The original title of this novel is La mort le roi Artu. Anonymous – the manuscripts record the name of a false chronicler: Galter Map –, it was written around 1230, and constitutes the end of the narrative world of the protagonist, King Arthur, of his most courageous and intrepid knight, Lanzarote del Lago, and of some than another Round Table champion. Dying, the king asks one of his men, Girflet, to throw his famous sword, Excalibur, from the top of a hill to the bottom of the lake at the foot of it. The faithful servant resists, due to the extreme value of the sword, but the third time is the charm, and then the reader will learn about one of those fabulous episodes thanks to which Martín de Riquer was able to distinguish between the books of chivalry – those that led to the insanity of Don Quixote, who, almost in the 17th century, insisted on living like a 13th century knight– and the chivalric novels –among which, our Tirant–.
The book at hand, even without falling into excess, is chivalric. And in it we meet famous characters from Brittany: the wizard Merlin – always remembered, not present – ??or the fairy Morgana, sister of the king.
The novel collects the fruit of betrayal, incest, dishonorable loves… There are several battles (such as that of Salisbury, fatal for the king), premonitory dreams, the unequivocal warning of Fortune, equipped with her wheel (and what happens from being a loving mother to a sullen stepmother). When teaching literature to my students, I try to make them understand that the moral structure of the centuries of the Middle Ages – from the 11th to the 13th – does not usually coincide with that of our days. Extreme caution must be exercised in the use of words: monsignor or mosén did not mean the same thing then as they do now. Something similar happens with the experience of love. Perhaps when you start reading the novel, the reader will have already heard about the adulterous love between Lancelot and Queen Guinevere. Here they both reached maturity (around fifty). But, as Lola Badia explains in the epilogue, “adulterous love, shared and faithful, neither offends nor deserves repression, as long as it is kept secret.” Unfortunately, an envious person has made such clandestine loves known to the king, and, from there, tragedy is unleashed. Thus, betrayal has to do, above all, with those who speak out.
We are witnessing a neat exemplification of the laws of chivalry. Broadly speaking, we could say that whoever wins in battle, or in a duel, is the one who is right. The Death of King Artús is, above all, a novel about mourning: mourning for the death of such important characters, but also mourning for love. Love kills, writes the translator (the author of our Curial e Güelfa knew this very well!): history gives at least three examples of this. As for the first, I have counted several epitaphs, written in small caps, that mark said duel, giving an account of the place where some of the most illustrious knights of the Arthurian cycle lie.
