Mordred, you bastard.

Numeral 13 is Mordred: Bastard Son by Douglas Clegg.

I love Arthurian legends, as I may have mentioned before. I read a lot about them. It is a rich legend full of interesting characters that you really can do just about anything with. So, I never usually mind when new things are tacked onto characters or small twists or turns are taken with things, so long as the story still stays true to the overall legend, so long as the internal consistency of the legends are intact.

But now and then, a change is made or something is added to a character that I just don't quite agree with, or it just doesn't ring true with me. And that's what's happened in this book.

Mordred: Bastard Son is supposedly the first part in a trilogy, where Mordred is telling about his life, so basically, this is the Arthurian Legends told from Mordred's POV. Which isn't novel, its been done before, and that's fine. Mordred, in the tales, has been everything from misunderstood to outright evil. I don't really have a preference, he is what he is, and ultimately, that is the villian of the piece.

Clegg has obviously read his Mists of Avalon, for that's very much what Mordred: Bastard Son feels like. This book deals with Mordred's upbringing in Broceliande, under the tutaledge of his mother, Morgan Le Fey, Viviane, the Lady of the Lake, and of course, Merlin. Mordred lives in a fantasy-like setting, surrounded by people of the old Celtic tribes, hidden away from a vengeful and fearful father, where he learns all manner of magic. There's really nothing wrong with the character of Mordred, he seems to be an earnest lad, he wants to learn, he wants his family (mainly his mother) to be happy, and he's unsure about the awesome, distant father he has, especially since his father so wronged his mother (we're lead to believe that rather than Arthur being the victim here, it was he who forced himself on his half-sister Morgan, and then tried to have her killed when he found out she was pregnant). No, but the main divergence in Mordred's character in this book is that Clegg has made him gay.

Now, homosexual/homoerotic undertones (or overt-tones) are not new in Arthurian legends either. Its been noted in various places, such as Mists of Avalon, and heck, even in Monty Python's The Holy Grail, that the deep love Arthur and Lancelot feel for one another is not a strictly platonic thing. Mists of Avalon goes one further in actually having Arthur, Lancelot and Guinevere engage in a threesome, and after awhile, you get the idea that Gwen felt rather left out. And that never bothered me, in fact, I thought it kinda made sense, in some of the tales, I sometimes got the idea that Lancelot had that all consuming love for Guinevere because that was the closest he could get to displaying his love for Arthur in a physical way; that Guinevere was an extension of her husband. But this is the first time (that I can remember) where I've seen Mordred portrayed as gay, and I think I don't like it because it feels like its too much.

Mordred's role in just about every tale is to be the villain, yes, but also to be that of the Other. Due to the circumstances of his birth, he is always considered tainted, the child of incest can never be fully accepted by society because he is the product of an extremely large societal taboo. Now I'm not saying this is correct because really, the blame shouldn't fall on him for something he could do nothing about, but that's the way it is in the tales. Mordred is forever on the outside looking in, and in those tales where he desperately wants to be accepted but never will, those are the ones that are most poignant. But making him gay, placing another societal 'taboo' on him, is nearly overkill. The deck is already stacked against Mordred, does it really need to be more so? I don't think so. Oh sure, I guess it adds another angle of angst to the character, but I just think its an unnecessary one.

I don't disagree with the choice to have Mordred's first lover be Lancelot. As I said, Lance has often been portrayed as having homosexual tendencies, and Lance has a long history of having ties to the Lady of the Lake and the Otherworld in which Mordred is raised in this novel, so its not far-fetched that their paths would cross. Of course though, in making Lance be rather more homosexual than just having homosexual leanings or perhaps being bi-sexual, I do wonder how Clegg will reconcile the more famous triangle that Lance is part of, because it seems to me, that by having Lance sleep with Arthur's gay son (who could be Arthur's sexual proxy in Lancelot's mind?), it makes one wonder just why Lance would switch teams and fall for Guinevere (although sometimes Arthurian authors make Gwen so horrible I'm often left questioning why Lance or Arthur fall for her, regardless of their sexual orientation). Of course, Clegg could just use some old standbys, magic spell, potion, etc, or he could just ignore it completely (ugh), but I guess we'll have to wait and see.

By the end of the novel, we've reached the end of Mordred's 'childhood'; he's well versed in magic and the martial arts, and he's just rescued the princess Guinevere from a plot devised by his mad aunt Morgause (who is currently the villain of the piece) and will now return the princess to her betrothed, King Arthur, therefore paving the way for the first meeting between the estranged father and son.

I am interested in reading on, but sometimes, this book focuses too much on the magic (an extended conversation with some practioners of magic of the goddess Hecate went on for what felt like ever), and I feel like I'm starting to have to skip the magic-babble like I would skip the techno-babble in a Tom Clancy novel, or the whaling-babble in Moby Dick or the marching-song babble in Fellowship of the Rings. Sure, stuff like that adds flavour, but after too much of it, I'm pretty freaking full.

It would seem to me that Clegg is obviously setting up Mordred as a more sympathetic character who has reasons other than just being evil to bring down his father's shining kingdom, so once again, its feeling very Mists of Avalonesque. But right now, Mordred is really the only well-drawn character and this lack of any interesting tertiary characters hurts a bit. By the end, this Lancelot was starting to feel a little more well-rounded, which is good, because well, a large part of my enjoyment of any Arthurian related book is how well Lancelot is portrayed. After all, he is my favourite.