She seduces the King and gives birth to Mordred, who will eventually destroy the Round Table. The truly evil character in the book, however, is Queen Morgause, Arthur’s half-sister. She is neither as high-minded and idealistic as Arthur nor as religious as Lancelot. He wanted Guenever to appear “good,” and as narrator he is always making excuses for her, but in the end she appears a little selfish. Throughout his career, White had difficulty portraying women, and felt more at ease imagining the minds of animals than the mind of a woman. Guenever is less fully developed than either Lancelot or Arthur.
In many ways, Lancelot is the novel’s most completely human character. In Lancelot’s futile struggle, White portrays a basically good man torn by his failure to live up to his own standards.
He knows that his adultery with the Queen goes against the laws of his church, and he does not want to hurt his beloved friend Arthur. Lancelot is very conscious of his own faults. Even though Lancelot is the greatest of all knights, White portrays him as cursed by an ambiguous secret flaw, an undefined darkness inside that prevents him from ever being at peace with himself. Perhaps the most enigmatic character in the novel is Lancelot. Clearly the cleverest person in the novel, Merlyn is also a bungler who forgets to tell Arthur a crucial piece of information that might save the kingdom.
White, however, undercuts Merlyn’s preachiness. Merlyn gives voice to White’s philosophy and at times launches into excessively long speeches. The most delightful character in the novel is the wizard Merlyn, who “lives backward in time,” remembering the future and predicting the past. Yet Arthur refuses to face what is occurring. Even though Lancelot and Guenever are basically good, their actions are evil-an evil that will destroy all that Arthur has aimed for and accomplished. He is deliberately blind to the evil of Queen Morgause, and will not recognize the adulterous behavior of Lancelot and Guenever. This trait makes him unwilling to acknowledge evil in those around him. Even after Merlyn departs, Arthur must struggle in order to rule justly and keep the kingdom at peace.Īrthur’s chief flaw, which helps to bring on his downfall, is his excessive goodheartedness. This is most obvious in The Sword in the Stone, where Merlyn changes Wart into different animals so that the boy can learn the ways of nature. White does not portray Arthur as an all-powerful legendary hero but as a good, honest person, not very clever but willing to work hard to understand the lessons Merlyn teaches him. The major character of The Once and Future King is Arthur, whom Merlyn affectionately nicknames “Wart.” One of the strengths of White’s novel is that it keeps its focus on Arthur in many versions of the Arthurian legend, the major emphasis falls on Lancelot and Guenever.
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