Character Flaws and Chivalry in The Once and Future King

Character Flaws of Morgause's Sons

In Book II of The Once and Future King, titled "The Queen of Air and Darkness," Morgause raises four boys but is far from a good mother. She fails to give her sons any meaningful sense of right and wrong. She often ignores them for days at a time and beats them when they displease her, treating them more like pets than human beings — to be loved or neglected entirely at her convenience. Despite this shared mistreatment, the four boys turn out very differently from one another.

Gawaine is the oldest and in many ways the most well-adjusted. He becomes a knight in Arthur's court and fights loyally on his behalf. The primary way his troubled upbringing affects him is through his temper: when provoked, Gawaine falls into a berserk rage in which he does things he would ordinarily never do. The next child, Agravaine, is probably the least well-adjusted of the four. He tends to be sadistic and self-centered. When the children are told the tale of the King of Ireland by St. Toirdealbhach — a story in which the king suffers a head wound but later dies defending the man who saved him — Agravaine sees no value in it. He says, "It was silly, it did no good," because he cannot grasp the moral principle the story is meant to convey.

One flaw all four brothers share is contempt rooted in family loyalty. They agree that they must hate Arthur because their mother has told them he is a Pendragon, and they love their grandmother Igraine and, especially, their mother Morgause. This, they say, is the reason "we of Cornwall and Orkney must be against the Kings of England evermore" (Chapter 1, p. 223).

Arthur, at his young age, is also marked by an eagerness for war. As Merlyn warns him: "Unless you can make the world wag better than it does at present, King, your reign will be an endless series of petty battles…" (Chapter 4, p. 241). Meanwhile, the boys act on impulse without reflection whenever they seek to please their mother, as shown when they conspire: "We could take the kitchenmaid. We could make her come." (Chapter 7, p. 193).

Selfish Ambitions of Kings and Queens

The kings and knights in Book II are largely driven by selfish ambition. Merlyn attempts to impress upon Arthur that many people are dying needlessly in battle. He does not want Arthur to follow the pattern of his father — a pattern in which kings and knights do whatever they want while the peasants forced to fight for them are killed. Arthur agrees that this is wrong and vows that he will never allow such suffering to mar what he envisions as a just and peaceful realm: "there will never have been such a thing as a single particle of sorrow on the gay, sweet surface of the dew-glittering world" (Chapter 2, p. 230).

King Lot, too, is driven by selfish ambition in his determination to hunt down Arthur. While on a quest, Kay asks Merlyn who Queen Morgause is and why her husband, King Lot, is fighting Arthur. Merlyn explains that Lot fights because Arthur's ancestors have been conquering Lot's ancestors for generations, and because Uther's assault on Morgause's mother has given Morgause cause to hate Arthur as Uther's son. Merlyn does not regard any of these as legitimate reasons for war.

Queen Guenever is the third figure in the love triangle that dominates the novel's second half. She is beautiful, but she is also jealous, petty, and shallow — qualities that fuel her self-serving behavior. Her insecurity is evident when she begins plucking at the neck of her dress and accuses: "You are standing up for her. You are in love with her, and deceiving me. I thought so all along" (p. 208). Her sons, in turn, are driven by their own ambition to please her: "And then, when we have caught the unicorn which is wanted, we will bring it home in triumph and give it to our mother! We will serve at supper every night!" (Chapter 7, p. 193).

Secrets and Cover-Ups and Their Effects

Guenever handles the secret of her relationship with Lancelot poorly. At one point she is visibly overjoyed to be reunited with Lancelot even in Arthur's presence. She also tries to conceal her aging: as Guenever grows older, she attempts desperately to preserve her youth and beauty, and her increasingly heavy use of makeup becomes a pathetic symbol of her inability to accept change.

Morgause, meanwhile, is pleased that three knights have arrived on her shores — knights who have no idea that England is at war with Orkney. She decides to exploit their ignorance and works to make them fall in love with her, engineering an unsuccessful unicorn hunt with the knights as part of her scheme.

Her sons carry their own secret. They consult St. Toirdealbhach and then attempt to catch a live unicorn to present to their mother as a gift. They nearly succeed, but Agravaine has the unicorn killed in a fit of rage — the boys had been secretly pretending that the virgin used to lure the unicorn was their mother, and Agravaine was furious that the animal had "put its hands" on her. As the narrator observes: "But it seems, in tragedy, that innocence is not enough" (Chapter 14, p. 323).