#bedwyr

Arthur was killed by a giant cat.* 

Arthur killed the cat.

Arthur didn’t fight the cat. Kay did.

Kay and Bedivere use salmon as taxis. 

Lucan is half giant, half lion. (This Lucan, Lucano in the original Italian, is evil and not related to Bedivere). 

King Arthur raided the land of the dead.

The human knight Caradoc Briefbras has three half siblings: a dog, a horse, and a pig.

A large portion of Arthur’s troops was killed a while before Badon by his nephew’s attack ravens in self-defense. Arthur and said nephew were playing chess at the time and neither did much to stop it. [Edit: before Badon, not Camlann, which has apparently already happened despite Arthur and Mordred being alive]

Merlin retired peacefully and went to live in the countryside with his also-magic sister Ganieda, Taliesin, and another of their friends. [Edited]

Wherever Arthur walks, plants die. They don’t grow back for years.

Arthur had a spunky (half?) brother who died in battle after making a mysterious oath.

Dagonet is more or less able to run the kingdom when Arthur is gone. His biggest error is overspending on mercenaries.

Guinevere has an evil almost identical twin half-sister.

Hector beat up all the best knights except for Galahad while possessed by a demon.

Gawain plays tennis.

Gawain has used a chessboard as a weapon.

Near the start of his reign, Arthur left Lot in charge of the kingdom and went on a quest with a sassy parrot.

Gawain or Galahad succeeded Arthur as king.** 

*Whether or not this is canon anywhere is a somewhat meta matter. André de Coutance complains that the story that Chapalu/Cath Palug killed King Arthur and conquered England is a slanderous lie while also implying it's widely circulated. He's saying that it's canon in other places and also that it's wrong. As far as I know, no other text mentions a tradition where the cat kills the king.

Putting my fav details under a cut

One being that Bedwyr is his own character, and I feel like it borders on erasure to force him into a role he was never implied to have held. People assembled the pieces together that he was A.) handsome, B.) one of Arthur's closest companions, and just mashed the two together with the thought that "...and so he has to betray Arthur, right?" It feels very remiss towards his character, treating him as though he's so hollow or lacking that he could be replaced with something else without much substance being lost.

Plus, a cursory reading of Culhwch and Olwen will tell you that he was hella gay for Cai, okay.

Second is the idea implicit in such descriptions that post-Galfridian Arthuriana is the definitive version of the Arthurian narrative, that Welsh material is not worth engaging with on its own merits except to support post-Galfridian material.

Nobody's really saying Lance should be out here helping Arthur hunt Twrch Trwyth, for instance, but when it comes to Bedwyr, he's suddenly the "Welsh Lancelot"? Huh?

Also, if that's the case, isn't that a little backwards? Shouldn't we be calling Lancelot the "French Bedwyr" instead?

Third - and this one is most subjective - I kind of feel like if you absolutely had to go this route of adultery, there are other candidates. Bedwyr often gets pinged as Arthur's best friend, and not without reason, but in Culhwch Cai is his right-hand man who spearheads some of the tasks of Culhwch's quest. There's also Gwenhwyfar's praise of Cai in The Dialogue of Melwas and Gwenhwyfar to take into account. I've also seen Melwas and Medrawt floated as possible alternatives, but ehhhh, like. Why does Gwen need to cheat for everything to fall apart, necessarily?

I guess I'm also peeved by the idea that adultery is considered such a necessary ingredient to the psychological conflict at the heart of Camlan that we can't imagine Camlan without it... When it was the blow to Gwenhwyfar's dignity, coupled with the insults exchanged between Medrawt and Arthur, that resulted in Camlan.

There's also the historical context to consider. 536 AD being "the worst year to be alive" based on climate change from a volcanic eruption resulting in an apocalyptic fog, preventing crops from growing and shrouding the sun in an eerie mist for half a year. One can imagine the lawlessness and violence that abounded.

It doesn't escape my notice that the date roughly coincides with the dates for Camlan. The Annales Cambriae also contend that plague broke out in Britain and Ireland after Camlan, which would make sense: illness often follows famine.

I strongly feel that with a little imagination, those elements could be made just as psychologically compelling as an affair. Part of the reason I'm even writing this VN is to try and explore those avenues.

I love them dearly, and I wish modern media did too, in the right way.

I'm greatly saddened by the miscarachterization that dawned on them (and several other characters that either got villainfied or erased: Morgan, Mordred, Llacheu ecc) in later centuries, and wish modern authors could understand the roots of the ancient myth without necessarily twisting it.

Still gotta see a version where these two are actually done justice and are written as they should be (a pair, the interpretation of it is then up to the author.)

I want to see their bond, and I WANT to see the original Triad (Arthur, Cai and Bedwyr) display an actual closeness, they were said to be his closest friends, where did that go?

The arrival or romances erased the epic roots in it, these characters went to wars and probably were born into war periods, they were tempered, they fought death and gods and awful beasts, usually against things beyond human, but they were just.

Yet these great epic heroes got reduced to shadows of themselves, boorish and easy to defeat. It's saddening. It gives me pain. They were beloved by the people who first wrote them and read them, respected, and their roles were intact and important.

Hi anon! You know, I looked at this question and just fuckin DIED with GLEE! Ehdhdjdhdjd I LOVE SHIT LIKE THIS!!!!! SHDJDJDH

First off, Arthur is pretty big. He's less a king and more of a warlord, but there's still a lot of cultural reverence for him in Welsh things. Seriously, Henry VII - a notable faux-Welshman - named his firstborn son Arthur purely because he was going to be Prince of Wales. Also, in Culhwch and Olwen his retinue has TWO Welsh GODS in it - Manawydan and Pryderi (my beloveds.) Idk what they're doing in it but I am inordinately pleased that they are there.

Also, Uther Pendragon / Uther Ben. Taliesin wrote a poem about him which is super fun. (Also, oddly enough Taliesin himself HAS been linked into Arthurian legends on multiple occasions. He's also another Arthur-type in that he's still regarded as tooling the line between mythical and real.)

Gwenhwyfar is also important even though she takes a back seat. Speculation is rife about whether she had a quest/myth about her (sorta like Culhwch and Olwen) and also her name means 'white phantom!' BRING IT BACK. I, for one, think she definitely did have a quest attributed to her in which Arthur had to do something to get her hand in marriage but idk WHAT.

Also, she's a GIANT!!!!!!!! EJDJDKDKDKD

Gwalchmai is also Super Important. There's speculation as to whether he was a mythical character who got implanted into the mythos or if he was always Atthur's nephew. Basically, he's a giant and he kills giants. Seriously, he's CONSTANTLY killing giants in the mythos. Plus he is called 'Gwalchmai Golden / Silver-tongued' in poetry too. In the Mabinogion, he's very often the one to soothe discord between the other knights so he's very diplomatic too.

Cai and Bedwyr, obviously! They come as a pair. Do Not Separate. Now, Cai is sometimes also seen to be a giant but his dad is Cynyr Ceinfarfog who was a real king. He ruled Dyfed and was the dad of Saint Non and, therefore, grandad to SAINT DAVID. (Wales' patron saint!) So Cai, like Arthur, has a saintly lineage. Before the French Romances shifted his character into the more recognisable Kay, Arthur's grumpy seneschal, Cai was a warrior of great renown. And literally superhuman. Like, nobody would received from.a blow from his sword, he could brave fire and water like nobody else, he has the ability to go nine nights and days without sleep or the need to breathe. He's a ledge.

Now, Bedwyr! Again he's a great warrior and ONE-ARMED. He's called Bedwyr Bedrydant (Bedwyr of the Perfect Sinew) and he's HOT SHIT. Seriously, he's like the most beautiful Knight in Arthur's court. The 10th-century poem 'pa gur' says that assailants 'fell by the hundred / before Bedwyr of the Perfect sinew ... fighting with Garwlwyd/ furious with sword and shield.' (Also, BTW Garwlwyd is possibly a werewolf.)

They have to put up with SO MUCH SHIT from Arthur's escapades it's ridiculous. They had to convince Arthur not to intervene in a King abducting a princess and carrying her back to his court, ffs. Give them a HOLIDAY. WITH SALMON TAXIS.

Now, I would say Merlin BUT he is added later into the mythology. He isn't there straight off. But he is Welsh. He's FUN. He was apparently based on Myrddin Wyllt. He went mad, and lived in a forest. His bestie was a king who died.

Now, I also think Owain, and Geraint on account of their having stories written about them but they're two kings who got folded into the mythos a bit later. Urien (Owain's dad) is another example.

Also, Macsen Wledig too. But again writers melded him in later. And I mean this in the sense that he and Arthur share similarities in how they're perceived in Welsh culture.

Sunrise