You mean King Arthur? Richard the Lionheart is real
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Replying to @arthur_affect @chton and
(Merlyn in TH White's The Sword in the Stone is a deliberately meta reference, him traveling backwards through time is a metaphor for White projecting himself and his own opinions and politics into the story from the future)
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Replying to @arthur_affect @chton and
I think I’ve said before how weird it is to me that T H White is so influential in American ideas of King Arthur. It’s like … ok, Once and Future King is a decent enough reimagining of the stories, but it’s not exactly the iconic version of the character ….
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Replying to @bazzalisk @chton and
It's *massively* deconstructive I keep being confused that no one else gets that Merlyn literally is TH White who has discovered a magical means of "living backwards" from the 20th century to medieval times (a metaphor for writing the book) It's so obvious
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Replying to @arthur_affect @bazzalisk and
In his fourth and final book (never published on its own), The Candle in the Wind, Merlyn puts almost all his cards on the table He explains his own political philosophy is anarcho-socialism and he knows Arthur's brand of monarchy is doomed etc
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Replying to @arthur_affect @bazzalisk and
But he made Arthur become king anyway because it's written into the historical record that his tragedy has to happen and he can't actually change it because when you live backwards the future is what's written in stone and the past is what's uncertain and strange etc etc
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Replying to @arthur_affect @bazzalisk and
Like it's so clearly not actually the King Arthur story, it's this melancholy reflection on the King Arthur story from a 20th-century Briton who lived through the World Wars, it *says so*
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Replying to @arthur_affect @bazzalisk and
Didn't Donald Barthelme do a King Arthur story, with Arthur coming back to life during WWII? Eventually the most he does is do inspirational addresses on the BBC.
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Replying to @Elpico72 @arthur_affect and
Which seems pretty implausible really. If Arthur returned the very first thing he’d likely do is try to kick the English out.
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Replying to @bazzalisk @Elpico72 and
(A civil servant informs PM that Arthur has returned from Avalon with a hose of fairy warriors) PM: “Truly this is Britain’s greatest hour of need!” CS: “Indeed, sir, though you might want to leave off the celebrations until you hear what he is saying.” Arthur: Rhyddid i Gymru!
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I've seen romantic takes that interpret the Once and Future King thing as Arthur being reincarnated as various heroes throughout history A lot has been made of the fact that the Duke of Wellington happened to be named Arthur
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Replying to @arthur_affect @bazzalisk and
I thought it was a missed opportunity for Douglas Adams to add that along with the joke about Mr Prosser at the beginning of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy being the heir of Genghis Khan, Arthur Dent happens to be the reincarnation of King Arthur Not that it does him any good
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Replying to @arthur_affect @bazzalisk and
Arthur Dent seemed a bit closer to the Arthur of the Kinks' 1969 concept album of the same name -- sort of a hapless surburbanite.
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