It's oddly interesting, really, how media that's ostensibly drawing upon Arthurian lore often uses little but the vaguest cliffnotes of Malory, in that respect. The Green Knight by A24 was a decided break in that respect, but it's also drawing one one of the more notable, specific texts with the corpus, translated at one point by Tolkien himself no less. It's scraping at the part of the iceberg immediately beneath the surface, but not going to the deepest depths.
The Fate franchise is one of the bigger aversions where you can tell someone has read
some sources, but it's also conflicted at times on what it's doing with the material, while also having to reconcile it with the 'all myths are true (sorta)' ecosystem the franchise runs on, rather than being simply Arthurian stories playing themselves out.
I'd love to see more fiction that, yeah, embraces the general array and smorgasbord of sources, especially for the more fantastical and out there elements. Like, Prince Valiant is nice as a story that is essentially trying to be its own modern Arthurian story following in the tradition of the French writers especially, but it's also decidedly low-key and grounded versus something like say, Culhwch and Olwen. There's no young lords going on quests to win the heart and hand in marriage of a giant woman who he's never met, leveraging the fact that Arthur is his kinsman for the resources to, among other things, hunt down the most dangerous boar in the North Sea, aided by a saxon so stereotypical his power is a knife able to be so big you can use it as a bridge.
In this respect, one of my favourite bits of 'modern' Arthuriana at the moment, again in a 'the author has actually done some reading' is The Four Knights of the Apocalypse, which is a sequel to The Seven Deadly Sins. The franchise has generally been one of the better showcases of the vibe as through a Dragon Quest filter (if with writing which rollercoasters on the quality front) - or, there is little basis for Arthur's cat
turning out to be evil except for the fact it's that story's version of Cath Palug so of course it tries to kill him - but Four Knights especially leans
hard on having those moments that, if you know the variety of sources out there, you will just stop and pause at the names and concepts which come up. It feels like the author ran SDS as a long term prologue so he can then
really go off with the twist to Arthuriana he's maybe been wanting to do all along
If nothing else, it'd be nice if we could see stories which better express which set and range of sources they take inspiration from - and that they
have an evident set of sources they're drawing on to begin with. As I say, a lot of stuff out there is just cliffnotes of Malory - sometimes by way of T.H. White - and I'd love to see material that more specifically delineates itself as drawing on say, the Welsh texts vs History of the Kings of Britain vs the French romances. Hell, maybe do some of the Irish material where Arthur appears as a cameo. Because there is indeed a lot of stuff that's buried in what was essentially medieval Europe's favourite campaign setting, to use a tabletop metaphor, and it's a bit of a shame we so often stick to surface details, or have 'critiques' that only engage with that surface understanding. From the
Dream of Rhonabwy (which by the way, is essentially a medieval time travel story by way of a writer being very salty over what the idea of Arthur even
means in a landscape where Britain's been conquered
twice by foreigners):
Thereupon they heard a call made for Kadwr, Earl of Cornwall, and behold he arose with the sword of Arthur in his hand. And the similitude of two serpents was upon the sword in gold. And when the sword was drawn from its scabbard, it seemed as if two flames of fire burst forth from the jaws of the serpents, and then, so wonderful was the sword, that it was hard for any one to look upon it. And the host became still, and the tumult ceased, and the Earl returned to the tent.
We have a textual basis for the idea of King Arthur's
flaming sword, and no-one fucking uses it!
