Al's Archive

Overanalyzing the Waifu Gambling Game Pt.II-Historical Background

Before we can talk about what makes F/Go's Morgan so interesting we need to talk about the absolute mess that is Arthurian cannon. To put it mildly, Arthurian cannon is an absolute mess of almost a thousand years of fannon, OC's, and "well actualy". It's as bad as comic book lore. Say Morgan is the mother of gawain and someone pops up and is like "Uhm actualy that was morgause!". Shut up, the only consistent thing here is that Arthur has a sword.

To try and from an immage of Morgan that I can work with to analyse the version from the Waifu gambling game I'm gonna do two things:/

  1. I am going to take a look at how Morgan has been written through out the midle ages, pointing out a few important turning points as we go.
  2. Look through a bunch of modern media that inclues Morgan, as well as asking random people, and use that to create a kind of "lowest common denominator" Morgan. The immage that most modern people would recognise as Morgan Le Fay.

We start with Geoffrey of Monmout's Vita Merlini (c. 1150), where Morgan is... The chief of nine magical sisters who agree to take Arthur to Avalon for healing after he's mortaly wounded. That's it. She's less a person and more "Look the magical fae lady is gonna take care of the king!"

about 40 years later in 1190 we get the tales of Chrétien de Troyes, writing for the french court. Chrétien writes a bunch of stories about the Knights of the round, in one of these stories Erec and Enide Morgan shows up as Arthur's sister and can do some magical healing. In another story, Yvain, we get the implication that Morgan is the wife of King Urien and mother of the titular Yvain. Again Morgan doesn't really do much. She's got some more character traits via being a mother and wife but that's about it. Chrétien's stories are about knights and kings and honor, not Arthur's sister.

A little later we get the famous Vulgate Cycle (13th century), and Morgan starts to be more recognizable. She's a villain here, sending enchanted artifacts to hurt Guinevere, scheming against Arthur's court, the works. We don't really know why she's doing this byond a feeling of "I should rule". Honestly, the only thing that really separates Morgan from Skeletor here is that she tries to seduce a bunch of men. However, Morgan doesn't get a love story. Her interactions with men are characterised by a very Catholic "Evil sexy woman uses sex to corrupt pure god-fearing men" vibe.

Continuing this trajectory, we have Sir Thomas Mallory's La Morte d'Arthur (1485). In this Morgan is Arthur's half sister, she's educated in magic and does antagonist things to take down Arthur. In the end she makes a Face turn and takes Arthur to Avalon after everything goes to hell. She fails the Bechdel test hard, everything is about Arthur and not in an interesting way.

You might be noticing a few commonalities at this point, so let's summarize. Morgan is consistently characterized by:

*Functional definition: she is defined by what she does (Heal, scheme, seduce)

Now we get to modern Morgan. After looking through a bunch of wikis, as well as talking to a bunch of people, I've compiled a list of common traits. There's a lot of overlap with the some of the later historical texts but some interesting points of divergence.

*One of the big points is that Morgan is often fused with Arthur's other magic half sister Morgause. traditionaly Morgause is the wife of the king Lot of Orkney, and mother of Gawain, Gareth, Gaharis, Agravain, and Mordred. While Morgan is the wife of king Urien and mother of Yvain. Many modern versions get rid of Urien and Yvain, making Morgan the Matriarch of the Orkney clan and widow of King Lot. *Morgan maintains a connection with Merlin, but loses her association with healing.

To cap this all off we have the Morgan from the main timeline of Fate/, I'll be calling her just "Morgan" to try and avoid confusion later on. Names are gonna be very important as you'll see in later parts.

Fate does something I find very interesting. You might've noticed as we discussed the historical texts that Morgan's actions can fall into three categories.

  1. Morgan the fae, who aids Arthur in his time of need and is associated with Avalon
  2. Morgan, sister of Arthur, who is a "Good guy", part of the court, and advises Arthur
  3. Morgan the Witch, who opposes Arthur, curses the righteous, and generally causes trouble A lot of modern texts will either pick only one of these aspects (often Morgan the witch), if they pick more than one, it's often the story of how Arthur's sister becomes his nemesis. Stuff that makes logical sense./ Fate goes the opposite route, it says that Morgan isn't one or the other. She's all three at the same time and that's part of what messes her up so badly. Morgan essentialy has three personalities, born from the contradictions of her existence as both a human and a fairy, her role as witch and rightfull king, and her love and hate for her sister. There is Artoria's caring sister: Morgan the Human, Vivian the Fairy: The lady of the lake, and the rightful king of britain, the witch Morgan le Fay.

Morgan is the Daughter of Igraine and Uther Pendragon, and older full sister to Artoria (remeber king Arthur is a girl in Fate). She is also a great fairy born from the Inner sea of the Planet (We'll get to what that is in a later part). She was the rightfull heir to the throne of britain, not just because she's the oldest child of Uther, but also because she's got the primordial magic that only the "owner" of britain gets. Despite all this her sister Artoria takes up the sword of selection Caliburn, disguises herself as a man, and becomes the once and future king, Arthur Pendragon.

Morgan becomes the wife of King Lot of Orkney, and has four children with him: Gawain, Gaheris, Gareth, and Agravain. All of whom reject their mother and become good knights of the round table. Later she does a no no to her sister, "extracts her genetic material" and creates Mordred as a weapon against Arthur.

Somehere in between doing a terrible job raising her children, one of Morgan's personalities "Lady of the Lake Vivian" finds and raises Lancelot.

After sending Mordred to camelot Morgan takes a backseat untill everything is over and everntualy farries Arthur over to Avalon.

Woo, that was a lot of ground to cover, I hope you see now why I'm breaking this up into multiple posts. Honestly there was a lot more I could cover but I am trying to exercise a little bit of restraint. Next time we start with Lostbelt No.6: Avalon le Fay, the moment a star is born!