Morgan Le Fey’s Condensed Timeline

If I were to nitpick at every weird thing Fate does with Arthurian legend, I’d be writing all night, but there is something the Fate series changes that really bugs me, and it has to do with Morgan le Fay.

Fate!Morgan is actually a composite character, derived from two characters from Arthurian legend; Legend!Morgan le Fay, from whom she gains her magical abilities, and Morgause, from whom she largely takes her role in story, as mother of the Orkney siblings (Gawain, Agravain, Gaheris, Gareth, and Mordred) and part of the reason for the fall of Camelot. Fate!Morgan being made up of those two characters doesn’t bug me. I think it’s actually not a bad idea to combine those two characters to make things a bit simpler than having them both around.

That’s not what bugs me.

What does bug me is the way they changed her relationship to Arthur/Artoria.

In Fate, Morgan is a legitimate daughter of Uther Pendragon. My search on the type-moon wiki doesn’t specify who her mother was, but it’s probably safe to assume her mother was Igraine, making her Artoria’s full sister. The reason for her antagonism towards Artoria is that she saw their father as loving her more, and placing his hopes in his younger daughter, even though both Morgan and Artoria were of equal status. This favoritism, whether true of perceived, led Morgan to resent Artoria and want to destroy her.

Now, in most versions of Arthurian legend, Morgan and Morgause are NOT the daughters of Uther. Instead, they are the daughters of Igraine and Gorlois, the Duke of Cornwall (the very south-western most part of Britain). Uther fell in love with Igraine, and went to war with Gorlois to steal her from him. On the very same night that Uther’s forces storm the castle Gorlois is staying in and kill him, Uther has Merlin use magic to disguise him as Gorlois, so he can sneak into the castle Igraine is in and rape her, conceiving Arthur. Igraine later learns the truth about what happened, and is coerced into marrying Uther. Her daughters, Elaine, Morgause, and Morgan, are then married to Uther’s allies.

From my point of view, Morgan and Morgause have a much more compelling reason to hate Arthur in the legend than Morgan does in Fate. The sisters see Arthur as the son of the person who murdered their father, raped their mother, and married them off to secure his own political alliances. Arthur presents himself as the rightful king of Britain and a just ruler, but this is predicated on being the legitimate heir of Uther Pendragon. For Morgan and Morgause, this means that Arthur, Camelot, and every ideal of honor and chivalry they stand for are built upon such an act of cruelty and barbarism that it renders everything a colossal monument to hypocrisy. How could they not want to see it all collapse in on itself?

All in all, I just think trading all of that in for “Dad loved you more than me so I hate you” is just wasted potential.

Yeah but like, don't you have to be chosen by the planet and be 'worthy' to use Excalibur or something like that??

I do not for the life of me remember how the fuck Excalibur works in fate beyond that Bedi not returning it was what resulted in The Lion King. It's also so subsumed with Caliburn in popular culture that I do not remember where one stops and the other starts most of the time.

The fact that they can shoot beams with it, doesn't that make all of Chaldea sabers?

The 'worthiness' thing is Caliburn, which Fate establishes as a different sword in its canon (which is a familiar take in some versions of Arthuriana, the Caliburn/Excalibur thing is historically kinda muddy).

Excalibur is just an incredibly juiced-up Divine Construct that needs a ton of mana and shoots super lasers that automatically scale in strength depending on how much of a 'threat to humanity' something is. And because of how powerful it is, and how much mana it consumes, will kill people who aren't properly built for using it- like Bedivere. Which is why handing Excalibur to Ritsuka and saying 'use it' would be the fastest way to get a Dead End, because they'd probably die instantly after firing it off.

Luckily, Artoria is built different (Dragon Core), and can use it without dying instantly. She'll just get really tired instead.

So, again, it's a fair weapon to stick on to your massive flying magical super ship, if not pretty energy consuming, so you need to make sure it works when you do fire it off.

What do you think about PHH Morgan?

Now, remember, I don't even like or really even pity LostBelt Morgan.

PHH just annoys me. Her motive has been completely cheapened from being a direct result of Uther's actions to 'it was her purpose as a fae to be king'. Because I guess we can't have Uther doing anything bad that might reflect poorly on Artoria.

We also now have her having split personalities because Nasu either was feeling lazy or REALLY wanted to hint at that triad goddess that everyone keeps pretending existed and never did outside the Fates.

And also making everything with Lancelot really REALLY weird. Since he was raised by the Lady of the Lake. Who is now Morgan. Who stole him as a child from his parents while they were fleeing their kingdom. Who also apparently raised him to fight for Artoria. Who he is implied to have feelings for and showed up earlier than usual.

Nasu's Camelot lore is a mess.

Then we have Mordred, and how Mordred was conceived and created. And the fact that we know that she was abusive to Mordred. To the point that Mordred goes nuts on Semiramis just because she reminds Mordred of Morgan. And yeah, I'm putting the blame of Artoria's rejection completely on Morgan. While Artoria gets a hard time for how she responded to Mordred, at some level, I'm not particularly shocked that she sort of shut down. That's about the only way she knows how to deal with trauma, and Nasu decided to have Morgan do what Uther originally did (taking the form of a loved one to sleep with you) and Artoria is understandably not responding well.

But yeah, my issues with Morgan are also a part of a wider issue with how Nasu is doing Camelot. I'm fully aware of WHY I think he's doing it this way, but it still annoys me.

re: Lucius Tiberius & Artoria fighting, they did. Bedivere has a line for Lucius in his Mats profile which says that they fought and that he took "Lucius" as his Camelot alias because history recorded Lucius as killing him during their battle; even though Bedi actually survived, he was basically a walking dead man by Camelot anyway, so he called himself "Lucius" in reference to that.

Interesting! If Arthur fought Lucius defensively though, would the same apply to Artoria, or did she conquer Rome?

Listen to me LISTEN to me. Camelot was doomed from the start. It was doomed from the moment Artoria picked up the sword. It was doomed from the moment Uther decided to create the "perfect king." Because if there is such a thing as a perfect ruler it cannot be a human being, and forcing a person into that mold can only have disastrous consequences.

It's not a matter of "one single event kickstarted the fall of Camelot," it's a matter of "Artoria's entire life lead to her acting like this. There is no way she could have made any other choice based on what she has experienced until now. And I say Artoria but this also applies to Mordred, to Lancelot, even to Morgan."

Of course Tristan would part with angry words. He was hurt, and the King was here for him to lash out. Of course Lancelot would reach out to Guinevere; he loved the king, wanted to help the king, grew up valuing the individual over the country, he could not foresee his affections growing. Of course Aggravain would out the affair; his loyalty to the king is absolute, and he found that to be betrayal. Of course Artoria would forgive him, of course Artoria would reject Mordred, she knows no other way to be, knows not how to hold personal grudges or hold people close to her. Of course Mordred would respond to this with violence, they know no other way to be. And before all of that, of course Morgan would plot Camelot's downfall, she's a witch in a world being drained of its mystery she's pissed that she's getting evicted because the world decided it belonged to humans from now on.

They all had other options, yes. But with their life, the one they would pick was a given. Of course, hindsight is 10/10, but can you truly say you would have known better in their place?

Love this game

You know whole Morgan having three different personalities probably worked a bit bitter if it was more like Morgan the witch, Vivian, and Morgan the sister to Artoria were originally one person but something happened to her to split into three people that now lead different lives that played a hand in fate’s arthurian mythos

Sorry, but I seriously don’t agree. If you're just going to split them into three different people, keep them as three separate people in the first place. The issue of 'Morgan being Vivian' wasn't 'Morgan and Vivian can't exist in separate places and live different lives', it's that:

'Morgan being Vivian, combined with the condensed timespan of Fate's Arthurian mythos, opens up more questions than answers due to the established ages of the characters'

I was fine with Morgan having Vivian's authority, because characters borrow the 'authority' of some other character every other moment. But having Morgan actually be Vivian, therefore being Lancelot's adoptive mother, and ALSO being arbitrarily written to be Artoria's FULL sister rather than a partial sibling from an earlier relationship- it just makes things messy for no good reason.

And Morgan COULD have been 'The Lady of the Lake'. That's not a new concept- but it was a concept that worked when Morgan was... you know, allowed to be considerably older than Arthur in order for that to feasibly work. Especially considering all the pre-Arthur stuff that generally happened regarding Merlin, Vortigern, Uther, etc.

The Arthurian mythos, despite the name, didn't just... start with King Arthur. It's a story that requires setup, and Nasu wrote it so that the 'setup' is just a murky pit that requires logical jumps and purely ignoring other things in order to make it work. 

Nasu wants to have his cake and eat it to with every Arthurian character being both 'cool and young' and also having lived the full lives that encapsulated their stories, and it just makes things into a muddy mess once you look past the glamour of 'this sounds cool'. He wants to have the moral ambiguity of Morgan le Fay, but he didn’t give himself a proper setting to do so.

The world deciding who’s gonna fuck up Camelot this time

Both thoughts on Morgan please ! :D

Morgan in folklore is a fascinating character. Mostly because no matter what, her first presence as "Morgan the Healer" never seems to go away. She always is, in the end, the one who takes Arthur to Avalon, the reason that maybe he'll be able to come back, while also being one of the key factors that leads to the end of Camelot. no matter how much people try, she's outside of being defined completely. What's more, she's got an incredibly personal and touching motive when you look at it. This isn't just some story about power and how far someone is willing to go to take it, it's about love, and how a horrific act in the past can have echoes that affect the innocent. This isn't to say I like her as a 'hero' but I like her as character.

So, to me Fate!Morgan feels a little like wasted potential. Her motives are a little clearer with new stuff, but honestly pretty much everything I said earlier still stands about why I hate her as Uther's 'true and recognized daughter' even if apparently she's now some fae that spawned into existence too. Her motive of 'you took away my destiny', sort of erases her nuance as a character, and it more just seems like she's a bad person from the start who doesn't accept that she's a bad person. What's more, Nasu tends to use her to project things like the Lady of the Lake's bad behavior on. And, more importantly, it erases Uther's being a creep. Like, I like that we've got a face and more to her, but I guess I feel that if we're going to overcomplicate the reason Artoria became king as having to do with Vortigern and the White Dragon and a plot between Uther and Merlin to save the country, we can have Morgan have a little more complicated motives. In the LB, I'm...pretty sure we're going to get some Midsummer Night's Dream payoff with her though.

Hige wo Soru. Soshite Joshikousei wo Hirou. (Higehiro: After Being Rejected, I Shaved and Took in a High School Runaway) - Sayu Ogiwara Dakimakura Covers (School Uniform ver. and Maid Swimsuit ver.) by Miyuki. Release: February 2024