The Winter King

“I was crouching near the High King and I saw tears show at his eyes that were gazing toward the sky. ‘An heir,’ Uther said in a tone of wonder as though he had not really dared to hope that the Gods would favor him. He dabbed at the tears with a fur-gloved hand. ‘the kingdom is safe, Bedwin,’ he said. ‘Praise God, High Lord, it is safe,’ Bedwin agreed.”

The birth of Mordred initiates the conflict between Paganism and Christianity that will animate much of the story. As the Christian Norwenna goes into labor, priests and Druids each perform their rituals, with the Christians upset when the pagans seem to have the greater effect, and the pagans upset with the many bag omens that surround Mordred’s birth. The one thing they can all agree on is the value of a male child in avoiding a succession crisis in the event of Uther’s death, even though it will be years before the young boy can exercise real control.

“‘Why didn’t we beat the Romans?’ I asked Nimue. “Because the Gods didn’t want it. Some Gods are wicked, Derfel. And besides, they have no duty to us, only we to them. Maybe it amused them? Or maybe our ancestors broke the pact and the Gods punished them by sending the Romans. We don’t know, but we do know that the Romans are gone and Merlin says we have a chance, just one chance, to restore Britain […] if we do it, Derfel, then once again we will have the power of Gods.”

Nimue is the most articulate voice of the pagan faith, especially in Merlin’s absence. The pagan gods, unlike the Christian God, see human beings as playthings, and because of their inferior status, human beings have no reason to lament their fate. Rather than succumb to despair, however, Nimue seeks to restore a more natural condition where it is easier for human beings to access the magic of the gods, and spare themselves from the ruinous advance of civilization.

“We had sinned! Sansum suddenly shouted, spreading his arms as he teetered at the table’s edge, and we all had to repent. The Kings of Britain, he said, must love Christ and His Blessed Mother, and only when Britain was united in God would God unite the whole of Britain.”

Here Sansum (later the bishop overseeing the elderly monk Derfel) provides his own counterpoint to Nimue’s earlier appeal to the pagan gods. The Christian God is willing to extend mercy and grace, but not where paganism runs rampant. Whereas Nimue seeks a return to the old ways as the chance for redemption, Sansum insists on an entirely Christian future.

“I was released from fear as the mad, God-given joy of battle came to me for the very first time. Later, much later, I learned that the joy and the fear are the exact same things, the one merely transformed into the other by action, but on that summer afternoon I was suddenly elated. May God and His Angels forgive me, but that day I discovered the joy that lies in battle and for a long time afterwards I craved it like a thirsty man seeking water.”

Bernard Cornwell is known as one of the best writers of battle sequences in contemporary fiction, and while the first battle scene is on a small scale, he pays close attention to the rush of extreme and yet contrary emotions that swirl in the moment of confrontation. Derfel is first stricken with fear, and then an adrenaline rush drives him into a state of near-ecstasy, until the deed is done and he is overwhelmed with regret at having taken a human life. Still later, once the emotions wear off, he will be able to think about it and crave the experience over and over.

“I noticed then, and ever after, how men and women became more cheerful when Arthur was in their company. Everyone became more optimistic, there was more laughter, and when he departed a dullness would ensue, yet Arthur was no great wit, nor a storyteller, he was simply Arthur, a good man of infectious confidence, impatient will and iron-hard resolve.”

Cornwell is careful to emphasize that Arthur is not a superhero. He does not have a magical sword, a wizard’s powers, or a divine destiny. He is strong and brave, but in a world of many strong and brave men, it is Arthur’s character that stands out. In battle, he inspires his soldiers to follow his example, just as in court he can charm and cajole. Where there is so much greed and malice, a genuinely virtuous man stands tall.

“‘Arthur doesn’t believe in the gods,’ Owain said. ‘That’s why not. He doesn’t even believe in that milksop God the Christians worship. So far as I can make out Arthur doesn’t believe in anything, except big hoses, and the Gods alone know what earthly use they are.”

Arthur’s religiosity is a frequent point of interest, especially given the tendency to associate the faith of leaders with the ultimate fate of the kingdom. It soon becomes evident that different people have different assessments of his faith, likely meaning that Arthur deliberately keeps his private views hidden and will assuage those in his company, making him acceptable to the greatest number of people without having to alienate others in turn.

“I stared at the moon and thought of Gundleus’ long-haired men massacring the guards on the Tor, and I thought of the people on the moor who would face the same savagery the very next night and I knew I could do nothing to stop it, even though I knew it should be stopped, but fate, as Merlin always taught us, is inexorable. Life is a jest of the Gods, Merlin liked to claim, and there is no justice. You must learn to laugh, he once told me, or else you’ll just weep yourself to death.”

In the cultural context of this book, war is good insofar as it can secure honors and riches for one’s self and their lord. Derfel, however, has enough of a conscience to draw a connection between the suffering of those he loves and those whom he has been ordered to kill. To ease those pangs of conscience, he must fall back on the wisdom of Merlin, accepting the absurdity of life rather than looking for a consistent moral meaning.

“One man must hold the power, Derfel, not three or four or ten, just one. I wish it were not so. With all my heart, believe me, I would rather leave things as they are. I would rather grow old with Owain as my dear friend, but it cannot be. The power must be held for Mordred, and it must be held properly and justly and given to him intact […] one man has to be a king who is no king.”

Not long after his arrival, Arthur recognizes the paradox of his position. If the regency is divided between too many people, they will struggle for power and probably tear the kingdom asunder well before Mordred comes of age. One person must bear the responsibility, but of course that person will then draw the ire of everyone else, who will not trust such a person to cede such power once the right time comes. Arthur hopes that his virtue can instill that kind of trust, but other flaws in his character soon get in the way.

“It was a madness that love. Mad as Pellinore. Mad enough to doom Arthur to the Isle of the Dead. Everything vanished for Arthur: Britain; the Saxons; the new alliance; all the careful, balanced structure of peace for which he had worked ever since he had sailed from Armorica, was set whirling into destruction for the possession of that penniless, landless, red-haired princess. He knew what he was doing, but he could no more stop himself than he could stop the sun from rising.”

The Winter King might be best known for its stark realism and bloody battles, but the plot ultimately hinges on the romance between Arthur and Guinevere, which is as passionate and irrational as any fairy tale. Arthur falls in love with Guinevere apparently without having exchanged a single word with her, and a handful of conversations are enough for him to throw away all his carefully wrought political machinations. Such actions are hardly unrealistic human behavior, but the novel dips into a more mythical form of storytelling, where the love of a woman determines the fate of kingdoms.

“Fate, Merlin always said, was inexorable. So much followed from that hurried ceremony in the flower-speckled clearing beside the stream. So many died. There was so much heartache, so much blood and so many tears that they would have made a great river; yet, in time, the eddies smoothed, new rivers joined, and the tears went down to the great wide sea and some people forgot how it ever began. The time of glory did come, yet what might have been never did, and of all those who were hurt by that moment in the sun, Arthur was hurt the most.”

From the earliest days of Arthurian legend, he has been a tragic figure, a remnant of a bygone world. A tragedy can either be one of character, where someone makes a fateful decision based on their traits which leads to disaster, or one of fate, where external forces bring someone to ruin regardless of what they might to do avoid it. If Arthur’s tragic arc begins with his marriage to Guinevere, then he seems to be both kinds of tragic heroes at once. The marriage may have precipitated a terrible sequence of events, but given the dangers already facing the kingdom, it is difficult to see how different choices could have ultimately led to fundamentally different outcomes.

“‘She loved the idea of him,’ I said. ‘She loved that he was the champion of Dumnomia, and she loved him as he was when she first saw him. He was in his armor, the great Arthur, the shining one, the lord of war, the most feared sword in all of Britain and Armorica.’”

In much of Arthurian legend, Guinevere is beautiful but treacherous, mainly concerned with proximity to power and using Arthur as a vehicle for her ambitions. Cornwell does not entirely depart from this tradition—later volumes of the Warlord Chronicles will address this theme much more directly—but in The Winter King, she truly is drawn to Arthur, if mainly as an embodiment of her ideals of beauty and order.

“‘Mordred could not fill a pissing pot! Mordred is a cripple! Mordred is a badly behaved child who already scents power like a hog snuffling to rut a sow.’ Her voice was whip-hard and scornful. ‘And since when, Derfel, was a throne handed from father to son? It was never thus in the old days! The best man in the tribe took the power, and that is how it should be today.’”

This passage describes the early phases of Guinevere’s scheming, but her scheming is closely connected to her love for Arthur. A modern audience might find her ableism unsettling, but given the dire conditions facing the kingdom, placing their hopes in a baby really could prove a terrible mistake, and there seems ample reason to return to older traditions, especially when Arthur is clearly the one figure at the moment capable of uniting the kingdoms against the Saxons.

“Lancelot was sometimes at a fight, but always a mile behind so that he could be fist back to Ynys Trebes with his news of victory. He knew how to tear a cloak, batter a sword edge, rumple his oiled hair and even cut his face so that he staggered home looking the hero, and then his mother would have the fili compose a new song and the song would be carried to Britain by traders an seamen so that even in distant Rheged, north of Elmet, they believed that Lancelot was the new Arthur.”

Cornwell’s treatment of Lancelot is a direct engagement with the idea of mythmaking, which is so central to the story of King Arthur. French revisions to the Arthurian myth would elevate Lancelot as the greatest of the Knights of the Round Table, the only one capable of challenging Arthur. Turning Lancelot into a coward with a penchant for self-promotion is a playful way of engaging with that myth, especially when Derfel cannot convince those who have heard the myth of the actual truth.

“‘Christ,’ he said finally, ‘was our last chance. He told us to love one another, to do good to each other, to give alms to the poor, food to the hungry, cloaks to the naked. So men killed Him.’ He turned and looked at me. ‘I think Christ knew what was coming and that was why He promised us that if we lived as He lived then one day we’d be with Him in paradise. Not on earth, Derfel, but in paradise. Up there’—he pointed at the stars—‘because He knew the earth was finished.’”

Christianity is generally depicted negatively in The Winter King (and many of Cornwell’s other novels), but Galahad is an admirable character who, in continuation of the Arthurian legend, makes a noble effort to integrate his faith with his soldierly life. The difficulty of doing this informs why he is so mournful, and why he must look beyond the present life for any hope of redemption.

“Fury is very useful, and dear Nimue has a talent for it. One of the things I can’t stand about the Christians is their admiration of meekness. Imagine elevating meekness into a virtue! The food would get cold while everyone passed the dishes to everyone else. Meekness is no good, Derfel. Anger and selfishness, those are the qualities which make the world march.”

Among the many characters who speak derisively about Christianity throughout the novel, Merlin is by far the most acerbic, making fun of Christian virtues that even in the modern day remain highly valued, even if they have been secularized. Merlin is anticipating, by nearly a millennia and a half, Friedrich Nietzsche’s criticism that Christianity robbed the West of its vigor by promoting meekness over decisive action.

“If, Derfel, if. If Mordred’s father had lived, or if Arthur had killed Gorfyddyd instead of just taking his arm, everything would be different. History is nothing but ifs. And perhaps you’re right. Perhaps if Arthur had married Ceinwyn we would be at peace now and perhaps Aelle’s head would be planted on a spear-point in Caer Cadarn, but how long do you think Gorfyddyd would have endured Arthur’s success?”

Fate plays a large role in the narrative, and the importance of fate diminishes the significance of any one event. Derfel will look back to Arthur’s wedding to Guinevere as the moment when it all went wrong, but as the sympathetic Bishop Bedwin tells him, there are so many moments on which fate potentially turns that there is no point dwelling on any one in particular.

“Don’t you understand? The Gods play games with us, but if we open ourselves then we can become a part of the game instead of its victims. Madness has a purpose! It’s a gift from the Gods, and like all their gifts it comes with a price, but I’ve paid it now.”

The term “mad” has gone out of use to describe mental health conditions, but here Nimue is talking about something different than what a modern audience understands to be afflictions of the mind. Instead of a condition in need of treatment, she is referring to a special access to the divine realm that comes through a mortification of the mind and body. She sees her trauma as a rite of passage that renders her uniquely able to perform the immensely important task of restoring the entire country to a similarly profound connection with the gods.

“‘A hundred years ago,’ he said slowly, ‘this land had peace. It had justice. A man could clear land in the happy knowledge that his grandsons would live to tell it. But those grandsons are dead, killed by Saxons or their own kind. If we do nothing then the chaos will spread until there’s nothing left but prancing Saxons and their mad wizards. If Gorfyddyd wins he’ll strip Dumnomia of its wealth, but if I will win I shall embrace Powys like a brother. I hate what we are doing, but if we do it, then we can put things right.”

This is another passage where Arthur pleads his case for being a better leader than Britain can otherwise expect, but at this moment, there is a tinge of regret and even desperation, because he has just made the terrible compromise of giving away a British fort to the Saxons. It may have been the right strategic choice, even an unavoidable one, but Arthur’s self-perception as a righteous leader makes such choices extremely difficult for him, leaving him to wonder if he is what he claims to be.

 “‘She was an ill-used woman,’ he told me. ‘All women are,’ Nimue said.”

The world of Arthurian Britain is particularly cruel for women, who experience all the traumas of war while rarely having the power to defend themselves or make meaningful changes. Arthur rejects Nimue’s conclusion offered here because he wants to offer justice to all people equally, but Nimue is the representative of a particularly female rage, which must look to divine sources to accomplish anything close to justice on earth.

“Arthur confuses morality with power, and he worsens the mix by always believing that people are inherently good, even the worst of them, and that is why, mark my words, he will never have peace. He longs for peace, he talks of peace, but his own trusting soul is the reason he will always have enemies.”

The scene where Arthur’s spurned lover Aileann finally appears as a character is a withering one for Guinevere and Arthur alike. Here she suggests that their less favorable qualities will feed on one another to foment disaster. Worse still, those qualities are not their mistrust, deceit, or anything obviously negative, but their very love for one another.

“He stopped abruptly, struck perhaps by the thought that his ambition of peace was also Tewdric’s dream. Maybe Arthur was wondering whether he should fight all […] I half expected him to bare his soul again, but on that rainy night the horse of ambition was tugging his soul hard and he could not contemplate a peace in which his own life or exile was the price. He wanted peace, but even more he wanted to dictate that peace.”

Derfel views Arthur as a man whose ambition is tempered by his self-doubt, who wants to make sure that he is doing the right thing before he proceeds on a bold course of action. However, since Arthur almost inevitably puts his doubts aside in favor of decisive action, it begs the question of what purpose those doubts really serve, other than perhaps to salve an uneasy conscience.

“The softness she had revealed at Lughnasa had been replaced by a chill bleakness that made me think I would never understand her. I loved her, not as I believed I loved Ceinwyn, but as a man can love a fine wild creature, an eagle or a wildcat, for I knew I would never comprehend her life or dreams.”

After their brief, idyllic moment together, Nimue rededicates herself to the gods with even greater ferocity. It does not diminish Derfel’s love for her but rather clarifies what that love has been all along. It is not a childhood crush, and there was never enough time to feed dreams of a life together, but he does regard her as an extraordinary person for whom he would do practically anything—although as she grows ever more fanatical, Derfel’s commitment to her will undergo very severe tests.

“The bards still sing of that battle, though the Gods only know how they invent the details they embroider into the tale because to hear their songs you would think none of us could have survived Lugg Vale and maybe none of us should. It was desperate. It was also, though the bards to not admit as much, a defeat for Arthur.”

Derfel loves to compare his own telling of the tales with the fanciful stories of the bards, but by doing so he draws attention to the moments where he leans on the mythical. It is uncertain, even within the fictional world Derfel is building, whether Merlin really did appear at the last second and force the armies to halt by his mere presence. It is also unclear whether Powys’s army was quite so large, or whether the moment was truly dire when the Irish suddenly switched sides. If the narrative undercuts the tendencies of the bards in some respects, it actively props them up in others.