TFA Arthurian Themes Thread

Just a quick side tangent, I really like how lines in Alfred Lord Tennysons poem about Sir Galahad (the only knight deemed worthy enough to find the grail because of his purity), really could also describe an ideal Jedi. Eg:

"My good blade carves the casques of men,
My tough lance thrusteth sure,
My strength is as the strength of ten,
Because my heart is pure.


I never felt the kiss of love,
Nor maiden's hand in mine.”

 

this is Luke to me, wounded in his exile. and Anakin's lightsaber is the Spear of Longinus.

but i come heavily influenced by Wolfram to this discussion.

 

yes, the guardian of the grail suffered for breaking his oath. but while this absolutely could be taken as literally (the wife business), it could also be that Luke broke his "oath" in some other way (by failing the new Jedi order, for example). we don't have enough information to draw conclusions as to the possible parallels except in the concept of being wounded.

the spear of Longinus is both cursed and blessed (can be wielded to destroy or heal). if you think about the journey of the lightsaber, it didn't serve Luke well in his fight with Vader (he lost it along with his hand). it also had the blood of innocents all over it from Anakin.

that said, the piercing with the spear was said to have converted Longinus himself and "proved" pseudepigraphically (for lack of a better term here) the dual mortality and divinity of Christ.

The Fisher King is allegedly wounded by this mystical weapon (and again, i can come up with all manner of let's play pretend reasons how this can apply to Luke), but the point is in the story of the Fisher King, it's the same spear that wounded him which can heal him.

so here's Luke and here's Rey, and she's handing him the cause of all his misery by which he also may be healed, but only by submitting to another kind of suffering.

that makes Rey Parzifal in this instance, which i don't know if that really tracks, but i don't think necessarily that everything here need be a one-to-one correlation.

 

that's all i got ~ hahaha

it's been years since i read La Morte or Parzifal and these are the things that stuck with me that feel applicable to the story beyond what's already been mentioned.

i would add, though, that while a lot of people say "this is Rey's story", and while i agree that it's Rey's agency that will determine the outcome of it, this is really tracking for me as Luke's story too. and by extension, their relationship to Ben, whose fate may prove to be in the balance between them.

 

now that you say that, the story of Parzifal might hold more interest for you if we're to apply it to Rey.

in the story Parzifal fights another knight who turns out to be his brother (I believe a "Saracen", who would have been considered unholy and villainous). Parzifal then converts this brother (from the dark to the light). The brother is also described as being of mixed race and literally marked both black and white on his skin. everyone lives happily ever after, i believe. hahaha

 

So I just found out the masculine name of Guinevere is Fionnvarr or Finn for short. Make of that what you will.

 

So Pablo tweeted this, which I thought was interesting:

 

Great thread

 

So I thought I'd have a look into how trees factored into the Arthurian myths after the tree pics surfaced from the lastest VIII set. This led me to some of the old, mostly Welsh, poems about Merlin from the Black Book of Carmarthen, and a few other places. I'll summarize some of the more interesting, perhaps less well known, snippets I came across:

*Merlin had a twin sister.

*Merlin was supposed the son of the devil. Despite Merlin's assurances that he worked on behalf of God, some people were still suspicious because he was the son of the devil, so many still didn't trust him, including the Lady of the Lake, Nimue.

*His sister was a Queen, who had a son.

*After a battle, Merlin was horrified at the slaughter of his people and the death of his sisters son, which he felt resonsible for. So Merlin hid in the forest, while the Kings men looked for him, where he went mad and lived as a 'wild man of the forrest'. This was when he fully developed the gift of prochecy. Isolated from his peers, with only a small pig for company, Merlin talked to the pig as if he was human.

*The Lady of the Lake had first met Merlin, when she was only twelve. She was amazed by the power of Merlin. She promised to love him if Merlin would teach her all his crafts. Years later, Merlin met Niniane again. Through subterfuge, Niniane seduced and used her magic to confine Merlin in a enchanted tower in which Merlin was powerless to leave, while the Lady could visit and leave the tower at will.

She used Merlin's love to get him to teach her his magic. In return, for the lessons in magic, Niniane offered to return his love. Some stories say this was a subterfuge to gain power, others say they both had actual feelings for each other, and Merlin was a willing participant in his incarceration. Merlin had also built her home at Lake of Diana, within the forest of Broceliande. With his power, he hid her domain from mortal eyes, so that anyone who travelled by would only see the lake instead of her home.

*The Lady of the Lake was said to have trapped Merlin in either a cave, a rock, a crystal or a tree. Apparenty Merlin's gift of procephy meant he knew this would happen, but he accepted the truth in his foresight. In some versions, Merlin willingly turned himself into a tree, so someone new and young could have his magical powers.


Anyway, if Luke is likened to Merlin in the ST, this certainly provides some interesting food for thoughts.

 

Substitute "puffin" for "pig" and we can take this show on the road!

Verrry interesting.

So the Lady of the Lake = Nimue = Niniane = ...Rey? Oh dear oh dear.

Tree imagery is ubiquitous, with most major world mythologies having some kind of tree story. We could have a ton of fun digging into all that!


[On a side note, if you like early-in-the-genre fantasy books that incorporate a few of these lesser-known myths, I recommend Mary Stewart's Merlin trilogy (The Crystal Cave, The Hollow Hills, and The Last Enchantment).]

 

i always did like that pig.

 

I reckon Rey is more analogous to King Arthur myself. I do wonder if the more ambiguous female Arthurian characters, such as Nimue (or Vivanne, Nimue, Niniane, or whatever other names she is reffered to by), or Morgan Le Fay, Thiton ect are more relevant to Reys mystery mother.

Maybe we should create a tree mythology thread? I love mythology stuff. I only looked at the tree in this context, due to the prevelance of other Arthurian themes in TFA.

Love a good fantasy book, so thanks for those recconmendations. I have to confess, the really old, like 10th century stuff and earlier, is quite facinating, but difficult to understand.

Totally snorted coffee all over my tablet!

You just wait, Luke's SW Space Pig will be, like, the next biggest thing, lol. In fact, I'm going to name the space pig Wilson, after the soccar ball in Castaway.

If Hux can have Millicent, then surely we need some balance with a good guys beastie. Voila Willson, lol!

 

Personally, I like Luke as Lancelot than an Arthur or Merlin figure. The one who was brought in as the great saviour, but who ultimately proved to be fallible? And with that logic, should Rey be Luke's daughter, it would make her Galahad (Lancelot's son) who is the one who eventually finds the 'Grail' and brought peace and balance.

That said: The same could have been said of Anakin/Luke ...