Posted on November 24, 2017, 11:25:02 PM by Jubal
How to tell if you accidentally end up in a classic Doctor Who episode
How to tell if you accidentally end up in a classic Doctor Who episode
By Jubal
By Jubal
As yesterday was Doctor Who's 54th anniversary, this week it's time for a Doctor Who article! In a format shamelessly borrowed-without-leave from The Toast, we bring you the ultimate guide to the many ways to tell if you suddenly find yourself in a classic series episode of Doctor Who. Hope you enjoy it!
You run down a tunnel. You have seen the tunnel before in a different place. Your pursuer has also seen the tunnel before in a different place. Neither of you consider this fact worthy of comment.
The TARDIS ends up in the wrong place.
The TARDIS doesn't end up in the wrong place because there wasn't a right place planned to start with.
You have reached a planet thousands of lightyears and several millennia from your home on earth. Everybody still basically looks human.
You have just freed a whole planet from its oppressive overlords. You have met no more than seven of the inhabitants in the process of doing so.
A corporation exists with a disconcertingly generic name and an even more disconcertingly generic plan for world domination.
There is some form of military personnel present. Whatever the problem is, they are intending to shoot at it. This proves to be a bad idea.
Something happens in a sewer system that could probably actually have been done overground in considerably more comfort.
Someone tells you with a dramatic flourish that they plan to conquer earth; you must once again do your best to try and sound surprised.
An alien power has hijacked your navigation systems and sent you into immense personal danger. This happens to you on a weekly basis.
There is a giant alien computer with impossibly complex circuitry the like of which would take a generation to decipher. Someone manages to remove just the right circuit in five minutes using a penknife.
You have been accused of treason and spying. You have been on the planet for five minutes and are not yet sure who you might have been committing it against.
An alien with an extremely obvious and widely known critical vulnerability comments repeatedly on the weakness of humanity.
You are permitted to access the seat of the planetary government and talk directly to its leaders despite absolutely nobody knowing who you are.
Nobody has ever queried the fact that most sentient life seems to evolve on planets that look uniformly like barren quarry pits.
A thing is a thing of the Daleks.
A thing is a thing of Rassilon.
You run down a tunnel a thousand miles underground. The walls wobble. This is fine.
There are strange alien growths everywhere. They are strangely reminiscent of common packaging materials.
There is danger, and injustice - but the main concern is that the tea is getting cold.
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Posted on November 17, 2017, 10:22:39 PM by Jubal
From Diceroll to Desktop
From Diceroll to Desktop
By Jubal
By Jubal
So, this week I’m going to be talking about some of the links between computer and board game design. I’ve been modding and designing computer and tabletop games for years in various forms, and whilst I’m certainly an amateur at both arts I thought it’d be interesting to share some of my thoughts on just one or two ideas of how these areas can link together.
Many of the features of good board and tabletop game design are pretty similar – indeed a good boardgame should be fun to play on the computer against a good enough AI (with the caveat that it often won’t be possible to build one). The reverse is less true, because computer games can sometimes use a level of calculation that you can’t reasonably mimic at tabletop level – a computer can, analogously, roll hundreds of dice and use the results every second without breaking a sweat!
Ultimately, both board and tabletop games can have similar sorts of goals, along sets of categories common to both – they can be games of skill, games of strategy, games of chance, games of story & evocation, or (most usually) some mixture thereof. I’m just going to pull out one or two thoughts on each of these elements, though they all deserve articles in their own right (and may get them in future if people are interested)! Elements of skill we’ll skip - these generally have the hardest parallels to draw, because they rely on an often very specific physical action or timing technique that can’t be replicated in a different game let alone a different system.
Strategy in computer games is usually played against an AI rather than another player – and this, oddly enough, is one of the areas where observing tabletop play can be most helpful. Artificial intelligences for playing games, to state the obvious, aren’t human. That often means that it’s really easy to make an AI that’s more than capable of beating humans, in most games – well designed AIs can see everything that’s happening in the game, calculate what to do hundreds of moves ahead, and control more things far more simultaneously than a human could manage. Such an AI is miserable to play against. We want AIs that act like humans, and that goes beyond simply ensuring that the AI makes blunders sometimes or is “slow” enough for the human to face.
Humans, for example, tend to have particular styles – perhaps preferred moves to use or units to train – that they will use even if not optimally calculated for the situation. They will also have particular sub-goals that they set themselves and try to achieve, often ending up in tunnel vision situations rather than recalculating every turn. Perhaps most importantly, they interact with other players in a human way – for an AI that can only see the scope of an individual instance of a game, it may not make sense to over-punish betrayals, whereas for humans used to the idea that there will always be another game, vengeance to teach a lesson is strategically common. Equally, friendships and alliances have lives of their own beyond mere calculation among humans, and that “stickiness” is similarly something that can be observed and then, potentially, replicated.
Moving on, there are numerous ways to present chance in a physical game. The most common tend to be dice and card decks, though spinners and other randomisation methods can be used. Dice and card decks are quite different – a die represents the closest analogy to a random number generator in a computer game, which is the usual mechanism for adding randomness there. Die-roll results are independent; that is to say, every single time you roll there’s the same outcome of getting, say, a 5. Computers, as mentioned earlier, have a lot more random number “power” than a human rolling a die, as they can roll dice with arbitrary numbers of sides and in as great a number as their designer chooses, but the systems are essentially similar.
It’s easy to assume that the same is true of a shuffled deck of cards – you’ll pick cards out and there’ll be a certain probability of any given type of card depending on what was shuffled in to begin with – but actually, if you know what cards have been drawn previously and you know what’s in the pack, you can subtract those from your mental list. If I have five cards – two green, two red, and one blue – I have a 40% chance of drawing a green at random. If I draw a green card first, assuming I haven’t shuffled all the cards again, the chance of me getting a second green card is now down to 25%. Now, this feature of a card deck doesn’t make it an inferior system, but it makes it a different one. The advantage and disadvantage of cards is that you know that after X goes, where X is the number of cards, you will get a certain type. Imagine the above scenario, and imagine that I win when I pull a blue card. If I pull a green, then a red, I as a player can actually be more hopeful about the third result, because I know my chances have improved to one in three, which wouldn’t be the case if I just used random numbers. As such, deck-type probability systems if the player knows that’s what’s being used, can be psychologically helpful for players. If you’re designing a computer game, medium you can mimic this kind of system easily by creating an array and “shuffling” it with a random number generator.
Finally, let’s think for a moment about storytelling in board and computer games, because it’s here where I think the two often have most to learn from one another. Boardgames often have to be far more minimalist in the way they tell stories – you have a limited range of pieces and options for players, and yet get those to immerse the players in a compelling way. This is worth thinking about for computer game designers, because it lets you strip down to the things that most evoke the theme you’re trying to go for – if you have just a paragraph of text at the start of a rulebook, or the illustration and title on a card, and you’re trying to evoke whole characters or settlements or cultures with that, what are the elements you really need in place and what’s just filler? Looking at how boardgames deal with the problem might help you find the answer.
On the other hand, boardgames can occasionally learn a thing or two about what can work in the more flexible of the computer-generated world, and think about how to replicate that on the tabletop. Computer game design can often afford to give players more depth of story and world, given the presence of (usually) a single player over a longer timespan. The ability to simulate a full setting in closer detail, rather than “boiling down” specific aspects of human decision-making to abstract rules as boardgames often must, also lends itself to certain levels of depth and consistency. Boardgame designers can perhaps learn from these more fluid environments how a story can be told with the freedom of simulated worlds, and then try and consider some of the reductions of those; as computer game design matures as an art in its own right, it becomes a stronger source of ideas for how players and their worlds can interact and stories can develop, and these things can then be brought into the often faster, sparser, more social worlds of board gaming.
I’ve only hinted in this article at a few ways that board and computer game designers could learn from one another – if you’ve got more thoughts, please do comment below or get in touch and I may try and write a follow-up article with more thoughts on this area. Hope you enjoyed reading!
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Posted on November 11, 2017, 12:05:48 AM by Jubal
The Two Cows Theory: Byzantine Edition
In this second historical Two Cows episode (after our first one, a trip to Ancient Greece), we sent our fictional cowherds to all the different time-spans and places in the Byzantine world. From the Macedonians to the Isaurians and the Heraclians to the Trapezuntines, it's all here. As ever, the Two Cows Theory attempts to explain concepts of government, culture, and philosophy through the simple means of one person with two cows. What could go wrong?
(In the case of Byzantium, quite a lot, it turns out...)
ARMENIA
You have no cows. You decide that everyone else’s cows are probably descended from yours, and take pride in this. You still have no milk.
THE ANGELIAN DYNASTY
You have two cows. You have no idea how cows work. The milk runs out.
THE DUCHY OF ATHENS
You have a small goat which you took from someone else in the first place. There is a surprising amount of bloodshed to determine who owns it.
BOGOMILISM
You have two cows. You believe that one of them is actually a sheep sold under false pretences. Someone kills you for this.
SECOND BULGARIAN EMPIRE
You have two under-fed cows. You petition the Emperor for more milk, and then start a war spanning decades because you are annoyed at his refusal. You are ultimately victorious, but someone assassinates you and takes the milk before you can drink any of it.
DIGENES AKRITAS
You have two cows. You feel this is insufficient, so you kill lots of people and take their cows. The result of this is that the Emperor gives you more cows.
THE DESPOTATE OF EPIRUS
You have one cow and one very large historiographical inferiority complex. Neither ends up producing any milk.
THE HERACLIAN DYNASTY
You have two cows. The Persians take one cow, you get the cow back, then take one of their cows, and vice versa and so on. Eventually, the Arabs get sick of this nonsense and take everyone’s cows.
ICONOCLASM
You have two cows. You destroy all pictures of cows.
THE ISAURIAN DYNASTY
You have two cows, but pretend you have three cows. The Pope gives your imaginary cow to the Franks.
THE JUSTINIANIC DYNASTY
You have two cows. You gain two more cows, make numerous laws about the cows, and compile the ultimate manual of cow-herding. People take your cows away anyway.
THE KOMNENIAN DYNASTY
You have two cows. You employ your entire family as cowherds.
THE LATIN EMPIRE
You have two cows. You claim to have twenty cows. You actually get all your milk from Venice.
THE MACEDONIAN DYNASTY
You have two cows, which you inherited in dubious circumstances. You have never previously owned cows. You successfully end up with five cows and a bull despite this fact.
THE EMPIRE OF NICAEA
You have one cow, and a burning desire to reclaim another which was stolen from you.
THE PALAIOLOGAN DYNASTY
You have two cows. You give one to each of your sons as an appanage, and then have to beg them for milk.
THE EMPIRE OF TREBIZOND
You have two cows. You hide them behind some mountains for two and a half centuries until someone notices.
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Posted on November 03, 2017, 04:24:46 PM by Jubal
The Bones of Earth: Creating Maps
The Bones of Earth: Creating Maps
By Jubal
By Jubal
I originally wrote most of this post for the now-defunct Exilian Academy a few years ago, but figured it could also sit here and get a new set of readers: it's simply a brief overview for setting designers, be you writers or game devs, looking at how to make realistic feeling earth-like geography. A lot of this is really about re-applying basic observations of our own reality, and working out the underlying rules that make them make sense and look right for our readers & players. At some point I may repost the follow-up article for worlds with geography very unlike our own, but even for most of those this should be useful.
A Planet's Bones: Plate Tectonics
This is an awfully high school teacher way of looking at things, but the old adage that a planet is kind of like an onion and has layers is actually pretty useful for a fantasy setting designer. The reason our Earth is the way it is and has the geography it does has a lot to do with the way it is made up - and so this leads us on to plate tectonics.
Our planet is made up of big plates of rock, floating on a molten core of magma (Note: it’s magma under the surface, lava when over the surface). The plate boundaries are shown above. So why is this important? The seas and mountains we have are often determined by where the plates are, and so it’s by understanding this system that we can work out what’s going to look right in terms of our own maps.
The basic thing to take away from this is that any really big mountains, any earthquake zones, and most volcanoes have to occur on a plate boundary or former plate boundary. (I say most volcanoes; Hawaii is in the middle of the Pacific plate where some magma has forced its way through the crust, but due to the volcano basically just being a hole through which some magma pours there isn’t much in terms of internal pressure.)
Secondly, plate boundaries go in lines. This is why it looks kind of weird if you try and make a mountain range that’s just perfectly circular with mountains in the middle and hills around the edge; imagine taking a piece of paper or cloth, putting your hands flat on the edges, and then pushing it together. That’s what the earth is doing, and so you need to make it look like that’s what’s happened. This certainly doesn’t mean you should try and map out all the plate boundaries in your world (though feel free to): if your world is of as old an age as our own there will in any case be plenty of mountain ranges that no longer have active plate boundaries next to them. The key thing is to think in natural lines.
A related feature to note is that peninsular regions are often bounded by mountains (India with the Himalayas, Italy the Alps, Iberia the Pyrenees) - this is because the peninsula is slowly shoving itself into the continent nearby. Mountains along shorelines are common, too, as a dense oceanic plate pushes itself down beneath (the Andes and Rockies fall into this category).
A Planet's Bloodstream: The Water System
Tectonics are one of the two major factors in land formations; the other is water. Water, in its various forms, has huge effects on the land around it. The three main forms of water we need to worry about are the river, the ocean or lake, and the glacier.
Rivers are always a key feature. The only really important thing to remember is that water flows downhill, and so any land area can be divided into “river basins” where all the water is heading for one river. Not all rivers have to start in the mountains, but many do; if your river flows in a direction other than towards the sea or a large lake without an obvious natural obstacle, it will look pretty darn odd. The edge of a river basin is called the watershed; watersheds can be important features in themselves, for example between the Waveney and Little Ouse River sources in the UK lies a thin watershed which is the only land bridge between Norfolk and the rest of England. Rivers are also notable in that they cause erosion and have different formations in different places; in the plains a river is likely to be deep, wide, and meandering, in the mountains it will be straight and fast-flowing, cutting out a steep-sided valley or gorge. The ends of rivers tend to have wide estuaries or deltas; putting a river going at right angles across the coast into the sea tends to look odd, particularly for large or major ones.
Oceans and lakes are important parts of any map. The first vital thing to note is that they are not standalone features; any major body of water must be fed by rivers and streams. Secondly, the rules of gravity still apply; a lake is likely to be at the bottom of a basin of rivers, or along a route to the sea where the way out is only thin (and so the water backs up into a lake). Coastlines are often a more difficult thing to work on, but do not need to be inherently difficult; remembering indentations where the estuaries and mouths of rivers are helps, as does noting that coastlines are rarely straight. They tend to be formed of bays with jutting headlands between them – harder rock forms headlands, softer soils and rocks will be eroded to make bays.
Glaciers are the last thing to note. When visiting many mountain ranges, you will see that they valleys are not as steep as you might expect if a fast flowing but thin river or stream had cut them. Huge U-shaped valleys are more likely the result of long-melted glaciers, huge walls of ice rolling down. These will also have deposited rocks not native to the local area (moraine) and formed canoe-shaped hills pointing in the direction of the glacier (drumlins). This characteristic set of features is common particularly in northern Europe or mountain regions since the ice ages, and remembering these can help add some realism to your features.
An Example: A Look at Middle-earth
If you take a look at a map of Middle-earth:
Examples include the long lines of mountains; the Ered Luin are good candidates for being on a current plate boundary, and all of the ranges generally fit together well in naturally flowing lines and curves (the right-angle over the Anduin where the Ered Nimrais meet the Ered Duath is odd, but not impossibly so). Note the water basin inside Mordor due to the Ered Duath and Ered Lithui; the water flows inland and therefore has to form the Sea of Nurnen. The river Lune in Eriador is an excellent example of a river basin lying between two sets of hills; the lake above the falls of Rauros shows how the water would have backed up before breaking through in the famous waterfall formation. The Brandywine, Greyflood and Isen all have large and visible estuaries rather than going into the sea at right angles, and note the large delta at the mouths of the Anduin.
Whilst it's possible to get these features right just from guesswork and a gut feel of how maps should look, it's certainly helpful to have these basic geographical features in mind when working out the shape of your world. I hope you've found this helpful - now get out there and get world-building!
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Posted on October 27, 2017, 11:05:36 PM by Eadgifu the Fair
The Best Dialogue of the Mabinogion
The Best Dialogue of the Mabinogion
By Eadgifu the Fair
By Eadgifu the Fair
When you think about the Mabinogion, if indeed you do think about the Mabinogion – the collection of medieval Welsh prose tales found in the White Book of Rhydderch and the Red Book of Hergest – you might think about magical boar hunts, or the birds of Rhiannon singing, or sheep that change colour. You might think about euhemerized deities or depictions of a fictionalised pre-Roman Britain. But it might not occur to you to think about dialogue, and that would be a shame, because as Brynley F. Roberts would put it, ‘Realistic natural dialogue which enlivens the narrative is a feature of all the tales’; or as I would put it, the dialogue of the Mabinogion can be really, really funny.
In this article I use Sioned Davies’ excellent translation; all the pictures are by Alan Lee.
Pwyll Pendeuic Dyuet
Pwyll begins as the story of how Pwyll, lord of Dyfed, won the friendship of Arawn, king of Annwfn (the Otherworld); but the latter half is devoted to Pwyll’s relationship with his wife Rhiannon. Let’s be honest, at that point it might as well be called Rhiannon, because Rhiannon is the best character in it – and a large part of that is her dialogue. Here’s her first encounter with Pwyll, after we’ve discovered that she rides past the same mound every day, and no-one can catch up with her:
Yeah. That’s the face of a woman who knows her horse is better than your horse.
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‘Groom,’ said Pwyll, ‘I see the rider. Give me my horse.’ Pwyll mounted his horse, and no sooner had he mounted his horse than she rode past him. He turned after her, and let his spirited, prancing horse go at its own pace. And he thought that at the second leap or the third he would catch up with her. But he was no closer to her than before. He urged his horse to go as fast as possible. But he saw that it was useless for him to pursue her.
Then Pwyll said, ‘Maiden,’ he said, ‘for the sake of the man you love most, wait for me.’
‘I will wait gladly,’ she said, ‘and it would have been better for the horse if you had asked that a while ago!’
This is the first thing she says in the story. This is the best entrance anyone has ever made into a story. It’s almost the best piece of dialogue in this story, but Rhiannon surpasses herself later on! Her ex-fiancé comes to Pwyll, disguised as a suppliant, and asks for a favour; Pwyll agrees to give him anything in his power.
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‘Friend,’ said Pwyll, ‘what is your request?’
‘The woman I love most you are to sleep with tonight. And it is to ask for her, and for the preparations and the provisions that are here that I have come.’
Pwyll was silent, for there was no answer that he could give.
‘Be silent for as long as you like,’ said Rhiannon. ‘Never has a man been more stupid than you have been.’
If I’m honest, I think this is the best line in all of the Mabinogion. But that might just be my overwhelming love for Rhiannon speaking. Pwyll must have been pretty impressed by this too, though, because at this point he starts calling her arglwydes – ‘lady’ – again, while she doesn’t call him arglwyd (‘lord’) again until he’s fixed this mess.
Branwen uerch Lyr
It’s difficult to pick funny dialogue out of Branwen because Branwen is not a funny story. Strange, yes, but dark: its climax is a battle which leaves almost all of Ireland dead, and only seven men of the British army alive. It focuses on Bendigeidfran, king of Britain, his sister Branwen and her ill-fated marriage to Matholwch, king of Ireland, and their brother Efnysien, an inveterate troublemaker. One of its major themes is the power of communication, whether that’s Branwen teaching a starling to speak so that she can use it to ask for rescue, Bendigeidfran’s head continuing to speak after it’s been cut off, or Efnysien – a character with a poisonous tongue if ever there was one – sacrificing himself to destroy the Cauldron of Rebirth, which can bring dead men back to life, but mute.
So it’s not surprising that really the only funny line in Branwen is from Efnysien, right before he commits the crime that sets off the final battle:
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‘Why does my nephew, my sister’s son, not come to me?’ said Efnysien. ‘Even if he were not king of Ireland, I would still like to make friends with the boy.’
‘Let him go, gladly,’ said Bendigeidfran. The boy went to him cheerfully.
‘I confess to God,’ said Efnysien to himself, ‘the outrage I shall now commit is one the household will never expect.’ And he gets up, and takes the boy by the feet, and immediately, before anyone in the house can lay a hand on him, he hurls the boy head-first into the fire.
It’s a horrible act! It’s an awful moment, right after the British and the Irish had made peace! But it’s just such a cartoon villain thing to say that it still makes me laugh: ‘They’ll NEVER suspect my plans!’ Efnysien, by the way, is the name of either Crabbe or Goyle in the Welsh translation of Harry Potter: I haven’t figured out which.
Manawydan uab Lyr
Manawydan is just as strange as Branwen – less dark, but just as weird and ominous. It’s the story of Bendigeidfran’s only surviving sibling, Manawydan, who returns to Britain only to discover that his brother’s throne has been usurped by Caswallon. He decides not to fight Caswallon, and retires to Dyfed instead with Pwyll’s son Pryderi, becoming the widowed Rhiannon’s second husband. (The timing of Manawydan is... wonky: if this is pre-Roman Britain, where it’s supposed to be set, Dyfed shouldn’t exist yet.)
And then everything in Dyfed disappears, leaving only Manawydan, Rhiannon, Pryderi and his wife Cigfa.
There isn’t much the four of them can do at this point, so they decide to go travelling in England, which also shouldn’t exist yet. Manawydan and Pryderi resolve to take up crafts to support the group, and that leads to this delightful exchange:
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‘What craft shall we take on?’ said Pryderi.
‘We will make shields,’ said Manawydan.
‘Do we know anything about that?’ said Pryderi.
‘We will attempt it,’ he said.
Of course, in the story, they’re so good at this – just as with every other craft they try – that they immediately become a roaring success, and the townsmen plot to kill them, forcing them to flee to the next town. Maybe we should all resolve to answer the question Do I know anything about that? with I will attempt it. On the other hand, it might lead to being driven out of town, so maybe not.
Math uab Mathonwy
Blodeuedd at her creation by Gwydion: the face of a woman bent on murder
There’s just the one hitch: no-one asked Blodeuedd how she felt about this, and she falls for local nobleman Gronw Pebr as soon she meets him. So the logical next step is for her to figure out how to kill Lleu, which she does thus, in conversation with him:
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‘I am thinking about something you would not expect of me,’ she said. ‘Namely, I am worried about your death, if you were to go before me.’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘may God repay you your concern. But unless God kills me, it is not easy to kill me,’ he said.
‘Then for God’s sake and mine, will you tell me how you can be killed? Because my memory is better than yours when it comes to avoiding danger.’
You wouldn’t think it could get less subtle than that, would you? But then comes this titbit, when Blodeuedd has led Lleu to his death-trap, and all that’s missing is the (necessary, for some reason) billy-goat:
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‘Lord,’ she said, ‘these are the animals you said were called billy-goats.’
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘have them catch one and bring it here.’
Really, Lleu? CATCH ONE AND BRING IT HERE? Your wife is pretending not to know what a goat is, and you still think nothing’s up?
Lleu’s luck holds good, though, and instead of dying, he turns into an eagle. His uncle Gwydion finds him, changes him back into a man, and helps him to get revenge on Blodeuedd and Gronw Pebr – Gronw Pebr is killed by a spear, but Blodeuedd is turned into an owl and her name changed to Blodeuwedd. Blodeuedd means flowers where Blodeuwedd means ‘flower-face’, a term for the owl, so yes, this whole episode is one giant excuse for a pun.
Owain, or Iarlles y Ffynnon
This story is one of several that takes place in or around Arthur’s court, and it begins with the men of Arthur’s court exchanging stories to amuse each other, inspiring Owain to go seek out the black knight he hears tell of in Cynon’s story. The preamble gives you a pretty good idea of what kind of dialogue to expect in the rest of the tale:
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Then Arthur said, ‘Men, as long as you do not make fun of me,’ he said, ‘I would like to sleep while I wait for my food; and you can tell each other stories, and Cai will bring you a jugful of mead and some chops.’ And the emperor slept. And Cynon son of Cludno asked Cai for what Arthur had promised them.
‘But I want the good story that I was promised,’ said Cai.
‘Sir,’ said Cynon, ‘it is better for you to fulfil Arthur’s promise first, and afterwards we shall tell you the best story we know.’
Cai went to the kitchen and the mead cellar, and came back with a jugful of mead and a goblet of gold, and his fist full of skewers with chops on them. And they took the chops and began to drink the mead.
‘Now,’ said Cai, ‘you owe me my story.’
‘Cynon,’ said Owain, ‘give Cai his story.’
‘God knows,’ said Cynon, ‘you are an older man and a better storyteller than me, and you have seen stranger things; you give Cai his story.’
‘You begin,’ said Owain, ‘with the strangest story that you know.’
When Cynon has told his story, Owain leaves the court to seek the black knight Cynon spoke of, and strikes him a mortal blow upon finding him. Later he finds himself in the castle of the dead knight, and falls madly in love with the knight’s widow. He also runs into Luned, the best character in this story:
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Owain asked the maiden who the lady was.
‘God knows,’ said the maiden, ‘a woman you could say is the most beautiful of women, and the most chaste, and the most generous, and wisest and noblest. She is my mistress, known as the Lady of the Well, the wife of the man you killed yesterday.’
‘God knows,’ said Owain, ‘she is the woman I love best.’
‘God knows,’ said the maiden, ‘there is no way she loves you, not in the very slightest.’
Luned, you’re on thin ice.
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‘Luned,’ said the countess, ‘how can you be so bold, seeing that you didn’t come and visit me in my grief? And I made you wealthy. That was wrong of you.’
‘God knows,’ said Luned, ‘I really did think you would have more sense. It would be better for you to start worrying about replacing your husband than wish for something you can never have back.’
‘Between me and God,’ said the countess, ‘I could never replace my lord with any other man in the world.’
‘Yes, you could,’ said Luned; ‘marry someone as good as he, or better.’
‘Between me and God,’ said the countess, ‘if I were not repelled by the thought of putting to death someone I had brought up, I would have you executed for proposing something as disloyal as that to me. And I will certainly have you banished.’
‘I am glad,’ said Luned, ‘that your only reason is that I told you what was good for you when you could not see it for yourself. And shame on whichever of us first sends word to the other, whether it is I to beg an invitation of you, or you to invite me.’ And with that Luned left.
The countess got up and went to the chamber door after Luned, and coughed loudly. Luned looked back; the countess beckoned to her. And Luned came back to the countess.
‘Between me and God,’ said the countess to Luned, ‘what a temper you have.’
I can’t decide which is my favourite moment here: Luned’s total dismissal of her mistress’ grief, or the countess’ cough to get her attention. Either way, somehow Luned’s logic works, and the countess marries Owain. One can only hope he was nicer to her than to her late husband.
Geraint uab Erbin
Geraint is another of Arthur’s knights, who spends the first half of his story being brave and honourable and making good decisions, and the second half being the worst asshole alive. The first half of the story tells how he won and married his wife, Enid. For a while all is well, and then in the second half, he starts to doubt her faithfulness (for no reason whatsoever, I might add). So he makes the logical decision to take Enid on a road trip into England (another anachronism – England only ever enters these tales when the mood is turning scary and hostile) and forbid her to speak to him. Enid does her best, but can’t stop herself from trying to warn him when she hears people plotting to kill him. Geraint takes offence at this. I know. I don’t know why she stays with him either.
So it’s very satisfying when Geraint, while seriously injured, runs into his fellow knight Gwalchmai (known for being polite and having good sense, and thus a rare character), and Gwalchmai drags him to see Arthur, who treats his temper tantrums with the respect they deserve:
Quote
‘Geraint,’ said Gwalchmai, ‘come and see Arthur: he is your lord and your cousin.’
‘I will not,’ he replied. ‘I am in no state to go and see anyone.’
[Gwalchmai arranges for him to see Arthur anyway]
‘Lord,’ said Geraint, ‘greetings.’
‘May God prosper you,’ said Arthur, ‘and who are you?’
‘This is Geraint,’ said Gwalchmai, ‘and by choice he would not have come to see you today.’
‘Well,’ said Arthur, ‘he is ill-advised.’
[Arthur talks to Enid, the first person to say something nice to her for months, probably]
‘Lord,’ said Geraint, ‘we shall be on our way, with your permission.’
‘Where will you go?’ said Arthur. ‘You cannot go now unless you want to go to your death.’
‘He would not allow me to invite him to stay,’ said Gwalchmai.
‘He will allow me,’ said Arthur, ‘and furthermore, he will not leave here until he is well.’
‘I would prefer it, lord,’ said Geraint, ‘if you would let me leave.’
‘No, I will not, between me and God,’ he replied.
Most of all, I love this exchange because it proves that the trope of Petulant Manchild With Weapon Refuses Medical Aid is at least a thousand years old.
(If you’re anxious about the fate of Enid, Geraint does eventually realise he’s been wrong all along, although he never apologises. I know. He’s the worst.)
Culhwch ac Olwen
Culhwch is like a fairy tale, if a fairy tale had, among other things, a strange fascination with pigs and the concept of shaving. Many scholars of medieval Welsh see it as a parody of fairy- or folk-tales: I like to see it as the medieval Welsh equivalent of Shrek. Culhwch is destined to marry no woman except for Olwen, daughter of Ysbaddaden Bencawr (‘Chief Giant’). He invokes the help of Arthur, who happens to be his cousin, in first finding and then winning her. Here’s an excerpt in which the party sent to look for Olwen encounter Culhwch’s aunt, who’s excited to meet her nephew:
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They made for the gate of the shepherd Custennin’s court. She heard them coming. She ran joyfully to meet them. Cai snatched a log from the wood-pile, and she came to meet them to try to embrace them. Cai placed a stake between her hands. She squeezed the stake until it was a twisted branch.
‘Woman,’ said Cai, ‘had you squeezed me like that, it would be useless for anyone else ever to make love to me. That was an evil love.’
No comment.
When Olwen is found, she reveals that her father will only live until she finds a husband, which is a fairly common motif for the daughters of giants, but not usually one they’re so blatantly aware of! Her father sets Culhwch several impossible tasks before he will give Culhwch Olwen’s hand in marriage: one of these is the hunting of the boar Twrch Trwyth, a king who was turned into a boar for his sins. Ysbaddaden must be shaved for his daughter’s wedding, and only the comb and shears that lie between Twrch Trwyth’s ears can do this.
Much to Ysbaddaden’s displeasure, Arthur helps out and Culhwch returns triumphant, and Caw of Prydyn comes to shave Ysbaddaden, leading to this exchange:
Quote
And Culhwch said, ‘Have you been shaved, man?’
‘I have,’ he replied.
‘And is your daughter now mine?’
‘Yours,’ he replied. ‘And you need not thank me for that, but thank Arthur, the one who arranged it for you. If I’d had my way you never would have got her. And it is high time to take away my life.’
Now, I’m not saying I’d like to be a giant who was fated to die when his daughter got married, but if I were, I think I’d like to go out on a note so ironic that I told her fiancé, It is high time to take away my life...
FURTHER READING
Charles-Edwards, T., ‘Honour and Status in Some Irish and Welsh Prose Tales’, Ériu 29 (1978)
Davies, S., The Mabinogion (2007)
Mac Giolla Chríost, D., Welsh Writing, Political Action and Incarceration: Branwen’s Starling (2013)
Roberts, B. F., Studies on Middle Welsh Literature (1992)