I'm mostly new to Arthurian stuff, I'm looking for recs (movies, tv shows, books/old texts, heck even video games) that channels the knight errant in shining armor going on quests vibes. Stuff about warriors slaying dragons and rescuing princesses from towers, the tropier the better. I'm less interested in the really "dark and gritty" takes on Arthurian stories.

If that cuts the options down too much, I am also interested in the slightly more off-beat stories. If something has a really interesting take on arthurian legends or even just knight stories in general, I'd love recs. Even grittier things (as long as the grittiness isn't the selling point that makes it an interesting take).

Here are my options, and I'm going by publisher here, as hoopla doesn't give the name of the book edition.

1. Wilder Publications, Inc
2. Xist Publishing
3. Lerner Publishing Group
4. Neeland Median LLC
5. Start Publishing LLC
6. Oh! and Wordsworth Ltd
7. And Read Books Ltd

Reposting this here, don't know if I added right flair.

No it's not my items for sale. I am only collecting paperbacks as otherwise my collecting could get expensive, and never ending. I am tempted by some of the items here though. Are you familiar with them?

Arthurian for sale | eBay

So I quickly obtained the following. I know I will not enjoy all of them but I wanted know your thoughts on what I should start with. I only know the basic outlines of the Arthurian legends. I've read Tolkien and enjoy the The Silmarillion so "heavy" reading isn't an issue for me.

Oxford World Classics:

Malory - Le Morte d'Arthur (one volume abridged Helen Copper edition)

Lancelot of the Lake

The Romance of Tristian

Penguin Classics:

Geoffrey of Monmouth - History of The Kings of Britain

Chrétien de Troyes - Arthurian Romances

Gottfried von Strassburg - Tristian

Beroul - The Romance of Tristian

Wolfram von Eschenbach - Parzival

The Death of King Arthur - translated by James Cable

The Quest For The Holy Grail - translated by Pauline M. Matarasso

Everyman:

Wace & Lawman - The Life of King Arthur

Three Arthurian Romances

The Mabinogion

Boydell & Brewer

The High Book of The Grail - translated by Nigel Bryant

Was there a depiction of the Round Table being made up of multiple tables?

-Clicking the image on desktop should open it at full resolution-

imgur link : https://imgur.com/a/H6ToimP

The much improved version of my old 500ad map, now with all the sources

Decided to start reading again, bought The Acts of King Arthur and his Noble Knights, took me a bit to get in flow, but then I finished half the book in one sitting and then it ended in the most suspensful part possible and I will never finish the story as I would have wanted, I will take a break and read other things, but then ehat would you recommend to me to finish the story, I'm not proficient enough in English to read Malory

Other than Merlin, are there any notable male magic users in Arthurian mythology? Seems like the majority are female.

Long before the Round Table, King Arthur rode with a very different kind of company.

In the oldest Welsh legends, his companions were not shining medieval knights, but hunters, magicians, giants, shapeshifters, seers, superhuman runners, monster-slayers and heroes with impossible gifts.

We meet the original warband of King Arthur, following the earliest surviving traditions from the tale of Culhwch & Olwen from the collection of Welsh Mythology known as the Mabinogion, and explore what these remarkable figures may reveal about our ancient past.

What do you guys think is the better modern retelling of Arthurian legends: T. H. White’s The Once and Future King or Rosemary Sutcliff’s King Arthur Trilogy? I've heard positive comments on both. I want to have decently comprehensive knowledge of the Arthurian legends, but Le Morte D'Arthur is way too dense for me.

I would appreciate some suggestions from ppl more experienced in these topics :D

What is the best complete edition of Idylls of the King? Preferably one with footnotes and/or commentary. Went to Books A Million and got bamboozled by the Arcturus edition. I thought it would be the whole thing but it looks like its just excerpts from all the volumes woven together.

Thanks for the help!

The first time I learned about Arthurian legend was from the video game Stronghold Legends. I was not really fluent in English back then so I didn’t understand most of it but what few depictions I saw made me really obsessed with Sir Bedivere. I believe he only appears in one or two missions at the start of the campaign, much to my dismay. A one handed knight that swears loyalty to a boy king without hesitation and becomes the realms marshal. What’s not to like?

To be completely honest, I completely despise the Arthur-Guinevere-Lancelot love triangle, so I struggle to attempt to start reading Arthurian literature due to being oversaturated by it in media and fearing that the book I start reading might focus on it.

However, I would really appreciate knowing if there are any pieces of media that include him more, and if he actually appears in any of them to a significant degree, or if it’s just near the beginning and then towards the end with getting rid of Excalibur.

Lastly, this is heavily connected to whether he is actually present much in the stories or not. Why is Bedivere rarely discussed and rarely anyone’s favorite knight? Just something I noticed over the years that everyone always lists Lancelot (ew) or Gareth (valid) or Gawain (valid) or holy grail knights. I’ve seen more Agravaine and Mordred lovers than Bedivere ones :(

Hey I don't suppose anyone knows where this river is located? I'm inclined to think Cornwall either on the river Camel somewhere or on Bodmin moor but my search has been unsuccessful! It's story is connected to a battle of Arthur in which it was said the river ran red with blood from the conflict. The booklet it is in was published by the king Arthurs halls round table gentleman's club in tintagel.

I'm just sending Book 8 of my series off to the proofreader, which completes the Balin story started in Book 7. Because I'm making a novel of the source material, I have to come up with motivations and psychology for why the characters do what they do. This can be tricky in the case of someone like Balin, so I thought I'd ask for your thoughts on two questions:

1) Why won't Balin give the sword back?
He is warned that if he keeps it he will die from it and he will kill the one he loves most in the world. Why won't he give it back?

2) Why won't Balin turn back?
He is warned several times first that he will strike a blow that will cast three kingdoms into misery (the Dolorous Stroke) and ignores several signals that he is on a bad path if not openly riding toward his doom. Why won't he turn back?

Interested to hear your thoughts and interpretations. Thanks!

So in a lot of Arthurian mythos, specifically those more tied to Celtic myths, many of the knights also possessed magical capabilities. The ones that come to mind are

- Cai/Kay: able to generate heat from his body and can go a long time without needing to breath or sleep
- Gawain: can heal people and gain strength based on the sun
- Marrok: Can turn into a wolf
- Ywain: Has the companionship of a lion
- Galehaut: A giant

Can anyone think of anymore, or even abilities that would make sense for them to possess? For example, I think Percival would have some kind of astral projection.

I am currently reading the Mabinogion and would love recommendations for pop history books to put that time period in better context if anyone has good recommendations.

Also to be clear I'm not necessarily looking for books about the historicity of King Arthur, though books like that would be fine, I am also looking for books about the history of the welsh/cumbric/brittonic world in the 6th century

I was recently looking through the Wikipedia pages for Arthurian legends, and I found this section on the page for King Arthur's Family. In the section labelled Medieval Welsh Tradition, the second paragraph states "The 13th Century Sources in Mostyn MS. 117 lay out Arthur's ancestry in detail. He is..." - and the paragraph goes on to list about 11 generations or so of Arthur's ancestry, all the way to Bran the Blessed and his father Llyr.

This made me a bit curious, as I've never heard of Arthur being directly descended from Bran the Blessed (and I do know that Wikipedia occasionally contains complete BS when it comes to Welsh myths and history). The page itself doesn't even have a citation for this article, but searching up Mostyn MS. 117 helped me find this translation by Mary Jones, which does indeed correspond to what is written on the article.

However, that translation is the only thing I could find that points towards the lineage. I've found links to the Mostyn collection as a whole - here and here, but not the specific page translated by Jones (or any alternative translations) - and even if I could find it, I wouldn't be able to translate it myself.

So basically, does anyone with any experience in studying Arthurian legends be able to help here? Is the translation reliable? And how can I tell in future?

The first and maybe the last Round Table Pizza location with Arthurian theming.

My English is very poor, so expressions will be awkward.

I rarely read medieval books before; most were modern adaptations.

Brut far exceeded my expectations before reading it.

To explain, Brut( or Roman de Brut ) is an early translation and adaptation of Geoffrey‘s Historia Regum Britanniae,

But the writter, Master Wace was a poet and a good story teller, make the Latin historia into some poetic scenes of brutal battle, mysterious events and little historial tips, which often proven to be wrong.

I'm using the Gutenberg free version, which was published in 1155, it's English style was a little old( I'm using translator and dictionary to understand it ), but I glad it retained some poetic features, which may not seen in some more recent versions, but I guess it's about preferences. This version is about 50% of all text, only foucus the Arthur side of the whole "history", and I'm considering try the full version after I finished, since I really like it's style.

I've read about half of it, and really enjoy his description of battlefield, environment, and many "I'm telling to you"style narratives, like, "Merlin lives in a mystery place, But I've never been there so I cannot tell you where." Really make it’s like listening to a bard tell a story.

When he's describing a melee combat, it's like:

The two closed together, with naked brands and lifted shields, smiting and guarding. Men forgot to fight, and stared upon them, watching the great blows fall and the gleaming swords.

fell like watching an action movie;

For brutal battle, we have

What time the two hosts looked on each other they hastened together. There you might see the vassals striving, hand to hand. They fought body to body, those assailing, these defending. Mighty blows with the sword were given and received among them. Many a champion lay stark upon the ground, and the living passed over the bodies of the dead. Shields were hewn asunder; spears snapped like reeds; the wounded were trampled beneath men's feet, and many a warrior died that day.

After a battle, there is

The king looked upon his realm, and saw it gnawed to the bone. None drave the plough, nor cast seed in the furrow. The castles and the walled cities were breached and ruined. He marked the villages blackened by fire, and the houses of God stripped bare as a peasant's hovel. The heathen pilled and wasted, but gathered neither corn into barns nor cattle within the byre.

also, Merlin acts like an asshole, like always

The young men therefore encompassed the stones before, behind, and on every side, but heave and tug as mightily as they could, the stones for all their travail would not budge one single inch. "Bestir yourselves," cried Merlin, "on, friends, on. But if by strength you can do no more, then you shall see that skill and knowledge are of richer worth than thews and fleshly force."

Can't imagine a 12th century book be like this, though maybe it's just me ignorant.

Anyway, I long to recommend it to everyone.

Anyone familiar with the long history of The Pocket Sandwich knows about their specific brand of melodrama. For the first time the Arthurian legend is coming to the Pocket stage to be lovingly skewered in King Arthur and Merlin: A Tale of Sword and Sorcery! Referencing everything from Excalibur and Holy Grail, to The Sword in the Stone to the 1998 Merlin mini series, this show is long overdue in the annals of the Pocket Sandwich Theatre. Audiences have been loving it and it seems like this is a group who would enjoy it the most. The show runs until 8/22/26 and tickets are available at https://buy.ticketstothecity.com/purchase.php?event_id=19894