The Bright Sword: What Happens When the Heroic Age Ends
Having grown up reading The Once and Future King and loving Arthurian legend, I was curious how Lev Grossman would approach his book. I was pleased to see The Bright Sword position itself as a post-Arthurian story, one that I don’t think has been explored much.
The Post-Arthur World
The story starts with Collum, an aspiring knight, arriving at Camelot and discovering King Arthur is dead, the Round Table shattered, and just a few knights remaining. Right away the rug is pulled under the reader and Collum, and creates space for quite an interesting story. During this set up we get more of a sense of England during this time, particularly of the paved roads and ruins that remain after the Romans abandoned England, grounding the legend of Arthur back to our real world.
Character Work and Storytelling
I felt that Collum as a character was okay, but him acting as a framing device to explore the remaining knights was a great tactic by Grossman. We get to read about Galahad, Palomides and Bedivere. For each we get a mix of present day action, and flashbacks to Arthur’s time.
Palomides’ background as an Arab from Baghdad who played polo and studied the Quran added some welcome diversity to the Round Table. Bedivere’s intimate perspective on Arthur’s rise revealed the human cost of legend making. Grossman’s Arthur isn’t a perfect king but a young man thrust into impossible circumstances, capable of “chilling his soul down to the temperature necessary for the sacrifice of loyal men.”
“a lot of heroes hate themselves, it’s why they work so hard to make everybody love them.”
The book’s central theme danced around the gap between the ideals of a hero and the messy reality of that ideal. The old saying ‘never meet your heroes’ seems to hit Collum hard as his romantic notion of knighthood vanishes upon meeting the remaining knights.
The life of a myth is an explored topic throughout the book. Grossman uses Arthurian legend to examine how myths survive the collapse of the systems that created them.
“An Empire that builds its walls in stone has stopped growing. And an empire that is not growing is dying.”
Final Thoughts
I enjoyed reading The Bright Sword and would recommend it, especially to anyone who is familiar with the Arthurian legend. I got to learn more about some of the knights I never paid attention to such as Galahad and Palomides, which are now way more cemented in my memory, and more interesting to me than perhaps stories of Lancelot. The book also continues to evoke a central theme that Arthurian legend usually tells, that even the legends of the idealistic kingdom of Camelot contained human flaws and the knights are no exception to that.
Words I Learned
Machicolations - (in medieval fortifications) an opening between the supporting corbels of a projecting parapet or the vault of a gate, through which stones or burning objects could be dropped on attackers.
Stevedore - a person employed, or a contractor engaged, at a dock to load and unload cargo from ships.
Vergescu - a virgin shield, one that is not claimed by a house or clan.