Heroes From Every Age

Today we’re gonna talk about Bors’ vow of chastity, what it entails, how it being broken against his will basically broke him, and why one day I will build a time machine to go punch T.H.White in his pretentious face. I apologize in advance for how long this may get.

1. The Vow of Chastity

It’s well-known by now that at some point after, or even before he was taken in by the Lady of the Lake following his and his brother’s escape from King Claudas, that Bors made a vow to God. This vow was to always remain chaste and pure. 

Why did he make such an oath? No one seems to know for certain. 

There are many ways to interpret the exact details of such an oath but for my own personal version of Bors I stick with the most simple and, to me at least, sensible details. 

Bors was allowed to feel romantic feelings for others and was even allowed to have a romantic relationship, should he have desired one. He could not, however, have a sexual relationship. Marriage was allowed but only in the sense of a chaste marriage. He could kiss someone, hug them, share a bed, but nothing more. 

2. Regarding the effects of it being broken due to magic (or why love magic is creepy and disturbing)

So hopefully everyone is more or less familiar with the tale of how Galahad came to exist. Lancelot being tricked into believing Elaine was Guinevere, stuff happening, and then Gally happened. More or less. 

Well... Lancelot wasn’t the only member of his family to end up with a kid due to...stuff. (Though Bors’ relationship with Elyan, once he met him, was less... *motions to whatever the hell Lancelot and Galahad’s relationship was* that.)

But to get back on topic. 

Bors kept true to his vow until it was broken through no choice of his own when he met the sister of one of his fellow Knights of the Round. Lady Claire and Bors met when he was returning to Camelot from either a quest or a tournament he had attended with Lancelot. Claire, being instantly smitten with Bors, offered to allow him to stay at her home for a while to rest up before continuing the journey back to Camelot. And Bors gratefully accepted the offer since, well, when the choice is between staying indoors or camping out in the wilderness who wouldn’t choose the indoors. So he stayed for a few days to rest and to allow his horse to rest. 

And that’s when Claire started to get...creepy. 

Claire began flirting with Bors, trying to seduce him despite his constant and gentle refusals and reminders that he had a vow of chastity. Angered by his rejection of her, Claire came up with a plan. A very...disgusting plan to be frank. The day Bors was to leave she tricked him into putting on a ring, enchanted (or rather cursed) to make whoever wore it instantly “fall in love with” the person who gave the ring. 

With no will of his own or control of his body, Bors was perfectly obedient to Claire though his mind was very much aware of what was happening.

Once he eventually broke free of the ring and escaped, many Arthurian writers (except for T.H.White but I’ll get to him eventually) wrote about how badly the experience affected Bors. 

For weeks or even months he barely ate more than what was necessary to stay alive, did the same with drinking water, barely slept and if he did sleep he slept only on the floor, and constantly prayed for forgiveness for something entirely outside of his control.

In short, Bors ended up severely traumatized by what Claire did to him.

And now...on to the pretentious asshole that is T.H.White..

3. On why T.H.White is a pretentious asshole who I will punch in the face (and I apologize for my salt here)

As I wrote earlier, most Arthurian scholars, from the time Bors was introduced as a character, were sympathetic to what he had been through. To a degree there was still the whole “being tested by God” deal but yeah. 

HOWEVER!

T.H.White, the author of The Once and Future King, decided he just couldn’t allow a member of Lancelot’s family beyond Galahad (maybe I can’t remember) be sympathetic. Now, for context, T.H.White was very firmly on the side of Gawain in the frankly stupid Gawain vs Lancelot debate. So he decided to make Lancelot and his entire family into complete and utter jackasses out of spite. 

Bors, who had always been said to be a kind, friendly, and gentle man who always carefully rejected women who showed interest in him to not break their hearts, was made into...well... T.H.White made Bors a woman-hating bastard who suffered no ill-effects from what Claire did to him. If he even included the Claire event in the book. I can’t remember honestly and have no desire to reread to find out.

T.H.White took someone who had been put through something so awful and made him an unsympathetic asshole out of spite towards Lancelot and his family. Which of course means I despise him for what he did. Not just because Bors as a character is important to me but because he trivialized something like that into “well he just hates women for no reason!”

Having done further reading and thought about things more it would appear Taliesin is even older than I initially thought. He was raised in the now long-sunken Welsh (though technically Cumbric) kingdom of Cantre’r Gwaelod from infancy and was even it’s king for a while before it was swallowed by the waves. Now that might not mean much until you look in the Mabinogion itself.

In the Third Branch with the Children of Llyr, Cantre’r Gwaelod or more accurately what’s left of it is referred to as the Sinking Lands. The implication here seems to be that it’s already been long enough since it was submerged entirely aside from the highest points of land (for now) that people have already begun to think of it as a myth. The Children of Llyr seems to take place around a hundred years or slightly more before the events of Arthurian legend would begin. 

Now, normally it can take at least a century for a lost city or kingdom to become viewed as a legend, less if it was lost so utterly that pretty much everyone who lived there died with it. Going off of this and the fact that the Third Branch occurs around... the late 4th century AD or so... That means Cantre’r Gwaelod sank around the 2nd-3rd century AD. 

And Taliesin was alive during the Arthurian era and didn’t die (or more accurately didn’t disappear) until after all of those from Camelot had finally died. 

Once again I can only wonder at what exactly he was as he was not human nor was he a demigod. Perhaps it’s more accurate to call him the living incarnation of the Potion of Infinite Knowledge that for all intents and purposes seems to have been a direct link to Akasah, or the Root. Or perhaps through that, he was in essence a god of fate.