Now wielding Excalibur, Arthur defeated his opponent, badly wounding him in the process. With Accolon at his mercy, Arthur demanded an explanation of how he got Excalibur and its scabbard. On hearing this, Arthur was genuinely shocked. He had loved and trusted his elder sister completely and to learn that she hated him hurt deeply. Despite his shock and grief, Arthur would have spared Accolon, but he died four days later from his wounds.
While Accolon and Arthur had been locked in mortal combat, Morgan herself had been busy at Camelot. As her husband, King Urien, lay sleeping, she had crept up to him with a knife, intending to murder him. Her son, Owain arrived by chance in time to stop her carrying out the fatal blow. Owain would have killed his mother, but she claimed she had been afflicted by a sudden bout of madness, and, believing her, he spared her life.
Morgan had truly loved Accolon. Devastated by his death and the failure of her plot, she sought vengeance. On receiving his body, she went to Guinevere, who at this stage was unaware of the fight between Arthur and Accolon, to request leave from the court, claiming she had received urgent news and needed to travel home to deal with it. Guinevere reluctantly gave consent and, at dawn the next morning, Morgan left on horseback with a retinue of her own knights.
After riding hard all day and all night they reached the abbey where Arthur was recuperating. She was met by the nuns who took her to his room and offered to wake him. Now, leave me with him! Arthur was lying fast asleep on a bed in the room, and in his right hand he tightly gripped Excalibur. Morgan thought about trying to steal the sword, but she knew if he should wake he would surely kill her now. She decided she would not take the chance, and seeing the empty scabbard close by, hid it under her cloak and rode off with her retinue following.
When Arthur awoke, he immediately discovered the scabbard was missing. Calling the nuns to him, he questioned them about what had happened while he slept. They told him about the visit of his sister and how she had ordered them out of the room leaving her alone with him.
On hearing this, Arthur ordered Sir Ontzlake to prepare their horses and they set off after her. Riding hard and fast, they eventually caught sight of her and her knights in the distance. Looking back, Morgan saw it was Arthur and realised she could not escape.
Despite having a company of knights, she knew they were no match for Arthur and Sir Ontzlake. Nevertheless, she was determined he would not get the scabbard back. Riding to a nearby lake, she threw it far into the water where the weight of the gold and jewels that embellished it quickly took it to the bottom. Looking to escape Arthur, Morgan and her knights galloped into a valley, where the sides were littered with great blocks of stone. With her magic arts, she turned herself and her knights into blocks of stone.
Just as she had done this, into the valley rode King Arthur and Sir Ontzlake, who looked around the valley but could only see blocks of stone. Unable to find a trace of her, Arthur searched for the scabbard hoping she had dropped it for them to find. Finding no trace, he returned to the Abbey. As soon he had gone, Morgan turned her knights and herself back into human form and rode back to her home country. Fearing her brother may seek revenge for her part in his attempted assassination and theft of the scabbard, she made strong her castles and town walls, for now she was an enemy of the Arthurian state.
They accused her of treason and demanded that she be burnt at the stake. She sent one of her girl servants to Camelot bearing him a most handsome cloak as a peace gift, begging his forgiveness. It was studded with precious gems and embroidered with threads of gold and silver, and Arthur was greatly impressed.
This was done and the cloak burst into flames turning the girl to ashes. Arthur was furious at the treachery of his sister and terribly hurt and bewildered that she would have killed him in such an awful fashion.
She immersed herself into further study of the arts of sorcery, eventually becoming so powerful and adept that people spoke of her as a goddess. At every opportunity, Morgan sought to capture and imprison any of the Knights of the Round Table who came her way, especially Lancelot who she captured several times.
She had an unrequited love for him, but her intention in capturing him was also to hurt Guinevere and Arthur. Morgan le Fay Source. During one period of confinement, Lancelot painted a mural depicting his life on the walls of his prison, which clearly included his love affair with Guinevere. Arthur had heard nothing of Morgan for years and believed his sister to be dead.
Seemingly forgetting and forgiving past wrongs, he was overjoyed to discover she was still alive and invited her to return to Camelot with him, but she told him,. When I finally leave this place I will go to the Isle of Avalon where the women live who know all the magic in the world.
Guiding him around her castle, she took great pains to show him the murals that Lancelot had painted. Although it is not until the Vulgate Cycle that she is portrayed as outwardly evil, Morgan's decline actually starts with the works of Chretien de Troyes.
In Geoffrey, she was independent and powerful, but in Chretien all the power she still possesses is tied to either her brother or her lover. She is no longer an independent woman.
This is only her second appearance in the Arthurian legends, and already her character has been changed by the misogyny of the medieval world. In fact, given her character in these texts so far, the largest reason for Morgan's decline in goodness is most likely a misogynistic one. Thelma Fenster writes in Arthurian Women: A Casebook that "while the hero proper transcends and yet respects the norms of the patriarchy, the counter-hero violates them in some way.
For the male Arthurian counter-hero, such violation usually entails wrongful force; for the female, usually powers of magic," This statement explains a lot about the reasons behind Morgan's decline. Since her first appearance in the Arthurian literature, she has wielded powers of magic.
Medieval authors who read the earlier stories would have seen that detail and thought it automatically made her a malicious character, ignoring the fact that she does not do anyone any harm in her first several appearances. These authors already thought that no female character could ever be as strong as a male character without using some kind of supernatural or demonic force Fenster 68 and of course, when a woman does use this kind of force, this automatically makes her a counter-hero.
Maureen Fries argues that she is a counter-hero even in the Vita Merlini 2 , and points out that Morgan's decline "coincides with the virulent growth of women-hatred in both religious and lay society," 4 , which proves that the strongly misogynistic views of medieval male authors had a significant effect on her later characterization.
Fenster also points out that the female counter-hero in Arthurian literature is never a maiden 68 , which goes along with Morgan's recent characterization as a "lustful" woman.
Clearly then, her use of magic and her sexual freedom set her apart from the other female characters in Arthurian literature, and cause medieval authors to portray her in a negative way. Many of Morgan's supposedly malicious actions could be portrayed as less evil when examined with a modern feminist eye.
One of these is the Valley of No Return episode. In the Vulgate Cycle, after leaving Camelot, Morgan places an enchantment on a valley somewhere in the woods of Britain so that no knight who enters it, if he has ever been unfaithful to his lady, can ever leave Lacy The Valley is described thus:.
The valley was broad and deep and surrounded on all sides by broad, high hills. It was covered with thick green grass, and right in the middle, a lovely, clear spring welled up; the metaled highway ran straight from one end of the valley to the way out at the other. The day when the duke rode down into the valley, there were as many as two hundred fifty three knights imprisoned there.
The valley was enclosed and sealed in an extraordinary way, in that the walls were as sheer as air. As soon as a knight would come along, he would be let in without a challenge; but as soon as he was inside, he was powerless to turn back and could not even find the spot where he had entered There were many knights who were very much at ease there, and there were also those who suffered greatly.
Whoever could bring his lover in with him, kept her, or kept his squire if he had one. Still, there had already been many deaths, some the outcome of great sorrow, some from long imprisonment, some from another affliction.
The ladies in the valley, to be freed, did not need to wait for one of their kind to come along who had never been unfaithful in love; indeed, they stayed as long as they liked and could go away at will The prison was much more pleasant than generally thought, for there was no lack of food and drink, and there were outdoor sports and backgammon and chess; there were dances and carols all day long and the delights of fiddles and harps and other instruments.
This description is puzzling, because it is so contradictory. On the one hand, there is a lovely spring and enjoyable company and activities, and, as stated, many knights were "very much at ease there. The passage states that they were "powerless to turn back," and there had "been many deaths.
Is it a positive place, or a negative one? At first, upon reading that it is a prison, it is generally assumed that it would be an unpleasant place. However, knights can live there in comfort and spend time with their ladies, and as the passage describes, there is no lack of entertainment. In fact, many of them actually enjoy it there. Morgan provides everything they need to live, and it is an easy, relaxed life, a life of comfort.
In fact, as Larrington says, "Morgan's knowledge of magic allows her to emerge in some narratives as articulating the desires and frustrations of courtly ladies which they cannot express for themselves, coercing men into acting in ways that appear contrary to chivalric norms and that are often detrimental to their quest for honor," 51 and although Morgan can be very vengeful and her punishments to false lovers can be especially cruel, it is not entirely a bad situation Larrington Overall, the Valley comes across as a positive place.
Through her magic, Morgan creates a safe place where lovers can live together and not have to worry about being separated by war or anything else. The fact that many of the knights as well as the ladies enjoyed themselves in the Valley also shows that it was not an entirely negative place at all. Furthermore, the fact that she is vengeful against false lovers especially suggests that she is speaking out for the other women in the tales, a character trait which would be admirable in modern society.
All this evidence suggests that it is the misogyny of medieval male authors which paints Morgan as a more maleficent character therefore, and not any actions of Morgan herself. After leaving behind the Valley of No Return, Morgan retreats to a castle in the woods, and it is here where she performs most of her infamous acts of war against the Round Table knights.
Most of these are abductions of Sir Lancelot. In the Lancelot section of the Vulgate Cycle, she kidnaps him several times over the course of a few years, always using magic to trick or imprison him Lacy Lancelot seems to be her favorite target because of his connection to Guinevere. On page , Lacy explains that it was Lancelot who "liberated" the knights from the Valley of False Lovers, and that Morgan correctly guessed that he was in love with Queen Guinevere.
Since Guinevere is the one who separated her from Guiomar, Morgan decided to attack Guinevere by attacking Lancelot.
She tries sorcery, trickery, and simple persuasion in her attempts to reveal Lancelot and Guinevere's love to King Arthur. While he was there, Lancelot painted his life story on the walls of the cell, including the tale of his love for Guinevere. Morgan explains the entire story to them, and also explains that "I've hated [Sir Lancelot] mortally since I knew it, and I'll hate him as long as I live, for he couldn't cause me greater grief than by bringing shame on such a noble man as my brother and by loving his wife and lying with her," Throughout the Vulgate cycle, there is no knight she kidnaps as often as she kidnaps Lancelot, and all of this is in an effort to reveal his love affair.
Therefore, even her most infamous acts tie back to her hatred of the queen, and most of her antagonism of Camelot occurs because of this loathing. There is one incident in which her hatred seems to be directed more at King Arthur himself than at Guinevere: the battle between Arthur and Accolon. Morgan steals Excalibur and gives it to her lover, Accolon, and convinces him to fight in a battle to the death against a knight whose death would put Accolon on the throne. This knight was King Arthur, but Accolon did not know this at the time of the battle.
They fought, King Arthur was victorious, and right before his death Accolon explained the whole plot to the king in great detail.
Arthur's response, after learning of his sister's treachery, was to swear vengeance on Morgan le Fay 62 , and to send Accolon's body to her. He informs her that he has recovered Excalibur and its sheath and is aware that she stole it from him," Malory This incident is the most vengeful we have seen Morgan act against Arthur directly, but it is also the most vengeful we have seen Arthur act against Morgan. Maureen Fries lists several accounts of treason Morgan commits in this particular story 12 , and these are made all the worse by the fact that she is the sister of the king.
Betrayal of an oath in medieval times, especially against your own kin, was one of the worst crimes a person could commit. Clearly, Morgan's character takes a severe and shocking turn toward evil in this tale, one which makes no sense given the previous mentions of her. This is most likely because by the time Malory wrote le Morte d'Arthur , the most prevalent image of Morgan le Fay was that of an evil sorceress, and the image of the benevolent healer had largely been forgotten.
Despite Morgan's villainy in the battle of Arthur and Accolon, Malory portrays her fairly well in later stories, and she becomes a slightly more sympathetic character once more. For example, after Arthur's mortal wounding at the Battle of Camlan, Morgan arrives in a small boat full of ladies and ferries him to Avalon for healing, placing his head on her lap and saying "My dear brother, you have stayed too long: I fear that the wound on your head is already cold," Malory In the Vulgate Cycle, it is Morgan who heals him at the end as well: "the bark landed near King Arthur, and the ladies emerged and went to the king.
Among them was Morgan the Enchantress, King Arthur's sister, who went to the king with all the ladies she led and entreated him to come on board the bark," Lacy vol. This kindness contrasts with her treachery and deceit of earlier chapters, and shows that even after all the antagonism and villainy, she is still willing to heal her brother when he needs her help. The fact that she returns once more to the good healer and leader of Avalon that she was in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Vita Merlini suggests that she is not an entirely evil character at all, but is instead a helpful one once more.
As Larrington says, "though she will later be forced to retreat into the castles she holds in the vast forests of the Arthurian realm, Morgan's bond with Arthur is never undone and she always presides over his passing from this world," Larrington also points out on page 30 that medieval brother-sister relationships were based on loyalty and protection, but that there is also an element of sibling rivalry. This is very true: there is always at least some sibling rivalry between any siblings.
This could explain Morgan's antagonism toward Arthur, and his toward her, especially when the Battle of Camlan scene is taken into effect. It is certainly true that Morgan attacks Arthur in several ways throughout the stories, but it is also true that in multiple versions she is the one who appears at the end to take him to Avalon. What is more, she seems to have a good relationship with him when she is not attacking him. Arthur is not the one she hates the most at Camelot.
Here, then, is further proof that Morgan le Fay is not a malicious character, despite what some writers may have thought. Even in tales where she is the villain, she is still capable of love, and still willing to heal her brother Arthur after all is said and done. Morgan and Guinevere. Most of Morgan's villainy stems from her hatred of Queen Guinevere, and the desire to bring shame to Camelot which that hatred causes.
However, it is very likely that there is a more specific cause, one particular event, which sparked Morgan's hate. The relationship between Arthur's sister and his Queen was strained from the very beginning, but, as with all strained relationships, some event must occur in order to create that "last straw.
She came to Guyamor and said that he was as good as dead if the king learned of the affair, and with pleas and threats she succeeded in making him give up the young woman. In fact, he did so easily, since he was hardly so in love with her that he could not get by without her," Lacy vol. This is the moment when Guinevere acts the most antagonistic towards Morgan.
What is more, the reader does not get much insight into Guinevere's motives in this instance. Lacy explains that the queen "would gladly have kept Morgan chaste lest the king be shamed, and Guyamor as well lest the king punish him, for he would have hated him for such behavior, had he learned of it," but this excerpt hardly explains anything.
Morgan is not married at this point in the tale, so her affair with Guyamor is not an adulterous one. Furthermore, no explanation is given for why Guinevere thought King Arthur would have hated Guiomar if he had learned of their love. Since Morgan is the King's sister in this version of the story, we can assume that her premarital sex with one of Arthur's knights could be the source of the shame Guinevere was afraid of, but this isn't specified.
We can also assume that the strong blood ties and family bonds present in medieval society Larrington 31 would have made a union between King Arthur's sister and Queen Guinevere's nephew, as Guyamor is in this version of the tale, a social taboo.
However, this is all speculation. The fact remains that Guinevere pleaded with and even threatened her nephew, Sir Guyamor, until he agreed to break up with Morgan le Fay, and it was this act that caused Morgan to hate the queen for the rest of her life. This hatred of Queen Guinevere directly results in most of Morgan's acts of antagonism against the Round Table Knights, Lancelot in particular. In fact, Lancelot is the one of King Arthur's knights who is captured most frequently by Morgan le Fay, and all of these kidnappings occur after the incident at the Valley of No Return.
It was during this incident that she correctly guessed he was having an affair with the queen Lacy vol. Due to her pre-existing hatred of Queen Guinevere, Morgan decided to antagonize Lancelot as a way of attacking the queen from afar.
After this point in the tales, she captures him countless times, usually through magic and trickery, and uses many different methods to get him to confess his love.
This occurs in more than just the Vulgate Cycle; in le Morte d'Arthur, "the Tale of Sir Launcelot", Morgan casts a sleeping spell on Guinevere's lover when she finds him in the forest, and imprisons him in her castle Malory Malory even insinuates that Morgan does this purely to spite Guinevere by adding this detail: "Sir Launcelot, I know that Queen Gwynevere loves you, and you her. But now you are my prisoner, and you will have to choose: either to take one of us for your paramour or to die miserably in this cell," By specifying that she knows about his love for the queen, and by listing that before she says anything else, Morgan is hinting that this is her main reason for capturing Launcelot: his love for Queen Guinevere.
However, despite this fact, Morgan is characterized as a more reasonable woman in this story, easier to deal with than in the previous stories. For example, later in this tale, when Sir Tristram asks for shelter at Morgan's castle, not knowing whose castle it is, she captures him and tells him "Sir, tell me your name and I will release you," He tells her the truth: that he is Sir Tristram of Lyonesse, and even though he is one of the knights she was targeting, she keeps her word and releases him.
This action shows her to be reasonable rather than blinded by vengeance. And in fact, she proves herself to be very crafty, and devises a way to reveal Guinevere and Lancelot's love to the world while still keeping her word to Sir Tristram.
To do this, she gives Tristram a specific shield to bear at an upcoming tournament: "the device showed three figures: a king and a queen, and, above them, standing with one foot on the head of each, a knight," Needless to say, the king and queen represent Arthur and Guinevere, and the knight is Sir Lancelot.
The image on the shield is meant to expose Lancelot and Guinevere's love to the court at Camelot. In this way, Morgan can still achieve her goal, and she does not have to break her word. Furthermore, she heals Sir Alexander later in the tale as well Malory , showing that she is not completely a malicious character in this story.
When she targets Sir Lancelot, she is driven mostly by vengeance and her hatred of Guinevere, but when she targets other knights, although she is still motivated by vengeance and hatred, they do not cloud her judgment or cause her to do anything rash.
Here, even though she is portrayed negatively, she is less of an evil sorceress and more of a villain who can still be reasoned with, and who still has a moral compass and somewhat of a concept of honor.
Another instance of Morgan acting helpful toward Round Table knights, where she has previously been targeting and antagonizing them, occurs in the Vulgate Cycle, volume 5. Morgan shelters them in her castle and heals the three of them Lacy While exploring her castle one day, Sir Mordred discovers a room in which Sir Lancelot had been kept prisoner sometime previously. As mentioned before, Lancelot had decorated the walls of this room while he had been imprisoned there, and anyone who could understand what the pictures meant would easily be able to decipher that Lancelot was having an affair with Queen Guinevere.
Morgan uses this room to attempt to prove Lancelot and Guinevere's guilt to the other knights. After she explains the meaning behind the images, she tells Sir Gawain and his brothers, "when you arrive at court, you'll have to tell all your adventures, and there you'll tell everything you saw and heard in this room," By making Gawain, Gaherit, and Mordred promise to tell the court at Camelot the story they had learned, Morgan could assure herself that Arthur would finally learn of the affair between one of his most beloved knights and his queen.
In these tales, it seems as though Morgan's overarching goal throughout the entire story is to reveal the love affair to the king, which is not necessarily an evil goal.
It certainly has catastrophic consequences, but that is more Lancelot's fault than Morgan's. Morgan's design is just to inform her brother of an injustice which is occurring in his household; an injustice she cares passionately about because it involves the woman who wronged her many years before.
One of Morgan's most well-known acts of vengeance against Guinevere is the tale told in the epic poem, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Although Morgan is not mentioned in the poem until the very end, the poet reveals at the end that Morgan is behind the entire thing Tolkien She enchanted Sir Bertilak de Hautdesert and sent him to Camelot for the purpose of causing uproar in the court and scaring the queen.
Once this is revealed, several points become clearer than before: namely, all the unexplainable supernatural occurrences which happen throughout the poem. First and foremost, the Green Knight is described as:. The mightiest on middle-earth in measure of height,. From his gorge to his girdle so great and so square,. And his loins and his limbs so long and so huge,.
That half a troll on Earth I trow he was. Tolkien This description makes it clear that he is a giant, much larger than a human man should be expected to be. The reason for his enormous size is not explained until the reader understands that Morgan le Fay is involved. Furthermore, aside from the Green Knight himself, there are several phenomena which cannot be fully explained with science, and therefore must be explained with magic.
For example, on page 42 in Tolkien's translation of the poem, Sir Gawain comes upon a castle, which seems to appear in the middle of the woods, right as he was praying for shelter. In fact, this castle "shimmered and shone through the shining oaks," 42 a phenomenon which is very supernatural indeed. This too, just like the Green Knight's unusual size and coloring, is a strange detail which is not fully explained. Only after Morgan's influence is revealed do the occurrences make sense.
It is assumed that the readers already know the character of Morgan le Fay, and therefore know that she is a sorceress capable of enormous magical feats. Clearly, Morgan is important to the story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, even though she is only mentioned by name a few times, and only at the end of the poem. None of the previous plot points would be possible without her magic.
What is more, Morgan designed the whole plot and put forth so much effort in making it happen, all in yet another attempt to shame Camelot and make Guinevere uncomfortable. Her hatred of the queen goes beyond just attacks on Lancelot and Arthur, it includes the entirety of Arthur's court as well, and it seems there is no extent to which she is not willing to go to get her vengeance. Although Morgan is not mentioned by name until the end of the poem, she does appear earlier in the story, when Gawain first arrives at Sir Bertilak's castle.
The physical description of her in this section, contrasted with that of Lady Bertilak, provides a very vivid image:. She was fairer in face, in her flesh and her skin. Her proportions, her complexion, and her port than all others.
And more lovely than Guinevere to Gawain she looked Leading her by the hand another lady was there. Who was older than she, indeed ancient she seemed,.
And held in high honor by all men about her. It is never explained exactly why they don't get along, but some researchers have presented their own ideas. According to the Encyclopedia of Witches and Witchcraft , "Morgan, invariably portrayed as evil, plotted against Arthur to steal his sword, Excalibur, or otherwise bring him down" According to Henry Pyle, author of The Story of King Arthur and His Knights , Morgan had a vendetta with Arthur: "After Queen Morgana Le Fay had come to the Island of Avalon as aforetold, she brooded a great deal over the afront which she deemed King Arthur had placed upon her house; and the more she brooded upon it the more big it became in her mind.
Wherefore, at last it seemed to her that she could have no pleasure in life unless she could punish King Arthur for that which he had done. Yea, she would have been glad to see him down at her feet because of the great anger that she felt against him" Morgan needs to be in control of people and situations. In some of the legends, Morgan is said to have been a mistress of Merlin. She uses and manipulates him by way of seduction in order to gain knowledge of his spells.
Hence the name Morgaine may be read as an anagram, "Gain More. For instance, in courtship of Guinevere and Lancelot, Morgan uses her powers to destroy the ties in the court of Arthur to ruin his reputation and pride: "The Kingdom now enjoyed a long, glorious, peace with Arthur maintaining justice and the knights helping those in distress.
Lancelot was the bravest and most courageous. But he loved Arthur's wife, Guinevere, and he was her own favourite among the knights" Ashe The best way for Morgan to hurt Arthur and cause him the most pain is to manipulate this situation between Guinevere and Lancelot, both of whom have the highest part of Arthur's love and pride.
Morgan "distressed Camelot with hints about Lancelot's motives, and the intrigue, now serious, between him and Guinevere" Ashe She slanders Lancelot and Guinevere's name in Camelot, and the rest of England, without any remorse or regret: "At Lancelot's knighting, Arthur forgets to gird on his sword; it is Guinevere who does this, thus creating a formal feudal bond between them which is soon reinforced by that of love.
And Lancelot and Guinevere become lovers on the night Arthur sleeps with the enchantress Camille. Arthur then repudiates Guinevere in favour of the false Guinevere, a magical creation of Morgan Le Fay, thus further weakening his claim to her loyalty" Barber
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