#and Lancelot’s armour

[sweetcookie500]

One thing I hate about aiming for ✨✨accuracy✨✨ is that I have to get his goddamn armour RIGHT.

Excuse me while I die in an artistic fire along with my lack of human anatomy and Lancelot’s armour oof-

#Out of Time Jedtavius #out of time au #jedtavius human au #jedtavius au #jedtavius #natm #natm fanart #behind the story #behind the scenes #rip my artistic capacities #and Lancelot’s armour #smelted for the greater good I promise

[illustratus]

Sir Lancelot in the Chapel Perilous by Walter Crane

#sir lancelot #sir launcelot #launcelot #lancelot #art #chapel perilous #arthurian #knight #knights #knights of the round table #king arthur #medieval #middle ages #walter crane #history #mythology #king arthur's knights #dagger #sword #armour

[lit-in-thy-heart]

trying to read all of malory and quickly coming to this conclusion:

(ID in alt)

#IT'S SO RIDICULOUS #like lancelot saves kay's ass with enemy knights and they sleep in the same bed and then lance fucks off in the morning with kay's armour #leaving his with kay so kay can get home in peace bc nobody will dare challenge sir lancelot unnecessarily #and then lance comes across four of his fellow knights of camelot and they're like hey let's beat kay up to see if he's improved #like GUYS #you get beaten up enough by people who don't like you #there's no need to go 'good morning!' *BONK* with people you actually get on with #ridiculous #le morte d'arthur #lit reads malory #arthuriana

[sickfreaksirkay]

lancelot in night at the museum: secret of the tomb (2014) is actually something that can be so special to me

#he’s so important my special boy #his armour is so pretty as well it’s true #we need more stupid and embarrassing lancelot representation (affectionate) #lancelot #sir lancelot #lancelot du lac #night at the museum

[sonic-adventure-3]

SIR PERCIVALLLLL!!!!! SHE’S SO COOOOOOOOL!!!! blaze is already so fucking cool she’s one of the coolest sonic characters ever and then they made her COOLER with dope ass ARMOUR and a SWORD not just any sword a RAPIER which is one of the dopest swords imo

#GOTTA LEARN TI DRAW ARMOUR #man i gotta say i fucking love the spirit of exclusively calling the satbk characters by their arthurian names #friendship ended with shadow knuckles and blaze now sir lancelot sir gawain and sir percival are my best friends #rambles #storybookposting #i don’t really know much shit about the arthurian legends but picking those three as knights was such an inspired choice #they’re already so knightly it just maps rlly well #GOD I LOVE SATBK

[the-punforgiven]

Idk where I remember reading it but I remember reading somewhere that black knights were a specific class of knight who'd paint over their armor and coat of arms to signify they no longer served a king or lord and while I cannot find any evidence of that being actually true, I'd be lying if I said that idea didn't kind of fuck tbh

#there are tales of knights (lancelot especially) painting over their coats of arms for anonymity #but it was just so he wasn't recognized it had nothing to do with him breaking oaths or striking out on his own #in addition blackening armor was just a thing people did for ages #not symbolic of anything just because it did a good job waterproofing armour #making it resistant to rust and such #not evocative or indicative of anything just purely utilitarian #that also just happens to look really fuckin cool #It seems almost analogous to the ronin archetype which almost feels telling like someone just making shit up because it sounds cool #which to be fair it does #which is to say little of warriors who'd paint their armor and shields black for nighttime ambushes #which also has nothing to do with lords or kings and is a purely utilitarian thing #that coincidentally happens to also be cool lmao #but the lordless knight thing as far as I can tell seems to be a pure fabrication #and I'm sad about that since I love that as a concept #and I'd happily be proven wrong if anyone's got a credible source #lmao #pun's text posts

[siegeprecipitous]

the impression i'm getting from this is that kay is kind of a bitch. is this true and where can i find more kay content if so

#he's so funny i love him #wearing lancelot's armour like heh suckers #arthuriana #kay

[hellerscape]

Watching shows about Medieval jousting techniques so I can live tweet (post on Tumblr) about the historical inaccuracies of BBC Merlin to all my followers (my two mutuals)

#bbc Merlin #Merlin #gonna rip Arthur’s jousting armour to shreds #or maybe it’ll actually be quite good #who knows #but shade!Lancelots coronel could actually be a great act of symbolism #ANYWAYS

[queenoficeandfire]

Five episodes into House of the Dragon and I'm full on smitten with this guy

I dunno why but he reminds me a lot of this guy:

Like what is it with tanned, dark haired, sexy, heroic knights

#house of the dragon #fire and blood #sir criston cole #bbc merlin #sir lancelot #knights in shining armour #they are like a weakness #hello sir #here we go again #fictional men

[originlist]

u know how artoria can walk on water bc of a blessing from nimue that ‘water will never impede her passage’. lance has one too but his makes him incapable of drowning and he can use freshwater as a weird conceptual magic shortcut to vivan/nimues section of avalon. anyways this is to say that sometimes he can just go slosh into a lake and like, not come back if he doesnt wanna.

#lance laying facedown at the bottom of a lake as fish briefly investigate his armour for snacks like 'im having Me Time' #ooc #headcanon : lancelot

[camelotsheart]

i dont think we talk enough about how popular merlin is with the ladies. like, this boy got gwen - the everyone has a crush on her gwen - to kiss him in the span of four episodes. he got morgana's "he's a lover" approval in less than three. he had freya falling for him in less than two days. mary saw him for less than a minute and insulted the prince of camelot to his face. he and mithian had basically the same or even more chemistry that she had with arthur, who was set to marry her. and then he has a quintessential anime meet cute "i bumped into you and helped you pick your things up from the floor" on the first episode of season 5 with sefa

forget lancelot being a knight in shining armour, hot rugged gwaine, hunk percival, loyal swordsman elyan, leon being leon, or literally any other bachelor including arthur "every woman in the land is attracted to this boy! i'm almost attracted to him myself" pendragon. ladies see merlin and immediately label him as marriage material

#and dont even get me started on his relationships with the non-ladies #HE EVEN HAS CHEMISTRY WITH A FUCKING ALIEN #like how do you even DO that #bbc merlin #merlin

[suzylind]

Got this lovely commission made by @silvermun

Hands down, I really love the details on Lancelots armour and Arondight! Not to mention, it's important to take care of things that hold value to you from time to time. Sonic and the Black Knight is one of my favorite games, and I can imagine that sometimes even the knights need to sit down, and care for their sacred swords.

Thank you again Silvermun for this lovely piece of art! I love him!

#art commission #satbk #sonic and the black knight #lancelot #sir lancelot #shadow #shadow the hedgehog #sth #commission #AAGH!! Look at him! #This is such a peaceful moment #Not everything needs to be action and what not #calm and relaxing #hedgehog caring for his sword #sonic #sonic art #black knight #I love this artwork~ #silvermun

[illustratus]

How Four Queens found Sir Lancelot Sleeping

by William Frank Calderon

#william frank calderon #lancelot #sir lancelot #queens #sleeping #arthurian #art #mythology #launcelot #chivalry #chivalric romance #knight #medieval #middle ages #knights #armour #sir launcelot #apple tree #apple trees #nature #sleep #queen

[suzannahnatters]

Let Your Knights Weep

One of the big things I've had to train myself out of when writing medieval historical fiction?

The stiff upper lip.

This used to really bewilder my editor, who for some time attempted to nudge me away from having my grown men weep and wail and blubber, but for me it's an essential part of the setting. Whether in grief or fear, medieval people did not hold things back.

Here are some of my favourite quotes to explain.

First, a couple from two great 20th century medievalists:

CS Lewis in his Letters put it this way:

“By the way, don't 'weep inwardly' and get a sore throat. If you must weep, weep: a good honest howl! I suspect we - and especially, my sex - don't cry enough now-a-days. Aeneas and Hector and Beowulf, Roland and Lancelot blubbered like schoolgirls, so why shouldn't we?”

Dorothy Sayers, in her fabulous Introduction to her translation of THE SONG OF ROLAND, speaking of Charlemagne discovering Roland's body on the battlefield:

Here too, I think we must not reckon it weakness in him that he is overcome by grief for Roland’s death, that he faints upon the body and has to be raised up by the barons and supported by them while he utters his lament. There are fashions in sensibility as in everything else. The idea that a strong man should react to great personal and national calamities by a slight compression of the lips and by silently throwing his cigarette into the fireplace is of very recent origin. By the standards of feudal epic, Charlemagne’s behaviour is perfectly correct. Fainting, weeping, and lamenting is what the situation calls for. The assembled knights and barons all decorously follow his example. They punctuate his lament with appropriate responses:

By hundred thousand the French for sorrow sigh; There’s none of them but utters grievous cries.

At the end of the next laisse:

He tears his beard that is so white of hue, Tears from his head his white hair by the roots; And of the French an hundred thousand swoon.

We may take this response as being ritual and poetic; grief, like everything else in the Epic, is displayed on the heroic scale. Though men of the eleventh century did, in fact, display their emotions much more openly than we do, there is no reason to suppose that they made a practice of fainting away in chorus. But the gesture had their approval; that was how they liked to think of people behaving. In every age, art holds up to us the standard pattern of exemplary conduct, and real life does its best to conform. From Charlemagne’s weeping and fainting we can draw no conclusions about his character except that the poet has represented him as a perfect model of the “man of feeling” in the taste of the period.

OK, now let's dig into some quotes that I found just in Christopher Tyerman's Chronicles of the First Crusade and Joinville's Life of St Louis:

Truly you would have grieved and sobbed in pity when the Turks killed any of our men....

As for the knights, they stood about in a great state of gloom, wringing their hands because they were so frightened and miserable, not knowing what to do with themselves and their armour, and offering to sell their shields, valuable breastplates and helmets for threepence or fivepence or any price they could get....

When Guy, who was a very honourable knight, had heard these lies, he and all the others began to weep and to make loud lamentation....

They stayed in the houses cowering, some some for hunger and some for fear of the Turks....

Now at vigils, the time of trust in God’s compassion, many gave up hope and hurriedly lowered themselves with ropes from the wall-tops; and in the city soldiers, returning from the encounter, circulated widely a rumour that mass decapitation of the defenders was in store. To add weight to the terror, they too fled…

In the course of that day’s battle there had been many people, and of fine appearance too, who had come very shamefully flying over the little bridge you know of and had fled away so panic-stricken that all our attempts to make them stay with us had been in vain. I could tell you some of their names, but shall refrain from doing so, because they are now dead.

I could go on looking for quotes in all the other medieval literature I've read, but that would be beyond the scope of this Tumblr post.

In the meantime, this leads me to make some comments on how trauma was perceived.

In Jonathan Riley-Smith's The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading, the author discusses the mental breakdowns suffered by the first crusaders during the second siege of Antioch, which caused many of them to flee at the moment of direst need:

In these stressful circumstances it is not surprising that the crusaders were often very frightened. At times, indeed, they seem to have been almost paralysed by a terror that they themselves could hardly comprehend. … When the crusade was bottled up in Antioch by Kerbogha's relief force it was gripped by such blind panic that there was the prospect of a mass break-out and on the night of 10 or 11 Juney 1098 Bohemond and Adhemar had the gates of the city closed. It is worth noting that many of those whom later chroniclers, writing after the events in comparative comfort in Europe, vilified for cowardice and desertion seem to have been treated more charitably by their fellow-crusaders, who must have understood what pressures they had been under.

--

In conclusion: the way we feel about things today in the English-speaking isn't necessarily the way people felt about things in the past (and this goes for other cultures, real or imagined, too). I'm continually catching myself writing people with stiff upper lips and emotional reservations, and having to remind myself that the culture was different back them. If a grown man wanted to weep, he could. That's a good thing. (Oh, and my medieval historical fantasy? Check out the Watchers of Outremer series on Amazon or wherever books are sold!)

#history #writing #historical fiction #medieval history #medieval #middle ages #historical #masculinity #history of masculinity #toxic masculinity

[sexy-sapphic-sorcerer]

1: Magic is a Metaphor < 2: Morgana is a Lesbian < 3: Merlin is Gay > 4: Arthur is Bi

Again with the whole metaphor thing, Merlin's entire character is about having to hide his identity and wishing that he could be free to be himself so that he wouldn't have to lie about how much Arthur means to him. So that's all very gay, but he's also just very queer-coded generally. There are so many jokes about him being more effeminate or wearing women's clothing, most notably in this episode where he dresses in full drag and then takes the opportunity to shamelessly flirt with Arthur. Unhinged.

Basically every other character seems to just assume that he's gay, at least towards the end, because Gaius and Arthur are in utter disbelief that Merlin would be 'seeing a girl'. And of course he isn't, he's actually sneaking around with that druid guy, leading Arthur to question how courting a girl would leave him 'walking with a limp.'

I also think it's very interesting how often Merlin has to pretend to be attracted to women to avoid people discovering his secret, like with Gwen in Series 1 or Morgana in Series 2. Or this scene, where Gwen and Merlin are the only people not affected by the Lamia's seduction charm and they're trying to figure out why. And Merlin says, 'it doesn't affect you because you're a woman'. And firstly, Gwen is like, 'so what?' So, bisexual queen. And then Merlin says, "it only affects men," and Gwen says, "so then why haven't you fallen under her spell?" And Merlin is just like, 'oh shit, I don't know. I can't think of any reason why I wouldn't be seduced by a woman.'

Now, you might be saying, "but Merlin is attracted to women! what about that one female love interest he had for literally one episode who immediately died?" Oh, you mean:

I'm sorry to all of the Freylin shippers out there, but this was so clearly just the writers' last-ditch attempt to make Merlin straight. If you think about it, Freya also 'has magic' if you catch my drift, and that is the only thing that she and Merlin have in common, and the only thing that they talk about. And if you look at their dialogue out of context, it really doesn't seem like it's magic that they're talking about. It's just gay/lesbian solidarity. Also, never forget when Colin Morgan accidentally referred to Merlin's potential love interests as "him or her." So who else could he have been thinking of?

Merlin definitely had a crush on Lancelot. From the moment that they first meet, he just keeps going on about, 'omg, isn't Lancelot so strong and brave and chivalrous? God, I hope he becomes a knight, he would look so good in a suit of armour.' And then he says to Gwen, completely unprompted, "so just for the sake of argument– Arthur or Lancelot?" Why are you thinking about that Merlin? Then that scene ends with Merlin and Lancelot getting drunk and stumbling home together and waking up the next morning having shared Merlin's single bed. So take from that what you will. I don't necessarily think that anything happened between them, not because I think Lancelot is straight, don't get it twisted, just because I think he's a fucking virgin.

But certified pansexual manwhore Gwaine on the other hand, oh they definitely fucked. And it's a very similar situation to Lancelot, Merlin's only flirting technique is just to find some buff guy who's just saved his life and be like, 'oh my god what can I possibly do to repay you? Maybe you could come back to my place and I could tend to your wounds and then we could go down to the tavern, have a few drinks'.

And it works. Merlin literally used his job as apprentice physician to the Knights of the Round Table as his own personal Grindr, and i love that for him. But, of course, these are just side hoes to Merlin's main bitch, Arthur.

You can deny everything else that I've said, but you cannot deny that Merlin was in love with Arthur. And don't even try to say, 'but it's just because it was his destiny'. Because, yeah, like that's any less gay. They're two sides of the same coin, destined to be together, Merlin 'uses magic only for Arthur'. Come on.

Also, it's pretty clear that Merlin cares about Arthur more than he cares about his destiny, throughout the entire show. But it culminates in this scene in series five where, because of very contrived plot reasons, Arthur has to choose between legalizing magic and saving the life of Mordred. And Merlin convinces Arthur not to legalise magic so that he will let Mordred die. He literally enables the genocide of his own people and condemns himself to a lifetime of suffering just on the off chance that he can spend a bit more time with Arthur.

And if that isn't heartbreaking enough, of course, every action that Merlin makes only confirms Arthur's fate. And after he very platonically dies in Merlin's arms, as dudebros do, what does Merlin do? does he go back to Camelot and live a full happy heterosexual life? Of course not. No, he spends the next one and a half thousand years just waiting at Arthur's resting place, waiting for the day that Arthur will be resurrected and they can be together again. What the fuck kind of Greek tragedy, Achilles and Patroclus level shit is that? That is fucking gay.

#this is so fucking long omg sorry #consider this series as a masterpost of all of my ramblings #merlin #merlance #merwaine #merthur #bbc merlin #merlin meta #the magic of metaphor

[rjalker]

Lancelot crossing the sword-bridge

[ID: A medieval illustration showing the knight Lancelot crossing a bridge that is a giant sword placed across a river. Lancelot wears his helmet, arm and leg armour, and chain mail, but his hands and feet are unarmored as he crawls across the giant sword, using his hands and feet to grip the sharp edges. Across the river is a castle where King Bademagu and either Prince Maleagant or Queen Guinevere look down out of a window. On the far side of the castle where the land curves away behind the wall, two lions watch. In the distance are plains, a town, and hills rising into the sky. End ID.]

Read this story for free on Project Gutenberg.

#described images #The Knight of the Cart #Lancelot #Lancelot the Knight of the Cart #medieval art #medieval illustration #public domain #Rjalker reads stories of King Arthur