Saying goodbye to the pesky love-triangle in Arthurian lore by adding some pirates

How I made Arthurian lore my own. Note: possible spoilers for The Grail Cycle ahead.

By Kate Schumacher

The complete Grail Cycle by Kate Schumacher

To say I’ve been obsessed with Arthurian legend since I was a kid is a bit of an understatement. I blame my mother and perhaps some inkling of ancestral memory from her side. We’ve got Cornish heritage, but it wasn’t until I was older that I learnt of the connection between Cornwall and King Arthur. Arthur was supposedly conceived at Tintagel Castle in Cornwall, later becoming king and defeating Picts, Saxons and the Irish, then establishing Camelot, marrying Guinevere, and we know the rest of this story.

Don’t we?

Over the years, I’ve read everything I could about Arthurian myth, wanting to know more about the knights of the round table and their chivalric code. Needing to know more about the magic and more about Morgan Le Fey, who has always been my favourite character.

I’d always wanted to write my own version of the legends of King Arthur and for a long time, I had no idea where or how to start. So, I began with history and trying to find out if the man, and the legend behind him, were true.

What I also discovered was the rich maritime history of Cornwall, and piracy. Popular culture represents these sea-faring rogues in their Golden Age, generally sailing around lush Caribbean islands. Cornwall has its own connection to the Golden Age of Piracy. The geography of Cornwall made it ideal for pirates, with hidden coves like those near Penzance, which meant pirates could moor their ships without being detected. Cornwall’s closeness to the Atlantic Ocean meant that pirates had access to ships traveling to and from Europe, Africa, and the Americas. Pirates were even thought to use the sea caves beneath Tintagel Castle.

It was therefore an easy choice to include pirates in my series. What that meant though, was learning, in theory, how to be an actual pirate and what all the different parts of a ship are called - even what the different ships were called eg a frigate versus a galleon. Ahoy matey indeed. I’ve never sailed a real ship in my life, but I think I could, maybe, if necessary!

History of the legends

King Arthur first appeared in early Welsh texts like the poem Y Gododdin (late 6th/7th century, possibly 9th century) as a metaphorical reference, and then in the Historia Brittonum (c. 830 AD), where he is as a military leader fighting Saxons in the Battle of Boden, which occurred in Sub-Roman Britain. These early texts took the first steps towards establishing him as a heroic figure prior to the development of the legends we know. Then we have Annales Cambriae (c. 960 AD), mentioning the Battle of Badon and the Battle of Camlann, where Arthur was slain.

Enter Geoffrey of Monmouth (1136 AD), whose Historia Regum Britanniae (The History of the Kings of Britain) shifted Arthur from a Dark Ages warrior into a king. Geoffery’s text gave us a new version of Merlin, Camelot, and a mostly fictional history.

I have drawn on a lot of different source material to write my version in order to settle on my own interpretation of the characters and the tales that surround them. TV shows and films have been a great place to start, to see how others have interpreted the characters, but I revisited literature as well: Le Morte d’Arthur, by Thomas Malory; Idylls of the King, by Alfred Tennyson; Vita Merlini, and The History of the Kings of Britain, by Geoffrey of Monmouth; The Mists of Avalon, by Marion Zimmer Bradley; Arthurian Romances, by Chretien de Troyes; The Sword in the Stone and The Once and Future King by TH White; and Gawain and the Green Knight, amongst others.

Then I needed to decide what I would keep, and what would be discarded. The love triangle had to go - that was an easy decision, because I’d never liked that inclusion. Not because I have anything against love triangles – I just don’t like this one. Mainly because it diminished Guinevere’s role to one based purely on desire, transforming her into a catalyst for the end of the world Arthur had built. A little like a certain woman who ate a certain apple…

I always felt she was more than that, so I wrote her as I wanted to see her – strong, refusing to be a tool, a woman who claims her power and is loyal to the man she loves. In my story, though, this is not Arthur.

The Legends of King Arthur – retold my way

I’ll start with characters. Arthur, of course, had to stay, but I decided to write him as a young man unsure of his place in the world. Through the series, with the help of Merlin and my usual suspects - the meddling gods - Arthur takes his place as a prophesied King. My version of Lancelot - a pirate named Ordes - is no knight of any tables, but like the Lancelot of legend, he is noble, honourable and loyal. Plus, he’s a pirate, so it’s green flags all around really. Guinevere becomes Jenyfer, a young woman living in a fishing village who must keep her magic and her affinity with the ocean secret. Jenyfer/Jennifer is the English variant of Guinevere, which is French, and Gwenyfar, the Welsh. Morgan Le Fey is there, but not as you’d know her. She’s fierce and powerful, and I wove Tintagel into her history as part of her name (more on her below). Merlin/Myrddin is there, but again, not as you’d know him. Niniane makes an appearance as the Goddess of Magic, Mistress of the Isle of Avalon. I have my variant of Bors and the Green Knight, Agravaine and Gaheris, and Morgause as the High Priestess of the land of Cruithea. Uther becomes Ulrian, a bitter and hard Chif of Kernou (Chif is Cornish for chief and Kernou is the Cornish word for Cornwall). And Uther’s love for Igraine is also there. Elaine makes an appearance also.

One of the most important characters to the story is Eseld, otherwise known as the Fisher Queen, who appears to Arthur in his dreams as a type of guide. She is the guardian of the Grail, as the Fisher King was in legend.

Onto Mordred. He’s another character who has fascinated me over the years. He’s been represented as an outright villain, as Arthur’s friend or his son, born of a union with his sister, Morgan. That was not a path I was willing to travel, nor did I want him to be the villain. What I’ve ended up with is a man who strives for power in a world where power is the divine right of women. As the son of the High Priestess, Mordred cannot inherit her position. Instead, he seeks power of his own, initially for his cousin, Arthur, who he’s grown up hearing stories about: a man prophesied to be a king, who will bring magic back to the world. But never meet your heroes, as Mordred himself says. His disappointment in his cousin initially provides the motivation for Mordred’s actions, which, by the time he realises his mistakes, are too late to undo. He commits himself to a path he knows won’t end well. I wanted to give him a moral greyness, as Mordred always has, but also moral fortitude. He sticks to his guns essentially, even once he comes to understand he is wrong.

Arming and Departure of the Knights Tapestry, Morris & Co., (1891-4)

Lamorna, Jenyfer’s younger sister, doesn’t have a parallel in the lore. She appeared firstly as a representation of the effects of a cultish religion on the young women of Kernou. She then took on a life of her own and became much more important to the series than I could have ever predicted. I absolutely love her and I’ve been surprised at how much readers have loved her.

Morgan Le Fey has always been my favourite character from Arthurian legend, and I often thought she got a raw deal as well, which is why I loved the Mists of Avalon, because it felt that Morgan’s story was finally being told. Morgan’s first appearances in Arthurian literature don’t expand her character beyond goddess, fey/fairy, witch or sorceress. At this early stage in the legend’s development, Morgan was usually Arthur’s magical saviour and protector. In one version, she is the one to take him to Avalon after he was wounded during the Battle of Camlann Field (Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Vita Merlini connects Morgan with the Isle of Apples - Avalon). Chrétien de Troyes chivalric romances depicted her as a healer. As the legend evolved, Morgan’s role increased, and so did her moral greyness. Some texts paint her as the antagonist (especially the Lancelot-Grail and the Post-Vulgate Cycle, both Old French texts). Morgan became a figure capable of both good and evil. Then came the later romances, where we begin to see the Morgan popular culture presents us with - seductress, half-sibling of Arthur, his greatest enemy, instrumental in his death.

Morgan le Fay by Frederick Sandys, 1864

She fascinates me, and the way her character has evolved and changed over time fascinates me as well. Was she simply too powerful, too much, for a 13th century Britain, who felt the need to reshape her because they could not tame her? To me, she’s always been the source of feminine power, so by tearing her down, by making her Other, especially in comparison to Guinevere and the other ladies of Arthur’s court, an attempt was made to diminish her. Like with Guinevere’s character, I wanted to give her back her power.

Here be dragons

The dragons needed to stay. To be trendy right? Not exactly. Dragons play an important role in Arthurian legend, and as the Grail Cycle is a reimagining of Arthurian legend, I needed some dragons.

In some of the early versions of the myth, Merlin reveals there are two dragons - a red and a white dragon - fighting beneath King Vortigern’s castle; the dragons were a metaphor. In the story, Vortigern was attempting to build a castle, but each night, the castle would be torn down. He had a young Merlin (named Myrddin Emrys, the original Welsh name) brought to him, intent on sacrificing this boy without a mortal father, as his soothsayers advised. Merlin instead informed him of the dragons beneath the castle. These dragons predicted the outcome of an important battle to come - the battle between the Britons and the Saxons. This was a bit of a mythological prelude to the invasion of Britain by the Saxons in around 410AD.

Vortigern and Ambros watch the fight between the red and white dragons: an illustration from a 15th-century manuscript of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain.

In the Grail Cycle, dragons are both literal and metaphorical, for … reasons. They’re mentioned in Merlin’s prophecies - ‘for the serpent to become the dragon, it must consume itself and be reborn.’ And Arthur is the Pendragon - Pen Draig in Middle Welsh, which means Chief of Dragons.

Places of legend

I’ve also included a specific place in my series - Dinas Emrys - a region in Wales, which, along with Cornwall, is the home of Arthurian myth. Dinas Emrys in my story is the location of a ruined castle, the seat of the former rulers of Teyath, the world where my story is set.

Then I have the land of Lyonesse. Lyonesse was a kingdom which, according to legend, consisted of a long strand of land that stretched from the southwestern tip of Cornwall to the Isles of Scilly in the Celtic Sea. It was lost after being swallowed by the sea. The Cornish name for Lyonesse is Lethowsow. Lyonesse appears in Arthurian myth and it’s the home of Tristan from Tristan and Isolde. While Tristan was away sneaking around with King Mark’s wife, his home disappeared. Lyonesse first appears in Mallory’s Le Morte D’Arthur, although other sources claim Tristan’s home was Leonois in Brittany. Tennyson described Lyonesse as the place of the final battle between Arthur and Mordred, whereas other versions have this battle occur on Camlann Field. In my version, Tristan has no connection to Lyonesse, but I wanted to include this place and maintain the connection to water, so I made it the home of the syhrens and their leader. Drowned cities/lands are a common motif in Celtic myth as well.

Camlann is also in my version, as the plain before the castle Dinas Emrys. Camelot will make an appearance - eventually. It can’t be an Arthurian story without it.

The Battle Between King Arthur and Sir Mordred, a 19th-century painting by William Hatherell.

The Holy Grail

I don’t think an Arthurian story works without the Grail. A symbol of Christianity, the Grail of legend was thought to be the vessel used to collect the blood of Christ at the crucifixion. Arthur and his Knights spent a lot of time searching for it.

The Damsel of the Sanct Grael by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1874)

In my story, the Grail has no association with Christianity, but is a magical vessel, used by the gods to create the world. It then ultimately needs to be used to reshape the world.

The Holy Grail serves as an important motif in Arthurian myth. It has been described as a cup, dish, or stone with miraculous healing powers. It sometimes provided eternal youth and was often guarded by the Fisher King.

Also, fun fact - historians have said that if King Arthur really existed, he would have been a 6th century king, not a medieval one, so no chain mail in sight.

I like that, but I went with pirates instead.

The Grail Cycle is available in ebook, KU, paperback, hardcover and the first three books are also available in audiobook. The final book in the series, To Rule a Kingdom, will be released in August 2026.