Transcript of 714. King Arthur: Lancelot and the Round Table (Part 2)

And so Lancelot comes to the bed of Guinevere, King Arthur's queen, whom he adores, and before whom he kneels holding her more dear than the relic of any saint. And the queen extends her arms to him, and embracing him, presses him tightly against her bosom, drawing him into the bed beside her, and showing him every possible satisfaction: her love and her heart go out to him. It is love that prompts her to treat him so, and if she feels great love for him, he feels a hundred thousand times as much for her.

It's definitely correct, I think.

Well, I mean, clearly you think that, because you've written it.

Name a more iconic couple.

Stanley Baldwin and Theodora.

Will they be sung of in centuries to come? I have my doubts.

Surely.

But time will tell, maybe.

So Lancelot has gained entry, as it were.

Who were Matron.

Yeah, by heroic means. There's been some action with metal bars.

Yes, so he's pulled them apart. They were on Guinevere's window, and he's done it with his bare hands, and he's cut a finger right the way down to the nerve as he does so. But Chrétien tells us, "So focused was he that he paid no heed to the wound." So that's true devotion. What Chrétien is describing here, the depths of his erotic passion, the rapture of its consummation, that this is perhaps the single most influential passage of erotica ever written by a medieval author.

Yeah, this is at the very centre of the idea of the chivalric romance, isn't it? And this text, I guess, is the foundational document of it, to some extent.

I think more than to some extent. I mean, I think it absolutely is fundamental.

Okay.

Because it's the text that introduces the love that Lancelot has for Guinevere to the world.

Yeah.

Chrétien de Troyes is writing it sometime around 1180, and he's doing it in obedience to a very, very glamorous patron. And so this patron is Marie of France, the Countess of Champagne. And in his dedication to Marie, Chrétien salutes her as, I think, only a top medieval French poet can. He writes brilliantly, "I am not one to wish to flatter my lady. I will simply say the Countess is worth as many queens as a gem is worth of pearls."

But of course, what he's doing there is what a knight should be doing with his lady. He's flattering her and paying homage to her beauty. And he's flattering somebody who is not just beautiful, so he says, or so we're led to believe, but incredibly important and powerful. I mean, she is the biggest patron in the Western world at this point.

I think you could say that Marie of France, who I'm guessing quite a few people may have never even heard of, that she ranks probably as the single most consequential literary patron in the whole of medieval Europe. She's also incredibly glamorous in terms of her parentage, because she's the daughter of the King of France, Louis VII, and her mother is the most glamorous and charismatic woman of the age, Eleanor of Aquitaine.

Oh, yeah.

And Eleanor of Aquitaine is a woman who is all about courtly love, because her father, Duke William IX of Aquitaine, he is the archetype of a courtly lover. So he is the earliest troubadour whose poetry survives. And troubadours are poets from southern France, and so Aquitaine is a part of that, who are very distinctive. They are celebrating love as an almost spiritual calling.

Yeah, the Anjuvian Empire.

Yeah, a vast agglomeration of territories. And this presents a terrible threat to the French monarchy, potentially a mortal one. And so, unsurprisingly, the rivalry between the French and the English crowns in the second half of the 12th century is a ferocious one, and indeed it will continue after the death of both Louis and of Henry II. But it's important to emphasise that it's not just about war and rivalry, because even as Chrétien is beginning to write these romances, the lands on either side of the channel, France and Britain, you know, they are joined by more than just the mutual enmity of their two kings.

So people will remember from the last episode that that kicked off with Brutus from Troy beating the giants, then it went all the way up to Athelstane, and that the centre of it is the story of Arthur and his reign. And this is where so many of the elements derive that are then picked up by Mallory and others. And Geoffrey's book had basically hit the shelves. I mean, I don't know what it hit the tables.

The scriptoria.

Yeah. You described him, didn't you, as the sort of the equivalent of the Tolkien or Rowling of the day.

Yeah.

So a fantasy writer that people actually, they cannot get enough. They're queuing up in Waterstones for it.

Yeah.

And so at this point, and it's at Marie's court, so 30 years after this, that you have the crossover between Geoffrey of Monmouth and then the troubadours singing about forbidden romance and people stealing into each other's bedrooms and all of that.

Yes. And the guy who leads the way is Chrétien de Troyes, and that is why he is as significant a poet as any who's ever lived in, you know, the European tradition.

Okay, wow.

He is that important. And I think you can gauge a sense of the impact that he has from the plot of Lancelot, which is the story in which that consummation between Lancelot and Guinevere that you opened this episode with features. So what is the plot of this poem? It opens at Arthur's court on the feast day of Ascension. And as always will tend to happen in Arthurian romances after Chrétien, he basically is establishing the template. You have this great feast, Arthur's presiding over it, and a strange figure arrives at the court.

And to be fair to Guinevere, I mean, she doesn't always behave well in the Arthurian romances. But you can see why she would be.

Yeah, a bit cross.

I mean, yeah, her husband's basically just reduced her to an absolute bargaining chip with the most useless person at the court to defend her honour, and everything has proceeded as she might have feared.

Yes, I mean, I think you can see why she'd be cross. However, that said, Arthur does send all the various knights of the Round Table off to try and get her back. And among these is his best knight, his nephew Gawain. And on the way, Gawain overtakes a knight whose horse is on the point of collapse because he has been pursuing the queen, I mean, absolutely frenetically. And this knight is Lancelot, although actually Chrétien doesn't reveal his name until about halfway through the poem, but we'll call him Lancelot because that's who he is.

Yeah.

As in the French Revolution, so in the Middle Ages, tumbrals are used to carry criminals around and make them into objects of derision and mockery. And the dwarf says to Lancelot, "I will give you news of Queen Guinevere if you agree to get off your horse and get into the tumbral, and I will drive you through all the various towns and villages." And for a fraction of a second, Lancelot hesitates, because this is such a monstrous humiliation that any knight would shrink from it.

The only person who could have told her is the dwarf.

Or Lancelot.

Lancelot would be mad to tell her that, wouldn't he?

Well, you've got to be honest with your lady.

I thought about not doing it and then.

No, you've got to be honest with your lady, Dominic.

Insane from Lancelot's. I mean, he deserves everything that's coming to him. Right, so let's stop here, stand back, and look at the story that Chrétien tells. What is so special about this story? I mean, you've been making great claims for Chrétien and indeed for this story. What makes this different from what the stories that people have been telling up to this point? Why does it have such an extraordinary impact on the imagination of medieval Europe?

I think it's a cocktail, Dominic. It's a cocktail of various elements.

Yeah.

So a lot of the elements of this story come from Wales. And we promised our Welsh listeners that there's going to be a lot of Welsh history in this.

You can end the show there. That's the explanation. That's all I needed.

Well, no, because we want to look and see what are the Welsh elements in this story.

Oh, you're right, actually. When we've got some Welsh history, we want to delve deep, do we not?

We want to plunge deep into the murk of Welsh history.

Into the mine. Into the coal mine of Welsh history.

So lots of the characters who feature in this story, they have a Welsh background. So Arthur, Guinevere, Kay, Gawain, these are all characters who've been mentioned by Geoffrey of Monmouth and who feature as well in 11th and 12th century Welsh poetry. So Guinevere, like Morgan le Fay, like the Lady of the Lake, is basically a Welsh woman. So great to have at least three Welsh women on the show. Meligon isn't mentioned by Geoffrey, but he does feature in a hagiography, so the life of a saint, that had been written by one of Geoffrey's mates.

Oh, interesting.

Because Melwas abducts Guinevere, and he takes her to Glastonbury.

Yeah.

Which we were talking about in the previous episode. And he imprisons her there behind reed beds, floodwaters, and marshes. So that's from the tale. And there he rapes her. And Arthur's looking for her and finally tracks her down. And he's preparing to free her by attacking Glastonbury, when disappointingly, the saint, who's a Welshman called Gildas, we'll be hearing about Gildas again later in this series, Gildas pops up and completely ruins the story by negotiating between Melwas and Arthur and securing the release of Guinevere.

Especially as Melwas has behaved poorly and deserves his come-up.

Yeah, I agree. But the odd thing is that this story is obviously being taken, I guess, by probably Bretons across Christendom. It's definitely reached northern Italy by the beginning of the 12th century because you remember that carving that appears on the Cathedral of Modena in northern Italy.

I do.

It's the earliest carving showing Arthur and his knights. The scene it shows is Arthur advancing on Melwas' castle to free Guinevere. So it's clearly very popular. And I think that although we don't have any source material, it clearly derives from the kind of Welsh mythology that Tolkien loved. So elvish, otherworldly lands that are perilous to enter, very difficult to escape, a kind of sinister Lothlorian. It's that kind of thing.

Yeah.

So Gaure is elvish, I guess, in its kind of character. So there's all these Welsh traditions, which are very venerable. They're very ancient. But at the same time, what Chrétien is doing in his story is he's fusing them with elements that are French and very, very cutting edge. And so the most obvious of these is the character of Lancelot himself, because Chrétien is the first-dimension Lancelot.

Yeah.

Scholars have obviously been very keen to know where does this figure suddenly pop up from. You know, they kind of derive his name from German or old French or even Welsh sources. But it's entirely possible that Chrétien has made the name up himself. I mean, it has kind of hint of Lance.

Yeah.

And as we'll see, Lance is quite important in this story. And also, scholars have kind of tried to distinguish, maybe there's a pre-existing folktale that Chrétien is drawing on. So it's telling, perhaps, that in another of his romances, Chrétien refers to Lancelot as Lancelot du Lac, of the lake.

Yeah, of course. Yeah.

And the reason for this, supposedly, is that he's been brought up by a fairy queen who lived beneath a lake. And so it's not surprising that within a few decades, Lancelot has been cast as the foster son of the Lady of the Lake. But again, it seems at least as likely that Chrétien has just made Lancelot up completely. And I think the reason why this is a credible theory is that he so plainly embodies everything that is kind of cutting edge about nightly fashion in the mid-12th century. So most obviously, he is the absolute archetype of a courtly lover.

Right.

He is the ultimate Troubadour hero. And this is why, you know, he is happy to sacrifice his personal honour in the cause of his beloved by getting into that tumbral. And this is counterpointed to Gawain, who is also asked by the dwarf if he wants to climb into the tumbral. And then Gawain can hear what the dwarf has to say. And Gawain says no, because Gawain is old school, and he's not interested in humiliating himself in that manner.

So Lancelot's a very modern figure in that sense. And he's modern throughout, right? So readers at the time or listeners would have interpreted Lancelot as a figure much like themselves, not like Arthur is a figure from antiquity.

So in Britain, Gawain remains the great hero. Gawain is seen as the ultimate knight, really, in Britain, right the way up to Mallory, who actually loves Lancelot, as we'll see. But in France, Lancelot is seen as, you know, he becomes the great hero of the Arthurian stories almost overnight. And I think that is because Lancelot is embodying, you know, this incredible new trend in loving and fighting. So it's not just that Lancelot is happy to get into the back of the tumbral in the cause of rescuing his beloved.

And he's getting this in the Troubadours. It's the Troubadours who are so obsessed with adultery and deception and stuff.

Yes.

And he's just simply picking this up.

Yes. It's a display of everything that's most edgy and glamorous in the literature of mid-12th century France.

Right. Got it.

And Chrétien has found the perfect hero to exemplify it. But just to say that the impact of the Troubadours is evident not just in the character of Lancelot, but in the character of Arthur's court. And a significant marker of this, I think, is the name that Chrétien gives to it. So in his history, Geoffrey of Monmouth had placed Arthur's court in the Welsh town of Caerleon, so the city of the Legion, thereby rooting it in the ancient history of Rome, giving Arthur the kind of the pattern of antiquity.

Yeah.

It's a novelty in Chrétien. In its wake, it becomes the absolute convention.

When I think about Camelot, it does look like a sort of 12th or 13th century French court, I suppose, with the sort of the towers and the banners and the flags and the damsels and all of that. And of course, a big part of that is that there just seems to be a permanent tournament going on. And that, I guess, is also a reflection of the political and sort of cultural currents of the time, isn't it?

And of the influence of Chrétien, because it's in a tournament that's staged before Guinevere and the Lady of Camelot that Lancelot is demonstrating his devotion to the queen by playing the coward on her commands. So, you know, he's riding into the lists. Guinevere sends a message saying, "Run away," and so Lancelot has to do it.

Yeah.

And then when she commands it and says, "Actually, go in and prove yourself the greatest knight in the world," Lancelot does that as well. And the climax of this, of course, is when he fights with Meligon, the guy who's abducted Guinevere, defeats him, beheads him. And again, this is being done at Camelot in front of Guinevere. So to quote Morris Keene, great Oxford historian, who once interviewed me for Oxford.

He interviewed me. He interviewed me as well. He was a tutor of Balliol.

Oh, well, Dominic, that's something we share. That's something we share.

Did he let you in, though? That's the question.

Well, I went for Cambridge instead.

I said no.

If I'd gone for Oxford, I would definitely have gone.

Yeah, it doesn't sound like it, but anyway, continue.

I think you'll find that Cambridge is number one in the rankings. Anyway, Keene wrote, "After Chrétien, no literary description of a tournament would be complete without its word picture of the watching ladies and of the tokens from their dresses, the sleeves of their gowns or their hair, which the champions proudly bear." That's basically what you're saying, that when you think of Camelot, that's what you think of. You think of the queen, the princess, gazing down at the knights, you know, she's bestowing tokens on them. And Chrétien, again, is the guy who establishes the template for that. But I think it's not just about the literature, right?

Oh, yeah.

And after the break, we will be exploring how Sir Lancelot became the poster boy for an entire revolution in the practice of medieval warfare.

I genuinely can't wait. We'll see you after the break, everybody. Welcome back to The Rest Is History. "A Frank on horseback could drive a hole through the walls of Babylon." Not my words, Tom, but the words of Anna Komnena, who was the daughter of the Byzantine or Roman Emperor Alexios I. And Anna Komnena was marvelling at the spectacle of the vast crusader army that in the last weeks of 1096 had arrived outside the walls of the new Rome, Constantinople.

Yeah. And her astonishment is unsurprising, because a knight on horseback is a new kind of fighter, you know, really, really novel. So at Hastings in 1066, so only 40 years previously, you hadn't had the spectacle of the kind of armed cavalryman that Anna Komnena is seeing. A crusader cavalry charge is even more intimidating than the charge of the Norman knights against the Anglo-Saxon shield wall. And that's because over the four decades that have followed the Norman conquest, horsemen have basically mastered a new and devastating way to handle a lance.

And what kind of people are we talking about? So stereotypically, we think of chevaliers, knights, as the nobility, well-born, you know, well-bred. But is that strictly true? And I guess this also takes us to the origins of the English word for them, as knights.

Yeah. Obviously, kings, barons, lords, they can afford the destriers, the armor, the arms, and all of that. That's not an issue for them. So in that sense, they are chevaliers. But actually, the word chevalier in the early 11th century had been quite declassé. Essentially, it's a name that is given to armed retainers of local lords. And they are not looked upon as being in any way classy. They are kind of akin to the heavies employed by a mafia boss.

Yeah, brothers in arms. But I can see what's in that if you've worked your way up and you're the parvenu. What's in it for you if you're, you know, the Duke of Norfolk or something? Why do you want to hang around with these people? Why do you want to be brothers with them?

Well, the Duke of Norfolk might lean on his immediate retainers because the Duke of Norfolk needs these guys at his back. And the king ultimately might then lean on the Duke of Norfolk, because the more that victory in medieval battle comes to depend on heavy cavalry, the chevaliers, operating as a kind of single body, you know, this great massed charge of Frankish heavy cavalry. So the more chivalry comes to seem to kings and dukes and such like, an absolutely brilliant way of fostering the esprit de corps that you need to form a coherent body of heavy cavalry.

Yeah.

And of course, Dominic, you will know what the most celebrated illustration of this principle is. It's devised in the mid-12th century just as chivalry is becoming fashionable across Christendom. And it is, of course, an entirely fictional one. And this is the Round Table.

And the roundness of it.

Yeah.

The roundness is key. There's no one at the head and no one at the foot, right?

The roundness is absolutely key. And it's completely telling that the Round Table, as a theme in Arthurian literature, first appears in the mid-12th century, exactly as this need for kings and such like to form their heavy cavalry into a kind of single body of men is becoming paramount. And it's introduced into the bloodstream of Arthurian literature by a Norman poet called Wace, great name.

Yeah.

And Wace is writing in the 1150s. It's a kind of updating of Geoffrey of Monmouth's history. And tellingly, he dedicates it to Eleanor of Aquitaine. So again, it's this idea of the fashionable southern kind of models of new behavior. Wace is buying into this as well. And the Round Table, you know, just as Lancelot seems to have been Chrétien's invention, the Round Table seems to have been Wace's invention, even though obviously he has to state otherwise, because it's supposed to be very ancient. So to quote Wace in his history, "On account of his noble barons, each of whom he felt he was superior, each considered himself the best, and no one could say who was the worst, Arthur had the Round Table built, about which the Britons tell many a tale."

It's a lovely idea. I'm curious whether any kings did actually introduce such a table.

No.

Oh, they didn't.

Okay. Well, there's that one that hangs in Winchester, but it's hanging from a wall. People are not actually sitting around it.

Because ultimately, the hierarchy is too important. You can't wish away the social organizations.

Yeah. You can go so far, but not, you know, the dukes aren't going to accept that.

Yeah, yeah.

But I think that what Arthurian literature does is that it offers ways, even though there isn't a Round Table, it does kind of offer paths for impecunious, upwardly mobile, ambitious young men to kind of make their way into the heart of courtly society in a way that would not have been possible before Chrétien's romances. So there are two shortcuts in particular, and both featured in Chrétien's romances, and both were centered on courts like those of Eleanor and Marie of France.

Yeah.

You know, treated as a kind of violet, but who displays his knightly prowess. And Lancelot is the only knight who recognizes this. And he champions Gareth from the beginning, ends up dubbing him as a knight, loves him like his own. And Gareth, in turn, adores Lancelot, models himself on him, prizes loyalty to Lancelot ultimately over loyalty to his own brothers. And that bond is seen as being entirely acceptable. You know, people understand why Lancelot and Gareth would be as close as they are.

Yeah, there's a problem with him there, isn't there? Because, you know, it's easy to think that people don't take the moral strictures of the day seriously, but of course they do. And Lancelot is breaking an enormous taboo. I mean, he's an adulterer and he's, you know, betraying his. You said he's unfailing in his loyalty to Arthur, but with one gigantic exception.

Yes.

Does this not create a problem for fans of the Arthurian romance?

I don't think it creates a problem for lots of fans of the Arthurian romances, but it does for some of them. And I think particularly Churchman, who, you know, are swept up on the craze, but are obviously very worried about its celebration of adultery. And particularly at the beginning of the 13th century, the Stursions, so Bernard of Clairvaux and the Ilk, who are very ascetic monks who almost by definition disapprove of Lancelot.

Wow.

And so it's Galahad won, Lancelot nil, in this Stursion-sponsored romance.

Galahad, I mean, he's a well-known figure, but he never quite inspires the same affection, does he, as Lancelot or indeed Gawain or Arthur himself, because he's just so untouchable and sort of.

He's too perfect.

Yeah, too perfect. Exactly.

I mean, chilly, prickish.

Yeah.

Ultimately unappealing. And I would say that for many lovers of chivalry, it's the fact of Lancelot's very sin, which makes him such an appealing role model, because ultimately, of course, Lancelot's sin is a sin that is hardwired into the way that chivalry is understood. I mean, it's been there right from the very beginning.

Right.

And I think that in the greatest romances, this generates a really profound tension on occasion, a tragic tension. And there's no romance that illustrates this better than the greatest of all the romances, which is Mallory's Mortearther. And I would say, I mean, you may disagree with this because you're not a Lancelot fan, but I think that to Mallory, Lancelot, even though he loses out on the Grail quest to Galahad, he's not just the real hero of the Mortearther, but he also provides it with its kind of moral fulcrum.

Yeah. But Lancelot's great offense, which is the adultery with Guinevere, I mean, that is the thing that ultimately destroys not just Arthur, but the whole world of Camelot, isn't it? I mean, this is the fatal flaw in the entire project.

Yeah, and that is the great tragedy. And that's what makes the Mortearther such a moving tragic book to read, because obviously it's Mordred who conspires to destroy the Round Table, but it is Lancelot who gives Mordred his chance. You're absolutely right. Now, listeners, if you haven't read the Mortearther, what is it that precipitates the downfall of Camelot? I mean, we talked about the last battle in the previous episode, but the build-up to this is that Mordred and his brother Agravane, who like Mordred is a kind of sneaky, murderous guy who operates in the shadows, they set out to surprise Lancelot and Guinevere in bed, and they finally achieve this.

Which Lancelot does, of course, but too late. I mean, there's the tragic irony. He gets there and he finds Arthur. Well, Arthur has been mortally wounded, hasn't he? And the Round Table is, you know, the knights are all destroyed and whatnot. Camelot is no more. And then he goes to find Guinevere, and she's become a nun in Amesbury.

In Wiltshire and the Salisbury area. So just down from Stonehenge.

Yeah.

Stonehenge will be featuring in our story in our next episode, just to flag that up. So yeah, he goes to Amesbury. He meets with Guinevere, who by now is an abbess. And Guinevere, when she sees Lancelot, swoons three times.

Yeah.

But she refuses to renounce her vows. And she basically tells Lancelot to go and ponder on his sins. You know, she's going to have no more of him. And Lancelot rides away weeping. And Mallory tells us that he threw his arms abroad and said, "Alas, who may trust this world?" And then in due course, he gives up being a knight altogether, and he becomes a priest.

So they've been punished for their sin.

Yeah, kind of. I mean, they've embraced their more spiritual sides, I suppose, at the end of their lives. The lesson that Mallory gives us in the Mortearther is that a knight can be the most perfect model of chivalry and yet still labor under a terrible guilty conscience. And we can never say for certain, because we don't really know anything about Mallory's inner life except what he reveals in the Mortearther. But I think it is possible to hazard a guess from the court records in which he appears as to why this idea of a knight who loves the ideals of chivalry but is suffering from a sense of guilt, why this might have had such an appeal to Mallory, why Lancelot meant so much to him, which he clearly did.

Yeah.

There is no other word for what he seems to have been. And so I will list just some of the offenses of which he stood accused in the various court records of the time. So the ambush and the attempted murder of the Duke of Buckingham, poaching deer from the estate of the Duke of Buckingham, extortion, theft, tattle rustling, horse stealing, assorted prison breaks, including on one occasion swimming across a moat, and a very specific crime, breaking into the house of a Coventry man called Hugh Smith, burgling him and raping his wife, Joan.

I mean, with that, you know, I mean, poaching, okay, fair enough. But this, for a lot of listeners, I mean, that's obviously crossed a massive line. And you already mentioned how when they in the Mortearther, Lancelot is riding with a, you know, there's a ward or something, isn't there? And he says, "What is he, a thief and a knight and a ravisher of women?" in horror. So is Mallory portraying himself? What's going on there?

There've been numerous attempts to try and explain this seeming discrepancy between the ideals that are on show in the Mortearther and the kind of seeming brutal reality of the author. Some have argued that the charges against Mallory are all trumped up for political reasons, possibly. You know, this is just a hunt by the Duke of Buckingham.

Yeah.

It's not going to be a particular object of Mallory's hatred.

Yeah.

Listeners who heard the episode that we did on Geoffrey Chaucer may remember that the word raptus, which the Latin word is in legal Latin, can mean rape, can also mean other things as well. And so there have been scholars who've suggested that perhaps Joan Smith wasn't being raped. She was eloping with Mallory. But I think that's special pleading.

Right.

I don't think most scholars think that. Others have argued perhaps it's a mistaken identity.

Trying a bit too hard. That strikes me as, yeah.

And others suggested that perhaps, you know, Mallory was much more of a Gawain than a Lancelot in the terms of the Mortearther, that he was someone who was given to violence, to blood feuds, to behaving intemperately, who nevertheless yearned to be a Lancelot. Because as the Mortearther makes very clear, actually, chivalric culture is very violent. I mean, it's structured around, you know, military activities, killing each other, all that kind of thing. And so perhaps it's not surprising that this is the, you know, the reality of what being a knight in the Middle Ages seems to have meant.

Oh, nice.

And at Joyous Guard, Lancelot's brother Ektor arrives not knowing that Lancelot is dead. And when he's told that his brother is dead, he goes into where his brother's body is laid out. And he prays by its side. And there he delivers what I think is both the greatest eulogy in the English language and the noblest tribute ever made to the great ideals of chivalry. And so let's finish today's episode by reading it in full. It's a banger. "Ah, Lancelot," he said, "thou were head of all Christian knights.

Wow. So the last word there goes to Sir Ektor on Sir Lancelot. But there is so much more to come. Because next time, we'll be meeting the one character who really does rival Arthur as a titanic cultural figure, indeed perhaps even exceeds him. And that is the wizard Merlin. So we'll be digging into the story of Merlin next time. And then after that, the moment that everybody has been waiting for, the rest is history, will definitively and exclusively solve the mystery of King Arthur by explaining just who he was.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.