Cadwallon 'Longsword'

[svalbard]

This is another excerpt from a project I am working on about King Arthur. I am sort of building the story around character sketches of the main characters before I begin to weave the story. Any thoughts on this would be appreciated.


Cadwallon ‘Longsword’ was a great king. It was a reputation that he had skilfully built up during his long reign in Gwynedd. To his family though, Cadwallon was a nasty piece of work. Three uncles, seven brothers and two sons bore testimony to this with their decapitated bodies. Now a grandson was facing the terrible fact that his grandfather was a great king and a very nasty piece of work. From where he lay, tied to an old oak tree, Maelgwyn could see the ravens feeding upon the corpses of what used to be his warband. He watched, with a mixture of anger and trepidation, his tyrannical grandfather walk across the bloody ground. Cadwallon stopped before the shackled boy, his face full of an old bitterness.

“Well, Maelgwyn, I forgave your father three times before I ended his sorry existence. How many times will I have to pardon you?” the king said. The gold torque around his neck glittered under the suns rays. Maelgwyn attempted to speak, but found his throat unbearably dry. All he could muster was a grunt. Cadwallon sighed. He had being living this scene his whole life it seemed. Was the line of Cunneda cursed to destroy itself. Cadwallon continued to look down at the youth for what seemed an age.

“Tell me boy! What shall I do with you?” he finally asked.

“I hate you,” Maelgwyn rasped. He grimaced with the effort of speaking aloud.

“Boy! You have not lived long enough to hate. Now your father could hate, he lived for it and died because of his hatred. Do not make his mistakes,” Cadwallon said and turned away from Maelgwyn to look across at the slaughter ground. I should have him killed now. No, it is too soon. He is the best of what is left of my family. The king walked away calling out to his men as he went. A horse was brought for him and with practised ease he swung himself up onto the saddle.

“Free him. Maelgwyn, I banish you from Gwynedd. If you are found within my lands two days hence, then your life shall be forfeit.” Two warriors ran forward to unbind Maelgwyn, who clambered to his feet, disbelief written across his features. Enniuan, the king’s battle leader, rode up to Cadwallon and in silence watched as Maelgwyn was given a mount. The boy stared long at his grandfather before kicking his mount into a trot to canter off south towards Powys.

“Why?” asked Enniuan.

Cadwallon knew what the warrior meant. Why spare the boy? Anyone with an ounce of sense would know that at some time in the future Maelgwyn would try again for the kingdom. But Maelgwyn was only sixteen and Cadwallon knew what the people saw when they looked upon him. Youth, vigour, boldness and beauty. They see in him the younger me, thought Cadwallon. He knew the risk he was taking in leaving him live, but he had hopes…

“Then nurture him. He will make a strong king in the years ahead. Gwynedd will need him to combat the rise of this Pendragon,” Enniuan said, realizing that he was not going to get an answer to his question.

Cadwallon glanced at his old friend. “If only this Arthur had been my son instead of the weaklings I was cursed with.”

“But he is not. You know he will seek to crush all the kingdoms to make himself High-King.” Enniuan had not liked the look of the Cymry when they had come to Gwynedd the previous summer to aid Cadwallon in fighting the Irish raiders. They were too good at fighting and their leader, Lancelot, had treated Cadwallon like some lowly lord.

“Maelgwyn has a brightness about him. You saw how he led his warriors today. He was magnificent,” Enniuan pressed.

“He was brave, but foolhardy. At the same age Arthur did not make mistakes and neither did I. Cold, you need to be cold, Enniuan, you know this. That is why I have never lost and that is why Arthur is always victorious,” Cadwallon said with a voice tinged with bitterness. His eyes searched the tree covered hills. Too much of his life had been wasted shivering around campfires chasing malcontents like Maelgwyn.

“I should have strangled them all at birth,” he muttered to mimself and eased his mount way from Enniuan. He began to shout out commands to his warband, cursing them with every second word. Men ran to do the bidding of their grim lord without question.

[Peter Graham]

Hi Svalbard,

Excellent stuff, as usual. I think you've got Maelgwyn bang on and I smiled at the appearance of Ennuian. As ever, the historical backdrop is believable, coherent and alive. You manage to do Arthur without what Tennyson referred to as "the horns of Elfland faintly blowing", which is very refreshing. You are painting a picture of the historical Arthur (insofar as there is a historical Arthur) rather than the bog standard mythological Arthur of Faerie and Romance. I like your approach very much.

You've posted quite a number of your Arthurian extracts and they are of consistently high quality. But, as you more or less say yourself, each one is really a thumbnail sketch of one of the characters. I'm a little concerned that you are going to give yourself a massive headache trying to bolt together the various little snapshots into a full blown story. Each snapshot essentially takes us back to the start and I'm not detecting too many themes developing across them. I know that this is probably the plan at the moment, but that development will need to come.

The snapshots may also give rise to another headache - by the looks of it, you are going to have a cast of thousands, many of whom are p.o.v characters. This might give you massive problems with character development and may lead to overuse of stereotypes (I know I've gone on about this before - I must be sounding like a cracked record).

I'm wondering whether you should think about reducing the number of p.o.v characters and relegating the Cadwallons and the others to bit part players. You'd save yourself the trouble of having to flesh out so many minds and brains, which in turn would give you more time to really go to town on those you retained. That would bring up strong characters to match your strong writing style, which would make for a winning combination.

If I were you, I'd be inclined to stick with 3 or 4 p.o.v characters - one of Arthur's warband (Gawain or Bedwyr), Morgana, either Medraut or Myrrdin and perhaps even one of the Saxon kings. That way, you'd cover all the bases - the fighting, the revenge, the plans, the intrigue and the enemy. I'd personally avoid Arthur himself, as his p.o.v has been done every which way since the Middle Ages.

Best regards,

Peter

[Pravuil]

Yes, masterfully done once more. And as Peter said, it is very nice to see a new and distinct spin on an old and infinently milked story. I am still surprised we haven't seen or been introduced to Sir Lamorack or King Pellias yet.

[Anarchon]

Some strong writing, Svalbard!

I have a tiny question, though.

In the following paragraph, are the two sentences in italics the king's thoughts? Why did you use "he", then? Or, if these are not Cadwallon's thoughts, why the italics?

“Well, Maelgwyn, I forgave your father three times before I ended his sorry existence. How many times will I have to pardon you?” the king said. The gold torque around his neck glittered under the suns rays. Maelgwyn attempted to speak, but found his throat unbearably dry. All he could muster was a grunt. Cadwallon sighed. He had being living this scene his whole life it seemed. Was the line of Cunneda cursed to destroy itself. Cadwallon continued to look down at the youth for what seemed an age.

[svalbard]

Hi Peter,

Thanks for the feedback and some good advice. I will have to trim back the list of main characters. It could become a problem later on. I am still working on the female aspect to the story, trying to draw up some realistic women characters. So far I have being dissatisfied with my depictions of Gwynhyvar, Morgause and Morgan. Hopefully in the near future I will get something out with them as the main focus.

Pravuil,

Thanks again. There might be a Pelias type character later on, but unfortunately there is no place for Lamarock in my story.

Anarchon,

Good spot. I missed that. It is indeed the thoughts of the king. I will rectify that in the re-write. Thanks for the input.