And now the mighty T. Rex gushes over Arthurian folk lore.
I’m reading Le Morte d’Arthur, though I am less than a quarter of the way through it (here’s where I grumble about it being a nine-hundred page epic made up of archaic vocabulary stumpers), and this is what I have to say about it today:
I. Love. Sir Kay. He is my favorite knight. And I have no idea why.
One of the first things he does in Le Morte is to run to his dad and say “Hey! I pulled this sword from that stone over there; I’m TOTALLY going to be king!” To which his father responds with a raised eyebrow and a skeptical “Oh really?” (I am paraphrasing, they actually said something with many more words like ‘wherefore,’ ‘anon,’ and ‘gat ye’). Kay hangs his head and sheepishly hands the sword back to Arthur. Then he stumbles around the rest of the book (or the first quarter of it, at least) getting on everybody else’s bad side. He picks fights indiscriminately. His buddies are constantly having to stifle his challenges in order to offer friendship to newcomers. When a bold hero rides out to have adventures, any Big Bad who has captured lots of good men usually has Sir Kay somewhere in his dungeon.
Why do I love this about him so? I don’t typically like hotheaded dishonest war mongers … Maybe it is that he reminds me of my nephew, who is not the smartest or the strongest of his brothers, but really really wants to be the best and the boldest.
Yes, perhaps that is it: Sir Kay wants to be the brave knight on the white charger. For that reason he will always challenge the next Big Bad, no matter how many dungeons he has weathered. He will always pick up his sword and fight again, no matter how many times he is beaten down. He will always stand tall and say “I’m the biggest and the bravest, and I RULE.” Because he yearns to be a hero.
I love Sir Kay.
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