Legend to Novel: The Flower of Chivalry

Since The Swithen is dedicated to remaining faithful to the actual Arthurian legend without changing anything, for each book I usually write a little piece comparing what’s in the actual legend to what is new and invented for the novel. I didn’t think I would do that for The Flower of Chivalry, however, since there is so little in the real legend about Arthur’s life prior to pulling the sword from the stone. The plot of this novel is, unlike the others, 95% original. However, upon a little thought, it occurred to me that that actually makes it more interesting to detail what has been arranged from the real legend in order to link this book to the future of the series and fill in this extremely large gap in the King Arthur story. So here we go!

What is in the legend
That Arthur goes to Logres as Kay’s squire, and the way in which he ends up pulling the sword is exactly as it was in the legend. Isn’t that interesting? We are always presented with this as a massively momentous event, witnessed by crowds of people, but the legend actually has it as this offhanded, deliberately downplayed moment, showing Arthur’s sincerity and how he is not seeking power—unlike all others who try the sword with the expectation that they might be king—but out of his sincere wish to help another.

All of that represents the only thing in this novel drawn directly from the legend. Everything else in the novel is invented by me. But that doesn’t mean they don’t have ties into the real legend, and we’ll discuss those here.

Nerida, or Lady Ector
Here is another major character who doesn’t receive so much as a name in the legend (after Merlin’s mother, who I named Meylinde). Nerida, as I call her, would play such a major role in Arthur’s development, yet barely rates a sentence in the actual Medieval sources. Literally all we know about her is that she is married to Sir Ector and that she puts her natural son, Kay, aside in order to nurse Arthur herself. Her omission is one of the more egregious sidelining of major female characters in the legend, just because she would play such a major role in Arthur’s life.

In my novel, Nerida is a major force, and one of the primary storylines in the book centers entirely around her. I wanted to show that Arthur has a very healthy childhood with loving parents and a close relationship with his mother, so Nerida plays a very visible role. Then, since I always wanted to show how Arthur develops his feelings about men’s responsibility to respect and protect women, that will eventually evolve into the ideal of chivalry and the Pentacostal Oath that the Knights of the Round Table swear to every year, it make sense that this impulse would first be inspired by his mother.

Sir Ector
Arthur’s adoptive father, who I give the first name Carlyle, does appear very slightly in the legend and joins Arthur’s first stable of knights before fading out of the story prior to the establishment of Camelot. Ector only has one scene in the legend that is telling about his character—and will now be among the first scenes of Book 5—and that is how he sits Arthur down immediately after pulling the sword and demands that the confused child promise both him and Kay high positions in his court—and that he can never fire them, no matter what they do. That detail helped me form Ector’s tough but practical character that appears in the novel, although I also warmed him up quite a bit and ensured that we know that he loves his wife very much. Incidentally, in the writing of this book I found my own parents’ cantankerous but ultimately loving relationship greatly influencing the relationship of the Ectors, although I didn’t intend it to mirror them at all.

Kay
Arthur’s adoptive brother Kay is going to be by his side right up until his dying day, and thus is one of the first characters introduced in this book that will be in the series until the final novel. Kay is one of the few characters in the legend who is given a distinctive character, and is known to be impulsive, cutting and sarcastic. At the same time, he is also a formidable knight and very faithful to Arthur. In The Flower of Chivalry I try to plant the first seeds of Kay’s developing character, and also get across that he might have some very good reasons to be as bitter and conflicted as he is. For one, his mother put him to a midwife so that Arthur could suckle from her breast (although he doesn’t know that). Secondly, he is raised alongside this boy who is just naturally better at everything and more pleasant for everyone to be around than he is—you’ve got to develop some resentment from that! And finally, after years of thinking that he is going to be a knight and Arthur is going to be his squire, he suddenly has to face that Arthur is going to be king, and he will be Arthur’s servant for the rest of his life… because he has no future otherwise. Yeah, we can forgive Kay being a little bitter.

Bedivere, Pedrawd and Lucan
In the legend, Bedivere and Lucan become Knights of the Round Table. Pedrawd is known as their father, although honestly I don’t remember him anywhere. Bedivere is best known as (in Le Morte D’Arthur) being the knight that the dying Arthur asks three times to throw Excalibur back into the lake, making him among Arthur’s longest-serving knights. So they are in the legend, but they are not necessarily around at this time. So having then be the neighbors of the Ectors and having Bedivere be Kay’s best friend, and Pedrawd be Carlyle’s best friend, is what I invented for the novel. Tibby, the wife of Pedrawd, is entirely invented.

Frog
The character of Frog is entirely invented by me and does not appear anywhere in any source. He was created in order to help illustrate Arthur’s developing impulse to help those less fortunate and defend the helpless. I also wanted the story to have a certain wholesome “a boy and his dog” quality… only now it’s “a boy and his frog.”

Moreland
The character of Moreland is also invented, as a way of demonstrating that the Ector’s are still tied into their past and to give Arthur something to try to save them from.

Horta
The character of Horta is entirely invented in order to have a suitably scary villain and to make more specific the threat of the Saxons.

That’s it! In a separate article I will describe what’s going on with all of the other characters that appear in chapters unrelated to the central story. They are there to push forward the other threads of the story that would be happening simultaneously, or introduce characters that will arc back into the story at a later date.