxes. Everyone's cool.
CM: Right. That's exactly it. Like – unlike later European models of Empire, the Roman Empire didn't feel the need to like completely eradicate the culture of the places they conquered, because the economics of the time didn't incentivize it like they did in the Age of Sails.
AM: Yeah.
CM: So, not that it was fun to be conquered by Rome, but like, basically, if you paid your taxes and called Caesar, Caesar, you're able to do your own thing. So, there was like room for genuine cultural sharing relative to other European empires. So, while the Romans are in Britain, this is kind of distinct. They called it Romano-British culture emerges among the ruling classes, where they basically keep, you know, most of their Celtic languages and religion. But they get aqueducts and bath houses and better farming technology. So, yes, they build --
JS: The good stuff.
CM: Yeah.
AM: So, like a win-win.
CM: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Except for like – I don't know – any of the peasants who were killed during the military campaign.
AM: Poor or low classes to be clear.
JS: Not too great.
CM: Right.
AM: Yeah.
CM: Right. But – so, by the late 300s, the Roman Empire is weakening for lots of factors that you probably learned about at some point in European history class. It's complicated. I still don't remember everything that was going on.
JS: I miss AP Euro.
AM: I do. I do.
CM: So, Rome's weakening. And, in 410 CE, direct rule of Roman Britain ends, which basically means they just pulled their army out and like, “Hey, you guys good here? All right. Bye.”
JS: Later.
AM: Got it. Got it.
CM: Right. And, so, begins the Saxon conquest of Britain. They originated in kind of – basically, while the Romans were in Britain.
AM: Yeah.
CM: The like Celtic tribes in Europe were on the decline.
AM: Right.
CM: And Germanic tribes --
AM: Right.
CM: -- were on the rise. And like, you know, they, they drank mead. They worshipped Odin and Thor. And they were pretty militarists.
AM: Cool. Sexy.
JS: All about that.
AM: Got it.
CM: Yeah. So, it's mostly tribes called the Angles and the Saxons. Hence, Anglo-Saxons.
JS: There we go.
AM: Boom.
CM: There's also some Jutes and Frisians in the mix.
JS: Jute just like sounds like a racist term you would use for people who live on Jupiter.
AM: Whoa.
CM: Wow.
JS: I like want to turn that around a little bit.
AM: Nice. Nice.
CM: Wow. Wow. I don't know.
AM: Yeah. Rolls off the tongue a little bit less than Anglo-Saxons.
CM: A little too easily.
AM: Also, the name of one of my favorite Mountain Goats songs, The Anglo-Saxons. It's great.
CM: Yeah. I don't know that song.
JS: We will play it for you later.
CM: Okay. So, yeah, Anglo-Saxons, Jutes, Frisians. To this day, there's still a language spoken in the Netherlands called Frisian, which is the closest modern language to English. And they're pronounced wildly differently, but you can like read a sentence in Frisian.
AM: Wow.
CM: And pretty much get it. All right. So, these guys come over, and they start claiming territory on the British Isles.
AM: Like you do.
CM: So – and, so, this is about like the 400 to 500 CE. And there's a lot of fighting. But, over the next couple centuries, the Saxons – I'll refer to them as the Saxons, because that's what the Celts refer to them as.
AM: Right.
CM: It's, it's these four tribes. But, for ease, we’ll call them the Saxons, because that's what they're called in the Arthur myths. So, they come to dominate what we now think of as England and which, at some point in like the 600 or 700s would have started to be called Angleland, because of the angles. And that’s where we get England.
AM: Yep. Boom.
CM: So, nearly all of the landmass of the like southern and eastern British Isles are now ruled by a Germanic landholding class. And Germanic languages --
AM: I thought you were gonna say landholding company --
CM: Yes.
AM: -- which is just my finance brain coming out.
CM: Right.
AM: To be like, “Oh, like what was the LLC under which they structured this, you know?
CM: Right.
JS: Cool, cool, cool, cool.
CM: Right. Like Odin LLC.
AM: Like based in the Maldives.
CM: Yes, exactly.
AM: Yeah.
CM: So, Germanic languages nearly completely displaced Celtic ones. And, to this day, you can maybe correct me on this having studied Irish.
AM: Sorry. I, I, I must implore you to recognize very brief.
CM: Okay. To my knowledge, pretty much the only Celtic things that we still have in modern English are the words whiskey, breeches, and like a few grammatical quirks.
AM: Pretty, pretty close. There’s some food words that are – that are somewhat close, but like, for example, water is the – is the same across lots of Latin language. Water in Irish is "uisce". And it's like U - I - S - C - E. Like, like it's ridiculously different.
CM: Yeah.
JS: But I'm all about whiskey being the same in all languages. I'm just – I'm so about that.
AM: It's, it's the constant.
JS: It makes my whiskey pong story universal across all languages.
AM: Should you ever hang out with us in person, y'all, buy us a drink after any live show and Julia will tell you her whiskey pond story.
JS: It is a epic story. Very long.
CM: A mythology onto itself.
AM: Of victory, and lost, and redemption. Yeah. It has a whole narrative arc.
CM: Great.
JS: It ends with me passed down on the couch with lo mein next to me.
CM: Good, as all good stories should.
JS: Should be.
CM: And, so, that's why we're drinking mead and whiskey, because --
AM: Yo, you're right.
CM: Because the ---
JS: That was the reason why you guys are drinking mead and whiskey. I'm just drinking mead.
CM: Yeah.
AM: Julia does not drink brown liquors.
JS: Uh-umm. Not anymore.
CM: And then, as this conquest is happening, the Celtic rulers, who aren't killed or absorbed by Germanic cultures, they retreat to more remote locations on the British Isles. A lot of them go west to Cornwall, and Wales, and Ireland. Some go north to Scotland. And that is why, in large part, those regions have always had more of a tie to Celtic culture and why --
AM: And languages.
CM: Yes. And it's like piggybacking a bit on the decolonial movements of the mid-20th century. We're seeing a revival of Celtic languages --
AM: Yeah.
CM: -- in Wales, Ireland, and in Cornwall, et cetera. Interestingly, some of the Celtic ruling class flee south, and they sail to France. And that is why there is a region of Northwestern France that is still called Brittany. And there they still – yep. And they still speak a Celtic language. They are called Breton.
AM: Amaze.
CM: Yeah.
JS: I actually know that. Not that that was connected really, but I knew that there was Brittany and had some sort of British connection.
AM: Amazing.
CM: I'm gonna hit you with another fun fact.
JS: Yes.
AM: Bring it.
CM: It's a little bit antiquated, but that region is sometimes referred to by old-timey Brits as lesser Britain. And that was --
JS: The most British thing ever.
CM: Yeah. But that is why – so, like the name Great Britain is not just like colonial self-aggrandizing. Great Britain is also in contrast to lesser Britain.
AM: Yeah.
JS: The tiny --
AM: It’s farther north and bigger.
CM: Yes, exactly. And, during like the late Middle Ages, they're – like a lot of British kings like claimed holdings in Brittany and other parts of France.
AM: Yeah.
JS: That's so great.
CM: Yeah. So, that was an idea that like this is a part of like an incomplete part of Britain.
AM: Amazing.
Midroll Music
AM: Our sponsor this week is Audible. Audible has an unmatched selection of audiobooks, audio shows, news, comedy, all kinds of stuff. And they're offering Spirits listeners a free 30-day trial and a free book if you sign up at audible.com/spirits.
JS: Now, Amanda, I'm sure you have a book recommendation, but I also have a book recommendation.
AM: Oh, is yours better?
JS: I mean I'm not gonna say it's better. But The Last Jedi did come out this week.
AM: It did.
JS: And Audible has an amazing audio book that’s celebrating the 40th anniversary of Star Wars that came out in October called From a Certain Point of View. And it is amazing.
AM: Have you read it?
JS: It – I’ve read the short story. And like listening to the audiobook is 1000 times better, because they have a full cast reading all of these short stories. Neil Patrick Harris is in it. Jon Hamm is in it for some reason.
AM: Oh, my gosh.
JS: It is worth checking out.
AM: Yeah. And our – I'm not going to say our friend, because, you know, one would aspire to that. But Griffin McElroy noted podcasting king and 30 under 30 Media luminary, a lot of heart.
JS: He's a good friend, Griffin McElroy.
AM: Along with our actual friend Lauren Shippen. Anyway. But he contributed this story to the book. So, I'm really excited to hear that story come to life.
JS: Hey, also, former guest on Spirits podcast, Greg Rucka, also, wrote a short story for that.
AM: Hey.
JS: Hey, Greg Rucka.
AM: Greg Rucka.
JS: What's up, buddy?
AM: We love him from our Wonder Woman episode. I love that idea. I think I'm going to use my free trial to listen to that book, but the one that I have to recommend is Vacation Land by John Hodgman.
JS: Is it also read by John Hodgman?
AM: It is read by John Hodgman.
JS: Excellent.
AM: Which just – I mean I enjoyed hearing his voice in my head as I read the physical copy of the book, but then I switched kind of halfway through to listen to the audiobook. And it is really, really nice to hear him speak in like emotion. He's very kind of deadpan as a – as a comic. But to hear him talk about the really like gorgeous prose and sardonic, you know, really good humor that he has to offer in Vacation Land, which is a kind of memoir. It’s a book about Maine, where his wife's family has vacation for a long time. And, now, he does as well. And it's just a wonderful book. It has a lot to do with like parenting and fatherhood. Obviously neither which, I really understand. But it made me feel as if I did. So, I definitely recommend that.
JS: Yeah. I, I also read the book. I haven't listened to the audiobook yet. Maybe that'll be what I use my free trial for.
AM: Adorable.
JS: But it's --
AM: It's like – it's like when couples put their arms around each other at the wedding to eat the cake.
JS: Okay.
AM: Audiobooks.
JS: Okay. That's cool. So, check out audible. You can go to audible.com/spirits to get a 30-day free trial and a free book.
AM: Enjoy. And thank you so much to Audible for sponsoring the show. Now, let's get back to King Arthur.
CM: Cool. So, then, with that little mini-Celtic diaspora that happened in mind, we can put the Arthur myth in context.
JS: Awesome.
AM: Yeah.
JS: Let's do it up.
CM: Cool. So, unfortunately, the oldest surviving written text that we have about Arthur is Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae. My Latin is terrible. I'm sorry.
JS: This is – this is gonna be really weird, but I've heard of this before.
CM: Yeah. It's like a big deal.
AM: Yeah. I read selection in my, my British History class.
CM: Yeah. It's like the first attempt. So, I mean – in Latin, it means history of the kings of Britain. And its attempt – it's an attempt to like tell the story of all the kings of Britain up until the time that Geoffrey of Monmouth was writing going back centuries. It's – we consider today a pseudo-historical account, because it's like very clear that some of the stories are fanciful. And it's like it's in that phase of writing history, where mythology and folklore were mixed with --
AM: Yeah.
CM: -- verifiable fact very interchangeably and without distinction.
JS: Sounds familiar.
CM: Yeah. Little ,little side story. Geoffrey of Monmouth was a Welsh monk. But I think, for fun, let's just imagine he's a guy named Jeff from Monmouth County, New Jersey.
AM: Great. I love it.
CM: Yes.
JS: Also a monk.
CM: Yeah. Also a monk.
JS: But like on holiday.
CM: Yeah. So, should we – is he from --
AM: From Monmouth. What?
CM: Yeah, exactly. Is he – is he also from like Freehold, or Asbury Park or Red Hook? Where should we decide Jeff is from?
AM: We're from Long Island. We know nothing about New Jersey.
CM: Okay.
AM: It's like contractual.
CM: I'm also from Long Island, but I've had – because I'm a big Bruce Springsteen fan, I've had to learn the geography.
AM: Yeah. Yeah.
JS: Yeah.
CM: So, I'm gonna say he's from Freehold.
AM: Let’s do it.
JS: Cool.
CM: Cool. Okay. So, the history of the kings of Britain is completed around 1138, which means we are way past the Saxon conquest.
AM: We super are.
CM: Yeah. And we're already a couple decades into the Norman Conquest, which is 1066.
AM: 1066. So, that’s all I know.
CM: Right. But it, it cites earlier written histories that we have lost. And it also cites oral traditions going back to the 500 and 600s.
JS: So, Jeff from Freehold did a good job.
CM: He did. He was pretty thorough as far as you could be.
AM: He listened to his mama’s stories, What?
CM: Exactly.
AM: But he didn't – but didn't save her like baby books that had all the dates and years.
JS: No. Fuck that.
CM: That's exactly right. That's exactly right. So, he definitely added some of his own imaginings into the stories, because there's stuff that never appears --
AM: Yeah.
CM: -- in an earlier text. So, we can safely say that, if it's not in Geoffrey of Monmouth's account, that it probably wasn't a prominent feature of the Arthur myth before like 1100.
AM: Nice. Nice to have that like watershed type of it.
CM: Yeah. So, what's actually included in Geoffrey of Monmouth's story of King Arthur, because Arthur is one of the kings that shows up in his History of the Kings of Britain.
JS: You would hope so.
CM: In Jersey Jeff's account --
JS: I can't get over that image now.
AM: I love it. I love it. It’s just like spiky hair.
CM: Yeah.
AM: Yeah.
JS: You’re so done.
AM: So awesome.
CM: So, he succeeds his father --
AM: Devils jersey.
CM: What's that?
AM: A devils jersey.
CM: Yes.
JS: Yeah.
AM: Anyway.
CM: Yeah. Yeah. So, he succeeds his father with Uther Pendragon as the King of Britain. Jeff mentions his sword Excalibur and his magician advisor, Merlin. So, they show up in his account.
JS: Oh, yeah.
AM: Nice. Nice.
CM: But, this account, Arthur is a Romano-British King. And he's a pretty straightforward like warrior hero. He fights bears and witches and other threats to Britain.
JS: There you go. Bears and witches.
CM: Yeah. Those are the main --
AM: Witches and shit.
CM: Those are the main threats.
AM: He fought bears and witches and shit. What?
CM: Right. Right. Do you even – do you even fight bears, bro? He also leads raids against fairy castles to liberate human prisoners there. That's like a very --
JS: That they ate some food. And, now, they're stuck in the fairy castle.
CM: Exactly. Exactly.
AM: Yeah. Yeah.
CM: It's a very --
AM: Classic.
JS: Like you do.
AM: Never, never eat the food people.
JS: Ever.
AM: Come on.
CM: In the fairy realm, you don't. Right. But like it's a very Celtic warrior hero thing --
AM: Yeah.
CM: -- to do. And, yes, he fights the Saxons so successfully that they are not a threat again until after his death. So, this is a major part of the, the Welsh that is Celtic tradition surrounding Arthur. It was he that he was this great hero, who stood against the Saxon invasion to preserve the Celtic identity of the British Isles. That was like his main jam. We can say, prior to like the Jeff of Monmouth --
AM: The changing. Yeah.
CM: -- and an earlier. So, that – which is not really recognizable. Like Arthur as a warrior king is not really what you think of.
AM: Yeah. So, this is sort of the original version off which all the future permutations like let.
CM: That's exactly right. And then – so, after he repels the Saxons and unifies England, that it's important as it like cements Arthur as part of the British National creation myth --
AM: Right.
CM: -- that unified the Isles. Then he goes to build his own empire by establishing claims in Ireland, Iceland, Norway, and Denmark. That probably didn't happen, because we probably would have heard about it in the Norse sagas at some point --
AM: Yeah.
CM: -- if that happened.
AM: The Norse we're like sitting in full library looking at England as they like told stories over campfires. They’re like, “What are you – do you guys even history?”
CM: Yeah, exactly.
JS: Yeah. Arthur fictionally got around.
CM: Yes.
AM: He did. He did.
CM: Yes. And he eventually challenges the emperor of Rome. Like he moved so far south that like Rome starts to [Inaudible 31:25].
AM: Naturally. Naturally.
JS: That's, that's bold, my friend.
CM: Exactly. He's like – he's a badass in this earliest version of the myth. But, while he's fighting Rome, he learns that Mordred, who in this text is just his nephew. Like there's no like --
JS: There's no weird incest in this.
CM: There's no like sorcerer incest or anything like that.
AM: Yeah.
CM: He’s just his nephew, who's kind of a dick. His nephew has married Guinevere and claimed his throne. So, he goes back, kills Mordred, is mortally wounded, and taken to Avalon. So, that part is all there.
AM: All right.
CM: So, our buddy, Jeff, is like very influential in England and also in spreading Arthur like back across the continent. But he's not the only source in the continent, because remember that the Celtic tribes fleeing the Saxons settled in Brittany/Lesser Britain --
AM: Yeah. Yeah
CM: -- in like the 500 or 600s. And they brought with them this story of this great warrior king, who would one day return and restore, you know, Britain to them. Like they were a diaspora culture.
AM: Yeah. Yeah.
CM: And they thought they were going to get their homeland back when Arthur returned.
JS: Some Targaryen shit going on right now.
CM: Exactly,
JS: Cool, cool, cool, cool.
AM: Yeah.
CM: Exactly. So ,French monks, they're both – they're reading Geoffrey of Monmouth and --
JS: They're making some dope ass cheese.
CM: Yes. They’re making some dope cheese. And they're hearing from the Breton people also about this. They've been hearing about Arthur for a while. Just not in a --
AM: Like we get it.
AM: Yeah.
AM: We get it. You’re gonna leave soon. Yeah.
CM: Right. And it's really – it's in France in like the 1200 to 1300s that the Arthur story becomes recognizable to what we have today.
AM: That's so amazing, especially because like those are the people who needed that myth the most.
CM: Right.
AM: Yeah.
CM: So, here are the major changes that like the French monks introduced.
AM: Okay.
CM: They begin to focus on the Knights of the Round Table.
JS: Cool.
CM: Who weren't really a big part of Arthur before.
JS: No, but the world building.
CM: Yes, the world building.
JS: The original author didn't get it. So, the fans are world building.
CM: Exactly.
AM: Yeah.
CM: So, they had the Knights of the Round Table, especially Lancelot and his doomed romance with Guinevere.
JS: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
CM: Arthur’s Queen. We should notice that, if we stare at the name Lancelot for a few seconds --
JS: Means he fucks a lot. Sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
CM: I wasn’t going there. But, yes, maybe. No, probably not. But, yeah, sure. Good. Right. So – but, no, if we stare at Lancelot’s name long enough, really it looks like a pretty French name.
JS: It does.
AM: It does.
CM: And Lancelot is canonically French. Canonically – like he usually comes from Lesser Britain, who, when Arthur like puts out a call to all the knights in Lesser Britain to help him repel the Saxons, Lancelot shows up.
JS: He takes the boat and shows up.
CM: Yep. And also the grail quest gets centered.
AM: Yep.
CM: Because these are very, very, very Catholic monks adding on to a very, very, very not Catholic story.
AM: Gotta just throw the grail in there. Just, just put a little God in the cracks.
CM: Exactly. And Arthur is almost never the one to get the grail if anyone gets the grail. It's usually one of his knights. Sometimes, it's Galahad. Sometimes, it's Lancelot. So – but – so, to tell these stories, which is what the French were really interested in telling, Arthur has to get sidelined, because they are focused on the stuff that's not Arthur. In order to like spend time on the, the Lancelot-Guinevere affair and for that to make sense, Arthur either has to be absent, oblivious, or a weak and ineffectual cuckold. Like --
JS: Nope.
AM: That's not gonna happen in a myth about a warrior king world builder.
CM: But it does.
JS: Unless, you were a French monk talking about it --
CM: Exactly.
JS: -- who doesn’t give a shit about this cool Celtic dude.
CM: And that's --
AM: Because it’s not your dude. Like why, why does it matter?
CM: It's not your dude. So, exactly. So, to recap, once French monks get their hands on Arthur, the story becomes about a French guy who just so happens to be like so suave and good – and good at being a knight. Like he was just so good knight, you guys.
JS: That's so weird. I would have never put those two things together.
CM: Wild, right? He’s so good at being a knight that the Queen just falls in love with him. You know, like he did.
JS: Whoa.
AM: You nailed it.
CM: Right. And, also, him and his friends are so awesome and virtuous that one of them becomes besties with like actual Jesus Christ. So --
AM: Yeah.
JS: For sure.
AM: Yep.
JS: That's not right.
AM: That's not good.
CM: Right. So, that ,my friends, is a self-insert love triangle romantic fanfic --
JS: For sure.
AM: Yes.
CM: -- if I ever heard one. And, honestly, like I've been trying to figure out exactly what the modern equivalent of this reframing would be. And the best I would come up with is like, if the next Die Hard movie was written entirely in a Tumblr thread, and John McClane is in like three scenes, and the rest of the movie is Oscar Isaac seducing his wife. Like that's pretty much if that was the next Die Hard movie.
AM: I'm pretty sure someone on Tumblr has written that already.
CM: Yeah. Right in, because I'm sure you have. So --
JS: Someone find this for me, because I would watch a movie where Oscar Isaac --
CM: Oh, yeah. Yeah.
JS: -- like really honestly just wooing anyone.
CM: Yeah. Like, to be clear, we would all watch that movie, but --
AM: The thing Hollywood hasn't figured out is that fans are, are multitudinous and have a shitload of money.
CM: Yeah.
AM: And like to see things more than one.
CM: Yes. Okay. And, so, I should also note that, during this time of like the French monk’s redoing Arthur --
JS: Sure.
CM: -- we also add the element where Mordred is the illegitimate son of Arthur through incest with his half sister sorceress, Morgause or Morgan Le Fay. In most versions, she uses some kind of magic to conceal her identity and or seduce him. Because this is not a very, very Catholic story, so, we --
AM: So, how – he couldn't have had deviant desires in his heart when this happened.
CM: Right. And we also need to associate pagan magic with femininity in general.
JS: Of course.
CM: And feminine sexuality in particular.
AM: Yes.
CM: And wrap the whole thing up in one bundle of evil and treachery. Yeah.
AM: Which like awesome, awesome conclusion. We love it.
CM: Yeah. Right. So, now, we're gonna come to – we're gonna to hop back across the channel to England. And we're gonna come to Thomas Mallory.
AM: Goodbye Little Britain. I can hardly see it from here.
CM: Exactly. And he publishes Le Morte d'Arthur. God, my French is bad.
JS: The death of Arthur.
CM: Yes.
JS: I can – I can translate that.
CM: Right on. So, he publishes that in 1485. And it’s his attempt to compile all of the French and English stories about Arthur into – and his – and his squad into one like coherent narrative.
AM: Makes sense. Thank you.
CM: Yes. Thank you, Thomas Mallory. And Sir Mallory tends to be the jumping off point or skeleton for nearly all of the later English language retellings of Arthur. So, if there's anything that resembles a canon for Arthur --
AM: This is it.
CM: It's, it's Mallory. But we should bear in mind that it's very, very, very French influence, influence.
JS: Sure.
CM: Like the fact that it has a French title even when published in England. And this is after French was like in style as the – like the court language in England.
JS: Right.
CM: So, that's like – that's very challenging. And one could and I am arguing that, by this point, the Arthur canon is as much French as it is English.
JS: Cool.
AM: Checks out.
CM: Yes. And this is like a big thing in the Arthur “scholarship” that arguably the central national myth of Britain is like actually really French.
AM: Which like that's so fitting, because so much about British identity is --
CM: Stolen.
AM: -- is like crafted and retold in opposition to France.
CM: Yes.
JS: For sure.
AM: [Inaudible 39:14] France. All of English history is just a chronicle of its relationship with France.
JS: Fuck you, France.
AM: Yeah. Yeah.
JS: You basically put the neat point of that.
AM: And so much like English national identity and points of pride, especially English but, but kind of British more broadly, are again in opposition to France, or perceived notions of France, or to like Europe as a continent --
CM: Right.
AM: -- which is refracted through France.
CM: Right.
AM: So, that makes so much sense and I love it.
CM: Right. And it's also – and it's also interesting how much of the modern English language is very, very French.
AM: Oh, yeah.
CM: And, so, yeah, exactly. And like, allegedly, one of Tolkien's reasons for writing Lord of the Rings was he wanted to create a British origin myth that was actually British in origin, because he knew how French Arthur was. And I think that Monty Python, well read enough and like studied enough to know about this undercurrent in the scholarship.
AM: Yeah. Those, those are Oxbridge bros. They knew what they were doing.
CM: Yeah. So, when Graham Chapman, as Arthur, asks the French nights, “What are you doing in England?” He never gets an answer. He never gets an answer. They’re just like, “Oh yeah. These French guys in England. They were not – these are all these French guys.”
JS: They have a castle. They're like, “Why?”
CM: Exactly. Yeah.
JS: I don’t know.
CM: Exactly. And I think – I think they were smart enough to like be doing that on purpose. One last cool detail from Mallory, it includes the detail that Arthur's tomb in Avalon bears the inscription. And here I go with with bad Latin, "Hic jacet Arthurus, Rex quondam, Rexque futurus." Again, excuse me.
JS: Wait, I know it. I know what this is.
CM: Yes. It's here lies Arthur, king once, and king who will be.
JS: The once and future king.
AM: The once and future king.
JS: Yes.
CM: And that's where T.H. White gets the name for his book. And we're gonna come back to White now.
AM: And where you got your podcasting for.
CM: Yes. Though it is not – I should say it's not like explicitly --
JS: Right. Right.
CM: -- Arthurian though. There’s all – you can't do fantasy without having some Arthurian undercurrent
JS: You can't.
AM: Yeah. And, once again, Avalon. Is Avalon real?
CM: Probably not. I mean it might be some tiny island that we've lost track of, but it seems like a mythical place. Almost --
AM: Like healing place? Or like a – like a final retreat type place?
CM: Depending on some versions of the myth, it has like connections to the fairy world. It is like – they think that maybe linguistically it's related to a Celtic word for apple. Like there's something --
JS: I was gonna say like probably – it sounds like it might have like Garden of Eden --
AM: Like a garden type thing. Right.
CM: Yeah. It's got this – it's got this feeling of like an unspoiled connection and like --
AM: Cool.
JS: Yeah.
AM: Everything is eaten.
CM: Yeah. And to a not sinister version of the fairy world. That is, yeah, a place of healing.
AM: Cool. Thank you.
JS: My, my Aunt's Country Club was named Avalon.
CM: It's a very like popular --
JS: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
CM: -- like state/ – yeah.
AM: Oh, yeah.
CM: Yeah. Because that's the idea. Right. You go there, and you heal. And then maybe you come back and save Britain. Okay. So, Mallory's 1485. And – but then, as we like leave the Middle Ages and enter the Renaissance, interest in medieval romances starts to kind of fade. But then it comes back in the 19th century, where there's like a romantic movement in the arts and also with the rise of nationalism. People are interested in their national origin myths.
AM: Also novels.
CM: Yes.
AM: They were some dirty, dirty Victorian boys and girls. Probably girls.
CM: Yes. Yes. And everybody was terrified by novels and bicycles that everyone's gonna be less weird, because of novels and bicycles.
JS: I'm all about that bicycle [Inaudible 42:29].
AM: I mean it checks out. It checks out.
CM: Yeah. And, so, obviously, nationalism gets very ugly in a lot of places. Wagner was a real, real nasty, nasty guy.
JS: Yes.
CM: Loved his dramatic mythology. But, anyway, in 1816, we see the first new edition of Mallory since 1634. So, that's – so that's telling. And then, after World War I, there's a bit of a dip again as Europeans briefly sour on the idea of like Marshall chivalry and the nationalism because like, "Well, that ended in a nasty place."
JS: Yeah. Not the best.
AM: Just for a second though before they forgot.
CM: Yeah.
JS: And then we came back to it real quick.
CM: Real hard.
AM: [Inaudible 43:09].
CM: But – so T.H. White uses that souring on those ideas as his advantage – but to his – to his advantage. So, the Once and Future King is a tetralogy. The last volume is not published until '58, but the first three come out in '38, '39, and '40 respectively.
AM: What a – what a – what a time.
CM: So, T.H White takes Mallory as the basic skeleton for his version, but, in his, Arthur's primary concern is uniting Britain under a just rule of law, which --
AM: Sound like super post World War I.
CM: Yes. And, also, right, that white paint as in stark contrast to the Saxon – remember the Germanic Saxon ethos that he presents as like might makes right. So, where --
AM: Yep. Totalitarian.
CM: -- '38 to '40.
AM: That sounds like Germany.
CM: Yes. Where '38 to '40 --
AM: Yeah.
CM: -- is very easy to see what White is getting at.
AM: Yeah.
CM: So, his Arthur is an explicitly anti-fascist Arthur, which is kind of cool.
AM: That is why historical criticism is the shit.
JS: His Arthur is literally just Churchill. I'm imagining.
CM: In some way. Yeah.
JS: Yeah.
CM: I mean it's almost like as Merlin is – I don’t know. But, yes. Yeah. It's something like that.
JS: Someone is Churchill in the situation.
CM: Yeah.
AM: I'm sure someone has written that essay.
CM: Yeah. And he tries – in White’s defense, he tries not to be hypocrite about it. There's this really weird undertone in White, where like the Irish just need to get over it. It's – which is like it's odd. And you'd be tempted – yeah.
JS: Amanda’s face is like, “Huhhhh.”
CM: Yeah. It's very odd and like you wouldn't have tempted --
AM: Yeah.
CM: -- to just write it off as like old British guy. But he does go out of his way to have Merlin remark very anachronistically about how like the Boer War was unjustified Imperial aggression on the part of England.
AM: Okay. Old English just love talking about the Boer War.
JS: They do, indeed.
CM: But he's like, “Oh, that was super bad,” but like the Irish are just like get over it.
JS: The Irish are just, “Ahhh.”
CM: It's really – it's an odd thing but like he tries. He tries to have like --
AM: Yeah. Yeah.
JS: Yeah.
CM: -- ideologically consistent position --
AM: Yeah.
CM: -- that might makes right is wrong.
AM: I'm also flashing to like the kind of like queer, you know, like anti-gay like, "Oh, just like, you know, get over it. Whatever. It's a phase. Just --
JS: Just live your life.
AM: Yeah.
CM: Yeah. We're about to come back to that in a very big way in like three seconds. So, this is a 20th century now, right? So, we're post Freud. We're post Empson. We're post Chekhov.
JS: You always want to be post Freud.
CM: Yeah. Yes. Thank God. But, so, audiences are like very interested in psychological motivation now and characters that were like psychologically coherent individuals. And its considered --
AM: With motivations.
CM: Yes.
AM: Right. And like – and like consistent actions.
CM: Right. And it's – sorry. Go ahead.
JS: No. I was – I was about to say I was just in my head finishing your sentence. You're like audience was very into gay things. Super into the stuff, right?
AM: [Inaudible 46:03].
CM: Yeah. We're so close.
JS: I know. I know. I'm sorry.
CM: We're so close.
AM: So close. So close.
JS: It's that three seconds and my mom was like --
CM: It's all right.
JS: -- one, two, three go.
CM: No. It's all right. It's more like – All right. So, like 120 seconds.
JS: Got you.
CM: So, it was like it's considered a plus at this time in literature if characters are acting on motivations that they aren't consciously aware of.
AM: Yes.
CM: Right.
JS: Hell, Freud.
CM: And medieval literature not – they like valued very different things. And it doesn't hold up to them. Like I can come back someday and we can do Beowulf and how it's just like fucking bonkers.
JS: Yep
AM: Yeah
JS: Hell yeah.
CM: From a modern – like people are acting on things like, “What? What? Why?”
AM: Yeah. And Chaucer.
CM: Yeah, exactly. Why did you do that?
JS: It doesn't matter.
CM: Right.
AM: Also, the way that I – that Julia helped me enjoy Star Wars for the first time. I was just like these are not people. These are archetypes.
JS: Yes.
AM: Like we're gonna watch an opera and not a movie.
JS: Yes.
AM: And I was like, “Okay. Cool. I got it.”
CM: Yeah. It is an opera. Yeah. That's good. That's good.
JS: Thank you.
CM: I think --
JS: I did my best.
AM: Julia knows how to make me like things.
JS: Yes.
CM: That's really good. I have to use that.
AM: I sat her down. I'm like, “We are going to watch a children's show, but it's about gay aliens and gender role.” And Amanda's like, “Okay. I will watch this now.”
CM: Yeah.
JS: So, that was Steven Universe by the way.
CM: Cool.
AM: Yeah.
CM: So, T.H. White looks back at the Mallory skeleton through this modern psychologically motivated lens. And he realizes that a lot of Lancelot’s behavior only makes sense if Lancelot is in romantic love with Arthur.
JS: Whoa. A little dance here.
AM: Finally, someone's looking out for Amanda.
CM: Exactly. And it is --
JS: Everything coming up, Amanda.
CM: It is never like explicitly stated in the text, but like all – but like it is.
AM: Yeah. Yeah.
CM: The subtext is very very, very strong.
JS: The subtext is basically he wants to kiss him on the mouth.
CM: Yeah.
AM: Yeah.
CM: No. It's very like – and he admired him as, as a boy and was like – and like there's lots of stuff about how like Lancelot never feels like he fits in his society.
JS: That will do it.
AM: The battle of Lancelot.
CM: And like feeling like he's made wrong and all this thing. But he's like --
AM: Yeah.
JS: My friend.
CM: His admiration for Arthur is so intense that he sometimes like feels floored.
AM: An intensity of feelings and closeness that he desired.
JS: Weird.
AM: Now, the first time that someone – that someone like told me that or that I read that online, I was like, “Oh, that explains so much.”
CM: Right. Every novel is gay now
AM: Not only – right. Not interpreting novels and movies, but also like my own like queer childhood really. I didn't have vocabulary or like knowledge or, or the opportunity. No one like asks me to consider those things.
CM: Right.
AM: And, so, it was only like in retrospect at 14, 15, 16 like reading this kind of like criticism and realizing from, you know, the internet and fandom that, “Oh, everything can be gay. I'm like, oh, no, that was why.”
CM: Yeah.
JS: It makes sense.
CM: Yeah.
AM: Yeah.
CM: Right. So yeah, that's like very, very strong in Once and Future King.
AM: Yes.
CM: And most of White – T.H. White’s biographers tend to agree that White was probably gay himself. He never came out. And he came close to marrying several women. We should note.
AM: Haven’t we all, T.H.? Haven’t we all?
CM: Yeah. And we should note that being gay was illegal in the UK until 1967. And T.H. White died from heart failure in 1964, because this portion of the show is gonna be a real fucking bummer by the way.
JS: This is sad.
CM: Yeah. And, also, coming back to Monty Python, I do think they were also well read enough to be aware of this idea, because it's a major part of Spamalot that --
AM: Yes.
CM: -- lets [Inaudible 49:19].
JS: There is a five minute song about how Lancelot is hella gay.
CM: Yeah. But, even in holy grail, there's a lot of the best like throwaway jokes that you will miss if your TV isn't turned up --
AM: Yeah.
CM: -- loud enough, where like – I think like we get – when Galahad rescues – when Lancelot rescues Galahad --
JS: Yeah.
CM: -- from the Castle of Anthrax.
JS: With all the – with all the, the priestesses or --
CM: Yeah.
JS: -- the nuns or whatever.
CM: The spanking and the oral sex.
JS: The spanking and the oral sex.
CM: Yeah. And he's like a little bit of parallel notes – two parallels. I’m like this is – they're about to go – to proceed into the distance and cut away. Again, that’s like, heck, you’re gay. I’m not.
JS: I'm not. Come away.
CM: Yeah. Exactly. And that's why like – and that’s why Arthur has survived for 1500 years like --
JS: Because we keep adapting that story to make it, you know, fit our timeline.
AM: Yeah.
CM: Exactly. He's – to – you know, he gets to be whatever the author wants to say is special and good about Britain. Like whatever they happen to think.
AM: And whenever they need it to be in that moment.
CM: Exactly. Yeah, to quote. Yeah, to paraphrase Christopher Nolan, he's like – he's whatever Britain needs him to be. That's the Arthur --
JS: You have to be the hero that Gotham deserves.
CM: Exactly.
AM: Yeah.
JS: It's exactly right. And like – so, before, you know, before anyone shits on fic writers, like Arthurian canon is a self-insert love triangle fan fiction.
AM: A+.
JS: As the former fic writer and as Amanda is a current fic writer --
AM: Hell yeah.
JS: -- we are totally into that.
AM: We are – we are so here for it. So good. So good.
CM: Yeah.
JS: Yeah, man. Well, thank you so much. You want to plug your stuff?
CM: Yeah. I'm actually like – I mean that's kind of – I do my best. So, that's kind of what we try to do with The Once And Future Nerd. For anyone who's not familiar, it's a – it's a fantasy audio drama. And we take three high school kids from modern day Pennsylvania and put them in a kind of Game of Thrones type high fantasy world. And we've always tried to be kind of like what Cabin in the Woods was.
AM: Sure.
CM: For, for horror – for fantasy, where it's a – it's like a humorous comment on the genre within, hopefully, successful instance of the genre. But, but a big part of of the the criticism that we level as like whose – whose stories aren't getting told in "traditional fantasy," which is very much just reshuffling the mythology of Northern Europe.
AM: Yeah. [Inaudible 51:48] and stuff.
CM: Yeah. And, over the – overtime, there's been a lot of like ways that, you know, indigeneity and racial otherness have gotten baked into the genre in really problematic ways. So, we talk about the way that, you know, indigenous storytelling is, is erased by our shared cultural mythology and you know their --
AM: Yeah. Like answer the most Aryan --
CM: Yes.
AM: -- you know, and other races who made out to be --
JS: How are they just so white?
CM: Yeah.
AM: Yeah. And other races who are meant to be like, you know, enemies of like the "heroes are coded in ways that are, you know, racially other end.” Yeah.
CM: Exactly. Exactly. And, you know, we've got one of the – of the three kids from Pennsylvania, who end up in our world. One of them is, is a young white man, whose, you know, got an alcoholic father, put a lot of toxic masculinity on him. One of them is a – is a black nerd, whose parents were academics and like – and, so, he's got some of that background even if he's had to hide it for years in his rural town. And one of them is a – is a woman who was, was sexually abused when she was younger. And, so, all of them are bringing their lens onto this fantasy world, where all those things are happening. It's not explicitly Arthurian. We do have a night who's very, very, very, very much in love with the kings he served.
JS: Sweet.
CM: Yeah. So, we do try to do that kind of reimagining of myth and trying to – the best we can, put people into it who would have been excluded before.
AM: You're doing good work. And, you know --
JS: Yeah.
CM: Thank you.
AM: -- isn't that like the, the beautiful burden of being alive is like working through your shit alongside other people, you know?
JS: Yeah.
CM: Yeah.
JS: That is true.
CM: Well, you can find The OnceAnd Future Nerd on iTunes or just Google it. We're on Facebook and Twitter and Tumblr. And we have a subreddit. So, pretty much any of the places that you go to find or talk about podcasts, we’ll, we’ll be there.
JS: Go leave them a nice review.
AM: Awesome. Check them out. Say some nice words. Check out their episodes. And remember, listeners --
JS: Stay creepy.
AM: Stay cool.
Outro Music
AM: Spirits was created by Amanda McLoughlin, Julia Schifini, and Eric Schneider with music by Kevin MacLeod and visual design by AllYson Wakeman.
JS: Keep up with all things creepy and cool by following us on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook and Instagram @SpiritsPodcast. We also have all our episodes, collaborations, and guest appearances plus merch on our website spiritspodcast.com.
AM: Come on over to our Patreon page, patreon.com/spiritspodcast, for all kinds of behind the scenes stuff. Throw us as little as $1 and get access to audio extras, recipe cards, director’s commentaries and patron-only live streams.
JS: And, hey, if you like the show, please share this with your friends. That is the best way to help us keep on growing.
AM: Thank you so much for listening, till next time.
Transcriptionist: Rachelle Rose Bacharo
Editor: Krizia Casil