Starry Knights

Jean-Leon Huens' cover for Lloyd Alexander's fantasy novel The Book of Three.

This was the first novel in the 5-part The Chronicles of Prydain, Alexander's adaptation of Welsh mythology and folklore.

The charming gentleman on the horse is The Horned King, the chief henchman and enforcer of the main villain, Arawn.

Robin Hood and a woman knight from the Magazine Enterprises take on the character, soon to be taken to Charlton comics, then DC comics, but then who hasn’t done a version? 

Barry Windsor-Smith “Axus the Great” Pathways to Fantasy #1 (1984) Source (21MP)

The Slaying of Sir Lamorak by N.C. Wyeth

We must picture Arthur to ourselves as a being of light. He and his knights are guardians of what is noble and just…. There was a time when the guardianship of human rights was held only in the pure hands of the priest-kings. Wherever Arthur and his knights appeared, wherever the Round Table was set up, there the sinister forms who hate the light were compelled to withdraw from their presence. Arthur and his sun-radiant knights brought law and order to every place as a reflection of the heavenly ordering of the stars. These traditions remained alive in England up to the time of Queen Elizabeth. From those Knights of the Sword whose strokes had smitten the countries of Europe with the glancing light of sunlike law and order, there came all that still lives on as the life of social rights in Britain. Then the sword was put aside and only the red sash from which the sword had once hung remained as representative of the rights of man.