There is an important question to be asked of Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur, and that is: why are there so many kings, and what happens to them? Specifically, there are many kings in the beginning of the story, and only Arthur (and Mordred) by the end. Why? What happens to these kings, and what does it tell us about kingship?
Perhaps the least important of these are kings like Pellinore and Lot. Both are certainly described as kings, although their sons are not princes but rather the de Galis and Orkney clan-knights. Malory does not say that Arthur usurped the princes of their birthright, and yet it seems that that must be what happened. Is this the remembrance, almost a thousand years later, of a dark-ages unifier of Britain who was able to absorb the petty kingdoms into which the land had been sundered into his single monarchy? Doubtful. Then what else could this be? Perhaps investigating the other kings will help.
King Pellam is surely more important. Pellam's wasteland is something meaningful, related to us by Merlin after he rescues Balin from the ruins of Pellam's castle (which is not called Corbenic here, is it a different castle? Hard to believe that). A bit of summary: Balin has chased the invisible knight Sir Garlon to a castle where there is a feast in progress. At said feast a visible Sir Garlon strikes Balin and so Balin draws his sword and cuts him down. Sir Garlon, it is revealed, is the brother of King Pellam, whose castle this is. Than kynge Pellam caught in his hand a grymme wepyn and smote egirly at Balyn, but he put his swerde betwyxte hys hede and the stroke, and therewith hys swede braste in sundir. Balin flees, racing through the castle until he finds a room marked by finery and a mervaylous spere strangely wrought. Balin strikes true, wounds Pellam, and with the wounding the castle collapses about them. And then Merlin rescues Balin for his unfortunate meeting with his brother. Pellam's land is become a wasteland through the wounding.
There is more to this story. First, Lancelot's first act of infidelity is with a young woman at a place called Corbenic, Pellam's castle, and the young woman is Pellam's daughter. Their child is Galahad, who is destined to find the Grail and restore the wasteland and heal Pellam. Furthermore, when Galahad comes to Camelot to become a member of the round table, there is a second sword in the stone, which must be drawn by Galahad (no other can) and is Balin's sword (but was not Balin's sword braste in sundir?). And remember, before all of this, when Balin was but a lad at Camelot, that he too drew a sword (from scabbard) which no other could draw, and was thus marked out by the ritual, and presumably this is the sword which Pellam sundered and which Galahad will draw from the stone.
Perhaps another mythology will answer some of out questions. Remember how Odysseus was recognized by his nurse? She felt (and saw) along his thigh a wound he had achieved while boar-hunting as a lad before the Trojan War, from which he nearly died. Robert Graves tells us that this is the mythological residue of a sacrifice of kings, like that at Nemi, where the king's genitals were torn off with a boar's tusk (or perhaps cut with a tusk-handled knife) in reenactment of the castration of Ouranos by Chronos and Chronos by Zeus and someday Zeus by Apollo. Remember too that Chronos' dick and balls fell into the sea and from this sprang Aphrodite. Aphrodite who loves Adonis, the sacrifice, who was gored by a boar. Now we look to Balin's heraldry and what do we see: the boar, massive and furious, spread across his might chest which surely was muscled and hairy like the beast's. Thus we must wonder if Balin is Odysseus' boar. I answer: Surely, he is.
More tomorrow.
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