The Once and Future King

T.H. White – 1958

Comprised of four novellas written in the 1930s and 40s about Arthurian legends, The Once and Future King is T.H. White’s most celebrated work, comparable in scope and eloquence to Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake and The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, White’s fellow English contemporaries. The four books are The Sword in the Stone, The Queen of Air and Darkness, The Ill-Made Knight and The Candle in the Wind. A fifth story, The Book of Merlyn, was intended to conclude the epic collection but was ultimately published posthumously. Like Tolkien’s The Hobbit, The Sword in the Stone was first published separately in the late 30s and is more of a whimsical introduction to the dense fantasy world to be further explored in the later, more mature books. As the basis of the animated 1963 Disney film, The Sword in the Stone may be the most famous story, but I felt that the centerpiece and soul of the book is The Ill-Made Knight, the story of Lancelot’s all-consuming and tragic love for Queen Guinevere. This passion causes him to betray his best friend and king, as well as his faith, and to compromise his honor. The portrait of Lancelot is like nothing I’ve encountered before, full of so much heartbreaking irony that it’s almost unbearable. Unlike Arthur, who was always destined to lead, Lancelot was a completely unexceptional and unloved child who craved nothing except the love of a father figure, a role that Arthur would fill. Much is made of his physical ugliness, which only adds to his low self-esteem. What he is, though, is a universally unmatched swordsman and warrior, making him a legend in his own lifetime. He carries a lonely and dark secret all his life; the knowledge that he is not benevolent by nature and has to actively imitate the behavior of good people in order to function as a noble knight. This humility, ironically, is what makes him the superior man in the end, though he never comprehends it. He feels like a pretender his entire life. In this sense, he is the noblest and truest hero, because he overcomes weaknesses to accomplish the things he does, whereas many of the other knights who seem “good” so effortlessly never seem to question their own righteousness. To make matters worse, being smitten by his idol Arthur’s wife leads to a one-sided burden of a relationship. Guinevere lusts for him but is generally capricious and jealous, barely concerned that her hysterics lead Lancelot to raving madness at one point, showing only fleeting regrets over the abject misery she is laying upon her guileless lover. The Queen of Air and Darkness (a.k.a. The Witch in the Wood) also stands out for its disturbing back-and-forth between Arthur agonizing over how to justify force to create peace and the witch Morgause’s and her children’s appalling cruelty to animals, including the gruesome killing and desecration of a rare, white unicorn. Throughout the novel, White’s prose is exquisite without becoming flowery. His famous use of anachronisms and his almost sadistic deployment of arcane British words and references can have you shaking your head at times, but it's never off-putting. Ultimately, its provocative debate about humanity’s penchant for war and whether or not it deserves its dominion over the natural world is what stays with the reader long after putting it down.