Tasty Merlin lore 🙌🏻. Got me thinking of one of Merlin's descendants and one of Arthur's relationship in Tracy Deon's Legendborn. I love how she played around with that dynamic and their previous history. I'm looking forward to see what you did with these characters too; your take on Nimue here made me more excited even 👀.
I found Merlin in The Bright Sword appropriately terrifying. In AI research, we sometimes talk about the idea of having powerful AI in a box, which can answer any question you put to it, but can't take any action besides talking (as a safety measure). The danger, of course, is that it will manage to talk the user into letting it out of the box. I saw this same kind of dynamic in your Merlin under the hill.
I can't wait to read The Bright Sword! Merlin and Nimue are my favorite part of Arthuriana and I've heard great things about the version of Merlin in TBS. You're lucky you got to read it early!
I always thought there was something a little "off"about Merlin. When I was a kid, I loved the Disney Sword in the Stone movie because of Madam Mim, the hilarious witch that has a shapeshifting fight with Merlin and I always rooted for her. Much later when I read the story of Merlin and Nimue, it occurred to me that Madam Mim (who I think was an invention of T.H. White's though the edition of the book I read didn't have her in it) could have been a version of Nimue, who was wronged by Merlin and decided to live as an old lady in the middle of the woods, until Arthur falls down her chimney. I'm probably wrong but the names do sound similar (Mim/Nimue). Anyways, team Nimue and any other woman capable of standing up to Merlin.
When I wrote my college application essays, one question was a version of "what person, living or dead, would you want to have dinner with" and my answer was Merlin. I don't really recall what I said in my essay, but with my acceptance, I got a nice letter from the head of the medieval studies department (to which I was applying) recommending that I read Mists of Avalon if I had not yet.
The term colonizer feels somewhat odd here, as in a lot of accounts and legends, Arthur and Merlin would come from the same culture, yet only belong to different religions. It also depends if we're looking at it from a historical or fictional standpoint. Medieval romances depict Arthur's Britain as mostly Christian (and a 11-12th century kind of christianity at that, very different from the one in the early middle ages), yet in reality Christianity would be far from the main religion in the 5th-6th century. But most importantly: what of the Welsh oral tradition, which is pre-christian? It was written down by Christian monks but evidently comes from pagan tradition-- in which Arthur and Merlin might just share the same religious beliefs. Why would that version be any less true than the later ones? As there is no canon.
tl;dr I find interesting that you wonder if Merlin would perceive Arthur as colonizer, but that already implies to view the story through a very late Christian prism, which is not necessarily true to all accounts. Sorry if it was a bit nitpicky lmao!!
Really appreciated your retelling in The Bright Sword and all the brilliant ideas you had to make a refreshing story out of it all.
(as a sidenote: I am aware that the dynamic between Arthur and Merlin as we know it comes from Monmouth, a Christian, but Merlin essentially acts as a stand-in to characters who served the same purpose in Arthur's court in the Welsh myths)
I'm definitely playing fast and loose, though in my defense when you're dealing with the Arthur of the romances, fast and loose is pretty much the only game in town. But even historically I think there could plausibly be quite a lot of distance between Arthur and Merlin. Not just religious but social and political. If he's a true Romanized Briton, from the south-east, Arthur would come from a _very_ Roman milieu -- 350 years is a long time to be occupied, especially by a cultural/social force like Imperial Rome, and I think in places the Britons were completely acculturated, and thought of themselves as Roman first. Baths, villas, language, religion, the works. But I also think Britain was very much a patchwork, not homogeneous, and there were pockets of almost totally un-Romanized Britain, particularly in the northwest but also Cornwall west of Exeter. (I rely a lot for this on Robin Fleming's Britain After Rome. Though all mistakes are mine and mine alone.) Plus I don't want to get into spoilers, but the Merlin of The Bright Sword comes from a _very_ Iron Age British place. ...
Of course-- I was not judging the historicity or legitimacy of your approach within the novel, rather I questioned some of the approaches within the article. But it all depends on what angle we try to analyze the romances. Literary? Historical? Even then, the historical context in which an account is written is more important than the actual historical situation in the Dark Ages. For example, The Bright Sword tells us more about 2024 than the Dark Ages. Which is normal imo, its a novel written for us, not 5th century Britons. And not to mention, some authors who have tried so-called "realistic, historically accurate" approaches to Arthur's story have had to make some drastic choices as well, be it regarding the narrative or the time period.
But when writing fiction, it's carte blanche, I think that's normal and legit. I found your approach in The Bright Sword to be quite satisfying, but I'd also add that what mattered to me was your narrative more than whether there were anachronistic elements or not. I think Arthurian romances are cooler when they try to tell me a story rather than be accurate to the time. And your story was particularly great.
Regarding the Britons, that is not entirely true. I would suggest relying on other sources than Fleming's book, which, while not inaccurate, is incomplete. It's important to remember a lot of Roman cultural elements were fused with Brythonic ones, the idea of people thinking themselves as "Roman" in those areas is not consistent (regional/local identity mattered more), and even the religion had become a patchwork (Romano-Celtic -- then Christianism, which was adopted by different people alike) -- and as you said, Britain remained a patchwork. My initial point was rather that the tradition of Arthur as a character does not necessarily come from Romanized Britain as much as it has its roots in Brythonic culture, and a very southwestern one (of Britain-- nowadays Wales). But then again all of this is not important if you try to analyze the Arthur of a specific text that is unrelated, it only matters if we wanna analyze the character comparatively, as a whole. It's just nitpicking at this point but I like being a nerd with other Arthurian nerds. <3
Tasty Merlin lore 🙌🏻. Got me thinking of one of Merlin's descendants and one of Arthur's relationship in Tracy Deon's Legendborn. I love how she played around with that dynamic and their previous history. I'm looking forward to see what you did with these characters too; your take on Nimue here made me more excited even 👀.
I found Merlin in The Bright Sword appropriately terrifying. In AI research, we sometimes talk about the idea of having powerful AI in a box, which can answer any question you put to it, but can't take any action besides talking (as a safety measure). The danger, of course, is that it will manage to talk the user into letting it out of the box. I saw this same kind of dynamic in your Merlin under the hill.
Precisely! The humans were the weak point
I can't wait to read The Bright Sword! Merlin and Nimue are my favorite part of Arthuriana and I've heard great things about the version of Merlin in TBS. You're lucky you got to read it early!
I always thought there was something a little "off"about Merlin. When I was a kid, I loved the Disney Sword in the Stone movie because of Madam Mim, the hilarious witch that has a shapeshifting fight with Merlin and I always rooted for her. Much later when I read the story of Merlin and Nimue, it occurred to me that Madam Mim (who I think was an invention of T.H. White's though the edition of the book I read didn't have her in it) could have been a version of Nimue, who was wronged by Merlin and decided to live as an old lady in the middle of the woods, until Arthur falls down her chimney. I'm probably wrong but the names do sound similar (Mim/Nimue). Anyways, team Nimue and any other woman capable of standing up to Merlin.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zANV9XNwfE4
When I wrote my college application essays, one question was a version of "what person, living or dead, would you want to have dinner with" and my answer was Merlin. I don't really recall what I said in my essay, but with my acceptance, I got a nice letter from the head of the medieval studies department (to which I was applying) recommending that I read Mists of Avalon if I had not yet.
The term colonizer feels somewhat odd here, as in a lot of accounts and legends, Arthur and Merlin would come from the same culture, yet only belong to different religions. It also depends if we're looking at it from a historical or fictional standpoint. Medieval romances depict Arthur's Britain as mostly Christian (and a 11-12th century kind of christianity at that, very different from the one in the early middle ages), yet in reality Christianity would be far from the main religion in the 5th-6th century. But most importantly: what of the Welsh oral tradition, which is pre-christian? It was written down by Christian monks but evidently comes from pagan tradition-- in which Arthur and Merlin might just share the same religious beliefs. Why would that version be any less true than the later ones? As there is no canon.
tl;dr I find interesting that you wonder if Merlin would perceive Arthur as colonizer, but that already implies to view the story through a very late Christian prism, which is not necessarily true to all accounts. Sorry if it was a bit nitpicky lmao!!
Really appreciated your retelling in The Bright Sword and all the brilliant ideas you had to make a refreshing story out of it all.
(as a sidenote: I am aware that the dynamic between Arthur and Merlin as we know it comes from Monmouth, a Christian, but Merlin essentially acts as a stand-in to characters who served the same purpose in Arthur's court in the Welsh myths)
I'm definitely playing fast and loose, though in my defense when you're dealing with the Arthur of the romances, fast and loose is pretty much the only game in town. But even historically I think there could plausibly be quite a lot of distance between Arthur and Merlin. Not just religious but social and political. If he's a true Romanized Briton, from the south-east, Arthur would come from a _very_ Roman milieu -- 350 years is a long time to be occupied, especially by a cultural/social force like Imperial Rome, and I think in places the Britons were completely acculturated, and thought of themselves as Roman first. Baths, villas, language, religion, the works. But I also think Britain was very much a patchwork, not homogeneous, and there were pockets of almost totally un-Romanized Britain, particularly in the northwest but also Cornwall west of Exeter. (I rely a lot for this on Robin Fleming's Britain After Rome. Though all mistakes are mine and mine alone.) Plus I don't want to get into spoilers, but the Merlin of The Bright Sword comes from a _very_ Iron Age British place. ...
Of course-- I was not judging the historicity or legitimacy of your approach within the novel, rather I questioned some of the approaches within the article. But it all depends on what angle we try to analyze the romances. Literary? Historical? Even then, the historical context in which an account is written is more important than the actual historical situation in the Dark Ages. For example, The Bright Sword tells us more about 2024 than the Dark Ages. Which is normal imo, its a novel written for us, not 5th century Britons. And not to mention, some authors who have tried so-called "realistic, historically accurate" approaches to Arthur's story have had to make some drastic choices as well, be it regarding the narrative or the time period.
But when writing fiction, it's carte blanche, I think that's normal and legit. I found your approach in The Bright Sword to be quite satisfying, but I'd also add that what mattered to me was your narrative more than whether there were anachronistic elements or not. I think Arthurian romances are cooler when they try to tell me a story rather than be accurate to the time. And your story was particularly great.
Regarding the Britons, that is not entirely true. I would suggest relying on other sources than Fleming's book, which, while not inaccurate, is incomplete. It's important to remember a lot of Roman cultural elements were fused with Brythonic ones, the idea of people thinking themselves as "Roman" in those areas is not consistent (regional/local identity mattered more), and even the religion had become a patchwork (Romano-Celtic -- then Christianism, which was adopted by different people alike) -- and as you said, Britain remained a patchwork. My initial point was rather that the tradition of Arthur as a character does not necessarily come from Romanized Britain as much as it has its roots in Brythonic culture, and a very southwestern one (of Britain-- nowadays Wales). But then again all of this is not important if you try to analyze the Arthur of a specific text that is unrelated, it only matters if we wanna analyze the character comparatively, as a whole. It's just nitpicking at this point but I like being a nerd with other Arthurian nerds. <3
Wow. “Arthur’s world is a woven one, where the warp is Rome and Christianity and the weft is paganism and magic and fairy.”
Shout out to Merlin in the musical Camelot, who is quite lovely.
(Or at least he was in the Aaron Sorkin version.)
What a wonderful, complicated figure. Now, when I reread T.H. White, I'll turn a psychoanalytic eye toward the old wizard