Gawain Project: The Sword of Kings 5-11

"Here, encompassed by Roman ramparts of earth and wood, the fate of Uther's kingdom was to be decided."

- Bernard Cornwell, The Winter King (1995)

Although I like spreading my posts a little, I am posting the rest of The Sword of Kings in one big instalment instead of the two I had originally planned. I think it is best: the comic is short and has no cliffhangers, and I do have it all ready. So today you get no less than seven pages - some sketchier than others, I should add :).

Constructive criticism is, as always, very welcome. I am thinking of drawing, inking and rendering this episode first by way of test, because I am not quite happy with the way my first inked TDH page looks, and since SoK is a short story, I can afford to experiment a little with it. But it would be great if I could get the layout right first.

In other news: I hope not to keep you waiting too long for the continuation of the story. I have been going over my general plot pages and noticed a) how much has changed since I typed them out a few months ago and b) the story is shaping up and making sense. The beginning needs some sorting out and I need to find my Schwung to get it going - but I think I am getting there (finally).

On to the comic, then!


What went before
Queen Ygraine has disappeared and Uther is desperate to get her back. He searches the land frantically but can find no trace of his wife. Having heard that Merlin currently resides in the forest of Cit Coit Caledon, he travels there to beg the wizard for help. He is met by the Giant Herdsman instead...

Ah, wonky perspective. It has become my trademark, wouldn't you say? ;P

Hope you enjoyed it a little, even if it was not much more than a bridge episode. Thank you very much for reading!

♥

Gawain Project: The Sword of Kings 1-4

"Jetzt, wo der gute Utepandragûn seinen Frieden hat... Er ist tapfer herumgeirrt, aber ich glaube kaum, daß er mich finden wollte. Das beruhte zwar auf Gegenseitigkeit, und doch, etwas weniger einig hätten wir uns diesmal schon sein dürfen."

- Adolf Muschg, Der rote Ritter (1993)

The comic is not dead. Whereas some future episodes are already getting a very definite shape, there is still a lot of sorting-out to do on others. One small step has been taken: a short bridge episode is ready. After three rewritings (you won't believe that when you see the result), I am glad that I can finally show you the eleven-page draft of The Sword of Kings. It is short, but not insignificant in the larger scheme of things.

You know the drill: constructive criticism is most welcome. I am very grateful for it and will certainly take it into account for the final version.

A few words about the current draft:
As per usual, I am posting layouts that I have been drawn on the train. They are by no means finished. The SoK drafts have been drawn with a ballpoint pen in a tiny notebook - less than half the size of the notebooks I used for TDH. That wasn't planned. I had been drafting in my usual notebooks, but I got stuck twice on the same plot element that I could not iron out. In the end, I simply didn't take my comic notebooks and pens with me anymore. But whaddayaknow, one day during a train ride I suddenly figured out how to go about it. The only notebook I had on me was tiny, but I could not possibly wait until I got home to write everything down.

The greatest drawback of the small notebook is that my handwriting is necessarily tiny, and therefore mostly illegible. So to make the layouts readable, I had to letter them digitally. The result looks very odd: you get sketchy drawings combined with neat computer lettering. I'm aware of how incongruent that looks, but I didn't have much of a choice :).

Now, on to the comic!


What went before
In The Darkest Hour, you could read how Uther Pendragon, High King of Britain, fell in love with another man's wife. He makes war on Gorlois of Cornwall and, with the help of the sorcerer Merlin, introduces himself into the castle where Lady Ygraine resides with her two daughters, Morgause and Morgana. Gorlois dies in battle and Ygraine cannot escape marrying Uther, whom she loathes. She bears the High King a son, but the child is given to Merlin as payment for his past services. Morgause and Morgana are given in marriage to King Lot and King Uriens, whose support Uther needs in his military efforts against the raiding Saxons. Then, finally, Ygraine finds someone who will help her take revenge: the mysterious sorcerer Klingsor. And so one night Uther wakes up to find his Queen gone...
(Need to re-read? You can do so here.)

This is how the story continues.

Tomorrow...

The Arthurian Review, Issue 5

A few months ago, I received a package in the mail. It came all the way from the States and contained a 104-year-old book – a 1906 reprint of an Edwardian bestseller. My friend Karina's SO had spotted it at a book mall, “sandwiched between Cajun Cookery and How to Clean Most Everything”, as she tells me, and rescued it. I am very grateful that he did so, because I did not know either the book or its author, and as it turns out, Uther & Igraine holds a few surprises.

Uther & Igraine (1903)

Warwick Deeping

It had been a while since I had last read a baroque Victorian novel, and it seems that I had all but forgotten what it is like. Reading the first few pages of Deeping’s prose was a little like receiving a blow to the head. I was dizzy with the overwrought imagery. Here is a taste:

“A wind cried restlessly amid the trees, gusty at intervals, but tuning its mood to a desolate and constant moan. There was an expression of despair on the face of the west. The woods were full of a vague woe, and of troubled breathing. The trees seemed to sway to one another, to fling strange words with a tossing of hair, and outstretched hands. The furze in the valley – swept and harrowed – undulated like a green lagoon.”

Mr Deeping (1877-1950), it is clear, likes his Aesthetes. He harnesses the worst affectations and most artificial phrasing of Wilde and Swinburne to write a romance novel. He adds positively lethal doses of alliteration and superfluous adjectives to the mix. In fact, his writing reminds me painfully of my own prose style :P. To do myself justice, I don’t insist on using “panier” when I could write “basket”, or “potage” instead of “soup”. Deeping does. As soon as I got used to it, I actually found his pedantry funny and went along with it.

Uther & Igraine is pure historical romance. When I say “historical”, I mean it in the widest possible sense. The story is set in what looks like post-Roman Britain, but the author adds all sorts of elements that evoke chivalry and courtly love and do not match the timeframe at all. Everything in this novel serves the romance. Characterisation, historicity and background: they are all (mostly cardboard) props to decorate the stage on which the Passionate and True Love of Uther and Igraine is shown. But if you can accept the novel for what it is, it is quite an enjoyable read, and much less silly than many of its modern counterparts.

“The true love of Uther and Igraine”? You heard it right. In Mists of Avalon, Uther is young and a hottie, and Igraine falls in love with him because her husband Gorlois is old and considerably less hot. Deeping’s scenario is somewhat different. In 1903, an adulterous love affair could not possibly have a happy ending, and happy endings are what romance novels are all about. The solution to this problem is to turn the source legend on its head. In Uther & Igraine, it is Gorlois who calls upon Merlin to trick Igraine into marrying him when he finds that she is not responsive to his advances. (This despite the fact that he has such romantic notions of wooing, including stalking his beloved, manhandling her, and showing her a lot of crucified Saxons.) If Igraine rebuffs Gorlois, it is not only because he is vain, cruel and insensitive, but also because, just before, she has fallen in love with the mysterious Pelleas. That intensely honourable, valiant and (quite maddeningly) devout knight turns out to be none other than Prince Uther. Igraine and Pelleas part, due to an unfortunate misunderstanding, and do not meet again until after Gorlois has perpetrated his dastardly deed. In the service of the happy ending, the Duke of Cornwall eventually pays for his awful treatment of the heroine by kicking the bucket (forcefully) and leaving Uther free to marry his widow with a clear conscience.

My little summary might lead you to assume that Igraine spends the entire novel playing the part of damsel in distress. If it is true that she has to suffer violence, trickery and death threats, it should nevertheless be mentioned that she is also a brave girl with a sharp tongue who is not content to let other people decide her fate. She fires arrows at Saxons, lies and tricks, jousts if she has to – no, she is no wilting lily. Of course she becomes “as a child” when Pelleas is near, and she goes insane at one point, as Victorian conventions demand, but in general she is rather more emancipated than her sisters in the pseudo-feminist Arthurian novels of the 1990s. Take that, Rosalind Miles!

Should you feel like reading this cute, quirky little romance, I am happy to report that it is widely available in digital form on the Internet.

On the Gawain-o-meter:

Zero! There is no trace of Gawain, which is not surprising seeing as Igraine is very young and has no children yet. If there is neither a Morgause nor an Anna, there is not going to be a Gawain either. I have no idea how Deeping envisions Arthur’s family tree.

To prove how much fun I had reading this book, I doodled three characters while on the train. Please note that Morgan is not Morgan le Fay – she is Morgan la Blanche, who does not seem to have a counterpart in the source legend (or not that I can see).