Arthur, son of Uther Pendragon, King of England, and Igraine, widow of the Duke of Tintagel, had been brought up by Sir Ector, and named by Uther as his successor just before the King’s death. Arthur then proved himself as the rightful king by drawing a sword from an anvil, and was crowned king as a result.
By that time, Arthur’s kingdom was in disarray, with various barons ruling their own fiefdoms and waging war against one another. Malory’s Morte Darthur gives a long and detailed account of these early battles, with King Arthur gaining support in his bid to control his kingdom. As far as I can tell, none has been painted, and even illustrations are scant and of limited quality. To spare you a long written summary, I here focus on two salient events: how Arthur came to obtain his sword Excalibur, and his marriage to Queen Guinevere.
After he had joined forces with King Ban and King Bors, Arthur fought against the combined forces of eleven kings. This ended on the advice of Merlin, when those eleven kings were facing threats to their own lands from invading Saracens. Arthur then engaged in combat with King Pellinore who got the better of him, and the King’s sword (the weapon he had drawn from the anvil) broke in two. Merlin saved Arthur by putting Pellinore into a deep sleep.
Merlin took Arthur to to a hermitage for his wounds to be healed. Once he had recovered, the pair rode to a beautiful lake, where there was an arm covered in white holding a sword up from the middle of the water. They met a lady who offered Arthur the sword in return for a future gift. Arthur and Merlin dismounted, boarded a boat, and crossed the lake to take the sword and its scabbard from the arm. Once they had them, the arm sank below the water.
Walter Crane’s illustration from 1911 shows the moment that King Arthur Asks the Lady of the Lake for the Sword Excalibur. Behind them, in the middle of the lake, the disembodied arm holds the sword up ready.
N. C. Wyeth’s illustration from 1922 accompanies the text “And when they came to the sword that the hand held, King Arthur took it up.” As three swans fly low behind them, Arthur and Merlin approach the hand, with the sword still in its scabbard.
Later Merlin told Arthur that it was the scabbard that was the more important, for as long as Arthur had the scabbard on him, he would lose no blood, no matter how severe his wounds.
The sword was named Excalibur, but there is room for confusion over the naming of Arthur’s swords, with some referring to both the sword in the anvil and that given him from the lake as Excalibur. This is aided by a single, probably erroneous, mention of the first sword as Excalibur in Malory’s account, but that name is only generally applied to the sword Arthur had obtained from the lake.
Before Arthur obtained Excalibur, King Lot’s wife had stayed with him in Caerleon. Although Arthur wasn’t aware at that time, she was his half-sister through their mother Igraine. While she was with him, Arthur fell in love with her, and slept with her, as a result of which she became pregnant with her son Mordred. Later, Merlin warned Arthur that the person who would destroy him and his kingdom had been born that May-day. The king therefore commanded that all the chidlren born on May-day of noble parentage were to be sent to him. They were put into a ship that was wrecked on the shore, where most were lost, except the young Mordred, who was taken into care and raised until he was brought to court at the age of fourteen.
Malory then tells the story of Sir Balin, the Knight with Two Swords, who inadvertently killed his own brother Sir Balan, and himself died in that combat.
King Arthur was coming under increasing pressure from his barons to marry, and had fallen in love with Guinevere, daughter of King Leodegranz of Camelard. Although Merlin warned him privately that she wasn’t a good choice, as she would fall in love with Sir Lancelot, the King pressed ahead and sought the approval of her father. He promised to give Arthur the Round Table that he had been given by King Uther, together with a hundred knights, leaving Arthur to find another fifty to fill the seats at the Round Table. Guinevere was married to Arthur and crowned Queen.
The redoubtable late Pre-Raphaelite Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale chose Guinevere as one of her Famous Women, in her illustrated book of 1919.
John Collier’s richly floral painting of Queen Guinevere’s Maying from 1900 follows Tennyson’s 1859 reworking of Malory, and shows Guinevere radiant during a May Day procession reminiscent of Flora in classical myth.
More controversial is Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale’s Uninvited Guest from 1906. Although this is normally read as referring to marriages of convenience, contracted for wealth and status rather than for love, some hold that it shows the marriage of Guinevere and Arthur. The guest referred to is the winged figure of Cupid, in the right foreground with his quiver of arrows, who could be a reference to the future adulterous relationship between Lancelot and Guinevere.
Reference
Dorsey Armstrong (translator and editor) & Sir Thomas Malory (2009) Morte Darthur, a new modern English translation, Parlor Press. ISBN 978 1 60235 103 5. (A superb translation based on the Winchester manuscript.)
The Eclectic Light Company 