Ned Stark, ASoIaF and Gawain...

[sigune]

...Obvious Ned Stark love is obvious -_-. My love for House Stark is partly related to my love for Gawain - more about that below the cut, for people who can't be, or don't mind being, spoiled for ASoIaF.

State of the AsoIaF: am 140 pages into A Storm of Swords: Part 2. So if you haven't got that far yet, and are afraid of spoilers, don't go behind the cut...



Argh. I'm still reeling from all the shocks House Stark has been receiving. Am I naïve to hope there will be an end to it at some point - and by 'an end', I mean: that House Stark will recover? This is just - AAARGHH! The Starks don't deserve what they are getting at the hands of all those heartless, unscrupulous, conniving, cheating, backstabbing, EVIL Lannisters, Greyjoys, Freys and Boltons ;_;.

Cat and Robb have just been killed. I'd seen it coming, actually, so the fact of what happened at the Twins didn't really surprise me, but it's still a shock D:. Seriously, if there are any more Stark deaths and unspeakable blows of fortune I'm going to stop reading. It's just too much to take for a sensitive reader! Especially because I'm such a Stark. *shakes head*

I was thinking the other day that many of the things that Eddard and Catelyn do and that are disastrous politically, are things related to their attempts to protect their children. They also reason (as I do, so this kind of hits home) that other people have feelings like their own and will be guided by them. Because they loathe cruelty, they don't expect other people to be cruel. Because they are honourable, they expect other people to be honourable. Because they think as parents, they suppose other people will think as parents too.

The Starks - and this is really horrible - are extra vulnerable because they have five children and care about them to boot. The ultimate reason that pushes Ned to accept the post of Hand of the King is to find out what happened, and why it happened, to his foster father and to his son. His hands are bound because he has his daughters with him. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't recall any other father in this series acting fatherly with his children either. And if Ned and Cat are ultimately unable to make the compromises that could have saved their lives, it is because they cannot put aside the fact that the people they are dealing with are the people who have tried to kill their son Bran. The thing that keeps bothering Ned when dealing with his friend and foster brother Robert is Robert's willingness to kill children. And Catelyn's ultimate argument against the Late Lord Frey is to offer to exchange a son for a son - she doesn't (want to) understand that Lord Frey doesn't consider all his children precious, like she does. Catelyn, after all, was willing to exchange the precious war prisoner Jaime Lannister for her daughters, who are 'only' two little girls.

What, you will ask, does this have to do with Gawain?

Everybody who is more or less versed in Arthurian lore will know that the most famous version of the end of Arthur's reign (i.e. Malory's) is when, at Gawain's instigation, Arthur takes his army to France to fight Sir Lancelot. This all seems terribly unjust, because Lancelot has just rescued the Queen, who'd been condemned to be burnt at the stake for her infidelity/high treason. Since Gawain has always supported the Queen, and refused to have any part in Mordred and Agravain's plot to expose her, you wouldn't expect him to be unhappy about the fact that a) Lancelot rescued the Queen and b) they both got away. Then why is he so hellbent on pursuing Lancelot with an army?

Well - it's because Lancelot has killed all three of Gawain's children while making his escape. And as if that wasn't enough, he has killed the unarmed Gaheris and Gareth while rescuing the Queen. All through the rivalry between Camp Gawain and Camp Lancelot, funny enough Gawain isn't very involved. It's mostly other people taking offence at slights directed at him. But once Lancelot touches his family, Gawain completely loses it and pulls all the strings he can so as to destroy Lancelot. Then again, though he brings Arthur's army, he provokes Lancelot to single combat three times in a row - basically, he fights Lancelot until he can't stand on his legs anymore. In Malory, Gawain is really no match for Lancelot, but he wants to fight anyway. He's just hoping Lancelot will kill him too. Without his children and his brothers, he has nothing left to live for. This is in stark contrast with Lancelot, who is a loner and has never cared for his son, Galahad, because the boy's mother isn't the Queen; or with Malory's Arthur, who has a hundred babies killed so as to avert his own doom - Mordred was supposed to be one of the babies, but Morgause managed to save him.

In Malory, Gawain is a family man. I guess that the thing that perplexes me is that Malory has no sympathy for Gawain at all. Apparently, being a family man is weakness. I guess Ned Stark would have to agree, posthumously :(.

Comments

[ysilme]

*offers sympathies* Your Ned Stark is awesome.

[sigune]

Thanks! I fear I have a small literary crush on him, and the fact that he comes out nicely in pictures doesn't help... ;-)

[ysilme]

*g* I just wish I were able to paint my current literary crush at all. I so long to give him a face... ;O)

[cabepfir.livejournal.com]

You are sophisticated enough to see where Malory's indifference toward a family man stems from - from a cultural point of view, I mean. I'm no expert, but wasn't he trying to re-propose the values of fin'amor that he'd found in the French texts? And in that case, weren't Lancelot and Gwinevere the focus of the story? Not to mention, isn't the exception that makes the story, in opposition to normalcy? But maybe I'm mistaken.

In any case, it was highly interesting to read your comparison between Gawain and Ned! I suppose you'll like Brienne as well.

[mary-j-59.livejournal.com]

Um - I had the idea that the courtly love ideal arose for two reasons? One (I think, but I might be wrong) was to give an earthly image of the heavenly devotion to Our Lady, and the second was to prevent the sort of tragedy that Lancelot and Guinevere acted out. Either way, I cannot see them as admirable, though certainly human and sympathetic, in their way. But wasn't it meant to be part of a knight's discipline not to interfere with his lord's wife?

But I haven't actually read Malory. Steinbeck, White, Stewart, a little bit of Tennyson, and a couple of more modern renditions, such as Elizabeth Wien. Also Chaucer, in part. BTW, T.H. White gives an interesting version of Malory in his tale. The boy comes across as pure Gryffindor, with the old king urging him to think and be a bit more Slytherin or Ravenclaw.

No offense, I hope, that I jumped in this way! I do think the painting of Ned Stark is wonderful.

[cabepfir.livejournal.com]

Uhm, I'm really no expert in the Arthurian field; I've only studied some things about fin'amor according to troubadours and chansons de geste. There are *many* theories around, but one that I particularly remember is that troubadours' poetry was born as a rebel one (paradoxically invented by a nobleman, Guillaume de Poitiers), in a younger-brother's-rebellion kind of sense. The protagonist is never the ruling sire, but always a knight/member of his court, and the point of view is that of a person who will never have complete power on his own. Kosofsky Sedgwick in her Between Men would say that there is a triangle of power between the king/husband, the queen/wife, and the knight/lover, in which the real rivalry is that between the king and the knight through the queen. In any case, the focus is on the knight/lover, whereas the king/husband represents an established power which is necessary to society, but despisable on a personal level. Since the knight won't have heirs, he despises those who can.

But Sigune knows much more than me on the subject...

[sigune.livejournal.com]

Ah, Eve Sedgwick! I gave up on trying to read her because I could never quite make out what she was trying to say :P. She's the most incomprehensible academic I've ever come across - even worse than Judith Butler!

...Um, where were we?

Oh yes. Lancelot/Arthur = a pretty popular pairing. Even Marion Bradley does it! Me, I have trouble imagining why on earth Arthur and Lancelot are friends. I just can't figure Lancelot out. I probably need to do some extra reading for inspiration. That said, there is something very pleasing about the male/male friendships in Arthurian romances (BBC Merlin didn't come out of nowhere!). Lots of bromance, with men weeping copious tears when they lose a comrade-in-arms. They aren't nearly as bothered when a woman's head gets lopped off...

re: knight/lover vs king/husband, I think it's logical that the king isn't the hero of the story - he isn't the sort of person you want to take risks, as his removal would bring chaos. One of the things I like about Arthur, though, is that his younger self had a few adventures of his own which never ended very well. (I look forward to writing those!) One of his last feats was probably the one where he ended up having to marry off Gawain to a loathly lady :). After that, he took to full-time kingship :P. I'd never heard the theory about the king being despised on a personal level...? As for Arthur, he's not to be envied when it comes to his heirs. If he has sons, they rebel against him, and in most version he doesn't have a legitimate heir.

Now that you mention the knights not having heirs, I've been trying to think off the top of my head which knights are mentioned as having children. There's Gawain, but he doesn't really fit the courtly love pattern since he isn't one lady's knight. There's Pellinore, but he's a king in his own right. There's Lancelot, but his son is only conceived because Lancelot thinks he's actually sleeping with the Queen. Apart from those, I can't really think of many...

[cabepfir.livejournal.com]

Ah, Eve Sedgwick! I gave up on trying to read her because I could never quite make out what she was trying to say :P. She's the most incomprehensible academic I've ever come across - even worse than Judith Butler!

Ah, thanks the Seven Gods that you agree with me about this! I read the first half of Between Men on a plane - I don't know why I ever did such a distressing thing :P

Anyway, just to clarify: I wasn't talking exclusively about Arthur/Lancelot/Gwinevere when mentioning my king, queen and knight, but in general about the scheme found in troubadours' poetry (the only subject, here, that I actually studied at university). There are many studies of fin'amor from a social point of view; I read in particular L'amour discourtois. La « fin'amors » chez les premiers troubadours by Jean-Charles Huchet, which I liked a lot. (Huchet wrote also extensively about chansons de geste.)

So, in general - though I may be completely mistaken, since I don't know Malory but superficially - I suppose that Malory tries to reproduce the Middle French atmosphere, and so he supports the one knight against the king or against a knight who isn't moved by fin'amor, such as Gawain.

As for you, you are obviously free to follow your heart. ♥

[sigune.livejournal.com]

Ha, T.H. White! He's entirely to blame for my Gawain love. He infuses Malory with a modern human sensibility. His Gawain has all the defects of the Malory version, but he's so loveable.

That reminds me I really ought to reread The Once and Future King...

[sigune.livejournal.com]

I haven't actually studied the Middle Ages and I know next to nothing of medieval literature (- I know the stories, but not the theory), so I really couldn't say what Malory is supposedly doing form a cultural point of view. I only know that on the brink of the Renaissance he is harking back to the Middle Ages, and that he uses French sources while ignoring the English ones. As a consequence, Gawain is depicted as a false knight (though not consistently) and Arthur doesn't come off all that well either (see his Herod-like episode with the babies). Those Malory does favour (i.e. they are the strongest and best everyone else) are clearly those who pledge themselves to one lady - Tristan, Gareth, Yvain/Owain and of course Lancelot. Mind you, Galahad is better still, because he is entirely pure. Gawain, being a ladies' man, is little short from villainous.

Of course Lancelot is the great example. To quote Shakespeare's Othello, he loves 'not wisely, but too well', which makes him really tragic. Like Mary says, Lancelot's affair with his King's wife is duly considered sinful (it is the reason why he cannot achieve the Grail), but at the same time his absolute devotion to the Queen and his brave deeds in her service make him the pinnacle of the knightly ideal.

I am quite, quite aware of the difference in culture between Malory and myself, and I have no intention whatsoever to be somehow faithful to his vision or to attempt to adopt it. Like my other sources, I read his writings with modern eyes. I'm not complaining about Malory; he is what he is and he likes what he likes. It just strikes me that he makes the 'noble' Lancelot a man who blindly kills squires and unarmed knights, whereas the 'false' knight is a bereft father. Malory's Gawain does other things and makes other judgements that in my opinion show him as being more sensitive (he balks at cruelty against animals, of all things) and more human than Lancelot, who, again in my opinion, has the emotional range of a teaspoon, to quote a bushy-haired Gryffindor. I suppose that the fact that for Lancelot, there is Nothing In The World But Guinevere makes him a very special knight, but it certainly doesn't help me to sympathise with him, or to understand him. He comes out on top, to be sure, but whether that's a good thing is another question. Kaamelott plays with that theme, actually: Lancelot is the only competent knight of the lot, but his singleminded valour turns him into an intolerant extremist. He's not a lovable character at all.

[themostepotente.livejournal.com]

I love your Ned Stark <3

[sigune.livejournal.com]

Thank you! :D I'm ridiculously fond of him. That's entirely George Martin's fault (and possibly his purpose) - even though Ned died some 1,400 pages ago, his shadow hovers over the next few books. I wonder if it's going to keep doing that in future books...

[sigune.livejournal.com]

I came out as Eddard Stark, close to Catelyn Stark and Brienne of Tarth :P. That makes me suspect I rated my sense of humour a bit too low ;).

I was shocked at Tyrion's injury too. In these books, terror never ends, does it? Nobody is ever safe or happy for any stretch of time; Martin manages to come up with new blows every chapter. I wonder how he does it XD.