I was just reading an article, where they cover some of the origins and versions of the Arthurian tales, and came across this passage. It is about how a group of French monks in the 1200’s modified the tales based on their own twisted views. In particular, this part about Morgan LeFay was interesting:

“Their most significant contribution, however, was to rewrite the Morgan LeFay character. The Cistercian monks believed that all flesh was evil, and included all women in their definition of flesh. Some even wrote essays arguing that there was no such thing as a female soul, that women were merely animals who were deluded into thinking that they were human beings. This all-male society was so uncomfortable with the idea of a woman with magical powers that they changed Morgan Le Fay from a happy, benevolent healer to a miserable, adulterous dark sorceress who knowingly slept with her own brother.”

In case you forgot, Morgan LeFay is Arthur’s half-sister, on his mother’s side. She’s portrayed as an evil sorceress, and upon her, Arthur unwittingly fathers the evil Mordred, who later kills him. Supposedly also, the name of Arthur’s wife, Guinevere, comes from the Welsh name “Gwenhwyfar” which means “unfaithful.” And the person she was unfaithful with originally was Mordred, and not Lancelot. Lancelot was a later French invention. And also, Mordred was originally the Welsh hero “Medraut” before being incorporated into the Arthurian mythos.

Also interesting is that scholars refer to Arthurian tales (as in Mallory’s “La Morte D’Arthur”) as a “Primary Epic.” A primary epic is said to “tie together all the oral myths and traditions of a culture into a single heroic story.” Which is cool. This made me think of how would you create a primary epic today. You would have to somehow incorporate all sorts of movies and novels and tv shows and other stuff into one gigantic story, and somehow make it all work together. I guess you’d probably have to do the sort of shit they did back then, where you shuffle around characters, changing their histories, identities and alignments until they all somehow became coherent to one story-system.

Other examples of primary epics: