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Messages from The Forever King:

Dreams and Visions as Bridges Between Past, Present, and Future in Medieval and Contemporary Arthurian Literature
Written by Maggie May

Dreams and visions – especially those that bend the borders between past, present, and future – are not just critical components in Arthurian legends; they act as common plot and character devices across centuries of literature. King Arthur, in his many Medieval and modern iterations, is often presented with a dash of foresight or semi-mystical skill, whether linked to or separate from his tutelage under Merlin. Similarly, the knights of both Medieval and contemporary Round Tables have real or imagined run-ins with religious, magical, and otherworldly creatures and events that are difficult to understand; when interpreted by magical beings or helpful local hermits, however, these grandiose experiences often help the knights reflect on past deeds, unravel present mysteries, and look toward a tumultuous future.

Across a millennium of retellings, Arthurian writers have embraced the concept of prophetic dreams. In fact, these are such common elements of Arthurian tales that it is difficult to imagine a modern Arthurian legend without them. In The Forever King, a 1992 novel written by Molly Cochran and Warren Murphy, both the teenage King Arthur and the reincarnated Arthur Blessing know things they should not; meanwhile, the tortured Hal Woczniak finds connection and purpose through baffling visions of his previous life as Sir Galahad. Cochran and Murphy are no strangers to prophetic dreams. In the same way that characters in The Forever King are guided toward their destinies by dreams and visions, Malory’s heroes in Le Morte D’Arthur face their fates with assistance from God, magical beings, and the spirits of their fallen brethren.

But what makes these literary devices so enduring? When literature, audiences, and writers alike have changed so much over the centuries, why have storytellers used these same narrative techniques over and over again? This paper argues that dreams and visions, especially prophetic ones, act as bridges between past, present, and future – not only for the characters within Arthurian legends, but for the audiences that have enjoyed them for generations.

 

I. The Timelessness of Arthurian Legends: Le Morte D’Arthur

While Thomas Malory cannot claim the creation of King Arthur and all the Knights of the Round Table (barring Sir Gareth, of course), Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur is widely regarded as one of the earliest complete collections of Arthur’s legends. The Morte tells Arthur’s tales, from his mysterious and problematic birth, to his kingship in Camelot, to the founding of the Round Table, and to his eventual death at the hands of his nephew-son, Mordred. The stories are familiar: Medieval audiences likely knew the tales through oral histories and the various sources Malory used to craft the Morte, and other Medieval writers, like Wolfram von Eschenbach and Gottfried von Strassburg, adopted portions of Arthur’s legends to flesh out Middle High German epics like Parzival and Tristan. Meanwhile, today’s audiences know Arthur best through pop culture, artwork, musicals like Camelot and Spamalot, or popular media like The Once and Future King, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Quest for Camelot, and The Sword in the Stone.

While each of these tales contains familiar characters and events, it is almost impossible to find a modern Arthurian adaptation that stays completely loyal to the Morte; but while this lack of close accuracy may bother some Arthurian purists, some scholars may not see this as a problem. Catherine Batt writes: “Arthurian beginnings, like all aspects of the legend, have always been ‘shifting and transforming’... Less important than consistency in factual detail is the resonance of a name, the nature of an action, and the relations established between both” (61). With how many variations of the Arthur legends exist today, it is interesting to consider accuracy as it relates to the timelessness of these stories. Arthur, for example, is a name that definitely resonates. Each version may tell a slightly different story, but when modern audiences see a boy pulling a sword from a stone, it is hard to misidentify him.

One specific literary carry-through is the idea of fortune-telling: “Numerous times in Le Morte Darthur [sic], prophecy explicitly reveals events, and this thrusts the characters into action” (Violette 26). Arthur stories, by nature, often involve some kind of fantastical or divine intervention, whether it comes from the wizard Merlin or God Himself. In Medieval and modern interpretations alike, the magical and the mundane battle it out in convoluted, prophetic dreams, hallucinations, and century-jumping memories. However, these concepts are not unique to Arthurian legends. As Alexandra Costache-Babcinschi writes, “Prophetic dreams have always inflamed our imagination and stirred controversy and passionate debates. Psychology, literature, myths, and religion speak widely of dreams; prophetic ones have held a special position in the writing and reading of texts, at all times, in all geographical areas” (44). In the same way that Arthurian tales have endured across centuries, nations, and cultures, prophetic dreams have carried through in literature from all around the world.

 

II. Modern Adaptations: The Forever King

A lesser-known modern adaptation of the Morte is The Forever King, a 1992 novel written by Molly Cochran and Warren Murphy. The first book in a trilogy, the novel is set in both the 1990s and Medieval times, exploring the adventures of Arthur, Galahad, and Merlin in their Medieval origins and modern reincarnations. Obviously, Cochran and Murphy did not stay entirely true to the Morte, but what they created is fascinating. The book invents an overarching nemesis for both versions of Arthur and Galahad: Saladin, an evil, narcissistic man made functionally immortal by the Holy Grail. After trying to kill a grievously wounded King Arthur, Saladin is overpowered by Merlin, who uses the Holy Grail to save Arthur’s life. Eventually, through trickery and force of his own, Saladin regains possession of the Grail until a reincarnation of King Arthur – the only person worthy of using its powers – can take it from him. At long last, through chivalry, courage, and a heap of luck, Cochran and Murphy’s contemporary characters, supported by the reawakened Merlin, manage to outmatch the nefarious Saladin and end his reign of immortality.

The balance between original characters and Medieval inspirations is worth acknowledging. In The Forever King, Saladin briefly joins the original Round Table as the Black Knight, sometimes referred to as “the Saracen knight” (Cochran and Murphy 124). While Saladin’s characterization matches a similar Black Knight from the Morte, it must be noted that he is an invention of the modern authors. Cochran and Murphy’s other focal characters, like King Arthur, young Arthur Blessing, Merlin, and Galahad, are truer to their origins, partly because the concepts of redemption and reincarnation are so central to the book’s themes.

 

III. Reincarnations: King Arthur vs. Arthur Blessing (vs. King Arthur)

All the different versions of Arthur that have existed across the years are part of what makes Arthur retellings so fascinating. Corina Dobrotă writes, “Many historical figures, by way of literary creation, penetrated mankind’s conscience, steadily emerging as memorable entities, familiar to everyone. Some of them became national heroes... As for England, this quality of national symbol is embodied by King Arthur” (161-162).

In keeping with Dobrotă’s point, Cochran and Murphy present two versions of Arthur: his righteously naive first incarnation, the High King, and his 1990s reincarnation, ten-year-old 5 Arthur Blessing. At various points in the novel, both characters possess knowledge they have no earthly way of knowing. Like King Arthur in the Morte, both Cochran and Murphy’s King Arthur and Arthur Blessing gain glimpses into the future through dreams and visions. Arthur Blessing has violent nightmares, while King Arthur must interpret foggy messages in Merlin’s dreams and his own. However, Arthur’s moments of foresight in The Forever King are suggested to come from more mundane means, like his well-intentioned but painfully innocent “vision” of uniting Britain’s barbarian tribes under one ruler. When he and Merlin discuss Arthur’s plans to welcome Saxon settlers into Britain, Merlin stresses how important it is to “distinguish the fine line between imagination and the supernatural” (Cochran and Murphy 199). Merlin implores Arthur to lead with intelligence, warning Arthur that Merlin’s skills cannot always protect him. Moreover, Merlin notes that his own prescience “may have been nothing more than the ability to observe people closely. The rest of what the common folk called ‘magic’ was simply education” (Cochran and Murphy 200). Undeterred, the young king playfully argues with Merlin about the validity of his dream for the kingdom, and Merlin recognizes that this Arthur is worthy not only of his protection, but his unrestrained loyalty:

Arthur Blessing, the High King’s 1990s reincarnation, has similar “sparks of greatness.” He is characterized as brilliant and worthy of loyalty, although he is held back by the realities of being ten years old: Arthur Blessing is a tiny genius, but he is subject to the whims and attitudes of childhood, and he is too small for many people to take him seriously. Despite that, Arthur Blessing discovers his own righteousness and worth as a leader, taking on the figurative and literal mantle of the High King when his tortured dreams help him connect with his own reincarnated soul: “He had been someone else, had actually lived as another person once, long ago, and for a time... he had remembered that faraway life. I was Arthur of England, he thought” (Cochran and Murphy 367, italics in original). From that point forward, Arthur Blessing encapsulates the High King in everything but physical size, eschewing his own innocence to focus on saving himself and his loved ones – and the world – from Saladin.

These righteous, inspiring Arthurs are familiar to readers, and they are simultaneously more naive, less violent, and less self-centered than Malory’s King Arthur. Malory, who “generally insists on Arthur’s perfection as a chivalric justice,” portrays Arthur as an upright but flawed leader who learns from his and others’ mistakes (Stone 32). Sometimes, those mistakes have further-reaching consequences than Arthur or his advisors realize.

For example, early in Volume 1 of the Morte, Malory’s Arthur unknowingly sleeps with his own sister. Afterward, he endures a nightmare in which he is set upon by “griffins and serpents” that wound him horribly until, at last, he slays them (Malory, Volume 1 45). Arthur is troubled by this dream, not least because it reeks of God’s disfavor. Simply including this dream, and other prophetic dreams, in the Morte was a risk on Malory’s part. According to Costache-Babcinschi, “the divine nature of dreams was a risky territory. The Word of God was no trifle to the Christian and to vouch for the holiness of a dream was serious business” (44). Rather than narrativizing the dream as a direct message from God, Malory relies on the “griffins and serpents” to pass along God’s meaning without potentially upsetting the devout among his patrons and readers. Malory’s Merlin explains that God is upset with Arthur’s actions: “God is displeased with you, for ye have lain by your sister, and on her ye have gotten a child that shall destroy you and all the knights of your realm” (Malory, Volume 1 47).

Later, spurred by Merlin’s prophesied warning, Arthur tries to avoid his son’s disastrous future by collecting all the boys born on May Day and setting them adrift on a massive ship (Malory, Volume 1 58). Everyone involved – and just about everyone in the kingdom – knows that the infants will likely die. The ship crashes and everyone on board perishes, save for Arthur’s son, Mordred. Similar to Arthur’s own childhood with Ector, Mordred survives because he is rescued and raised by a good man unrelated to him by blood (Malory, Volume 1 58-59).

Comparing these versions of Arthur shows that, despite some changes, Arthur’s characterization remains recognizable across iterations, not just in comparison between the Morte and The Forever King, but in the characterization of Cochran and Murphy’s two Arthurs.

 

IV. Reincarnations: Galahad vs. Hal Woczniak

In the book’s modern events, young Arthur Blessing has violent nightmares, which lead to his spouting quotes directly from the memories of his unlikely guardian, Hal Woczniak. Back in New York, Hal had been a gifted FBI agent, but after one of Hal’s cases ended in the violent death of a young boy, he resigned. The disappointed FBI chief lets Hal go, but leaves him with the parting words, “You’re the best, kid. The best there is” (Cochran and Murphy 5). Beaten down by guilt and his own self-loathing, Hal drinks himself into impoverished misery. In their first meeting, however, Arthur Blessing seems to know Hal better than Hal knows himself:

By this point in the novel, Hal is still reeling from the visions of Medieval memories that helped him win a trip to England: visions of a cup “floating above the table... the Grail, appear[ing] like a rainbow in mist, draped in Samite, shimmering like water...” (Cochran and Murphy 45). Back on the bus, Hal, hungover and distracted by the other passengers, is understandably shaken by his conversation with Arthur Blessing. He has experienced memories that do not belong to him, and now this little redheaded boy seems to be quoting directly from the worst time in Hal’s life. Hal remarks, “Things had gone far beyond coincidence... [It] was all connected somehow. He believed this with the same instinct that had singled out [trouble]. He believed, but he didn’t understand a damned thing” (Cochran and Murphy 110).

About a third of the way into the novel, the reader discovers that where Arthur Blessing carries the soul of King Arthur, Hal Woczniak is a reincarnation of none other than Sir Galahad. Thomas Malory’s King Arthur seems to have a similar connection to the original Galahad, whose name, valor, and rightful seat in the Siege Perilous have been prophesied for centuries before his arrival in Camelot: “And anon he led [Galahad] unto the Siege Perilous, where beside sat Sir Launcelot; and the good man lift up the cloth, and found there letters that said thus: THIS IS THE SIEGE OF GALAHAD, THE HAUT PRINCE” (Malory, Volume 2 243).

The Siege Perilous is not Galahad’s only claim to glory. Before his arrival in Camelot, he causes quite a stir, when writing magically appears on seats around the Round Table. The mysterious gold letters identify one of Galahad’s many connections to God: his arrival in Camelot was prophesied to happen four centuries after the birth, and death, of Christ (Malory, Volume 2 240). Immediately, King Arthur greets Galahad like he has known him forever – or at least, like he understands the great feats Galahad is prophesied to accomplish in his service. Launching into a prophecy of his own, Arthur tells young Galahad, “Sir, ye be welcome, for ye shall move many good knights to the quest of the Sangrail, and ye shall achieve that never knights might bring an end” (Malory, Volume 2 244). Based on foresight, Arthur knows long before they meet that Galahad will be the one to find the Grail, and he knows the truth of this prophecy from the very moment he lays eyes on the young knight. This connection between King Arthur and Sir Galahad – and Arthur Blessing and Hal Woczniak – represents a common magical thread that appears over and over again in Camelot stories: knowing someone you should not know, knowing information you should not know, and yet acting on that knowledge as if it is the most natural thing in the world.

While the �Ѵǰ��ٱ�’s version of Galahad is an ultra-holy, impossibly talented Grail Knight who earns direct favor from God, Cochran and Murphy’s version focuses less on religion and more on Galahad’s – literal – undying loyalty to Arthur. The first time Hal comes face-to-face with the Grail, in the possession of Arthur Blessing, he is stricken by a vision of his previous life. Cochran and Murphy’s Grail Quest begins as a last-ditch effort to save King Arthur and a war-torn Camelot from destruction. In fact, their Galahad is so single-minded in his quest to save Arthur that he never realizes he is being followed. Just when the original Sir Galahad finds the Grail and is about to claim it for his king, he hears Saladin’s voice from the darkness:

In Galahad’s last moments, Saladin mocks his loyalty for Arthur. His goal is to cause pain, to rub salt in Galahad’s wounds, but at that moment, no one can torture Galahad more than he can torture himself with his own failure. Galahad’s guilt ties a cord between his own life in the past and the present-day life of Hal Woczniak, his soul’s reincarnation. It is this feeling, Galahad’s desperate need for redemption and even more desperate need to protect the king, that will drive Hal’s character arc throughout the rest of the novel.

 

V. Visions of the Future: Arthur’s Deaths

Perhaps the most obvious use of dreams and visions as connections between past, present, and future appears in regard to Arthur’s death. In the Morte, long before the wars that are to upend Camelot, Merlin prophesies Arthur’s death at Mordred’s hands, calling Mordred “a child that shall destroy you and all the knights of your realm” (Malory, Volume 1 47). After his failed attempt to end the threat, Arthur either forgets or ignores Merlin’s warning, not because he doesn’t trust the sorcerer, but because the events are so far off in the future that they might never come to pass. Later, though, long after Arthur loses Merlin’s guidance, he is given another warning. Gawain, newly dead, appears to him in a dream before the final battle with Mordred:

Arthur attempts to thwart his fate by calling a risky truce with Mordred. According to Brian Stone, “When faced with the enemy, the ideal king does not commit his forces to battle before offering a final parley, in order to establish the justice of his cause and to confirm the inveterate hostility of his foe” (35). Arthur does his best to live up to this ideal, but after the fragile peace between his and Mordred’s forces is broken by a sudden snakebite, Arthur remarks, “‘Ah Sir Launcelot... this day have I sore missed thee: alas, that ever I was against thee, for now have I my death, whereof Sir Gawain warned me in my dream’” (Malory, Volume 2 515).

In this case, Arthur does not choose to ignore his prophetic dream. In fact, he actively tries to follow Gawain’s advice by attempting to avoid a final battle with Mordred. The inevitability of Arthur’s destruction is reminiscent of other unstoppable doomsday prophecies like the Biblical fall of Eden or the end of the Trojan War. Jon Whitman writes,

It is possible that Arthur struggles with the coming of his own doom because he does not want to face the eventual fall of Camelot. Examining the role of prophecies in Medieval literature, Rachel Kapelle writes, “For one tragic hero, fulfillment confirms the end is near; for the other, acknowledgement that a prophecy has come to pass constitutes the end” (58). Believing Gawain’s prophecy means staring the kingdom’s end in the face, and while Arthur does what he can to stop it, the course of history inevitably comes for him.

The Forever King also uses dreams as literary devices that foresee King Arthur’s death. At first, the reader is led to believe that Merlin is the only one who sees this dire future: “In the centuries to come, Merlin might have forgiven himself for Arthur’s early death, if it had not been for the dream” (Cochran and Murphy 208). In Merlin’s dream, Christ appears before young King Arthur and offers him the Holy Grail; Arthur is unable to accept it, not because he cannot reach it, but because he actively chooses not to take it (Cochran and Murphy 208-209). Frightened of the dream, Merlin decides to reclaim the Holy Grail from Saladin, betraying a man who has become his friend in order to protect the future of the High King, and thereby, the world.

But all of this seems to be for naught. Later, when King Arthur is facing the dissolution of his marriage and the destruction of Camelot, Merlin offers him the Holy Grail. In doing so, he offers Arthur immortality, but Arthur does not respond in the way he expects:

It isn’t until the very end of the novel, when Arthur Blessing has reconnected with his reincarnated soul and reclaimed the memories of his life as High King, that the reader discovers there was more to this interaction than originally thought. Once again, faced with the option to keep the Holy Grail and live forever, Arthur turns it down:

Unlike Malory’s King Arthur, Cochran and Murphy’s versions of Arthur seem to deny the warnings of their own dooms not because they do not believe in them or because they are inevitable, but out of a noble desire to do the right thing. King Arthur and Arthur Blessing share a soul, which acts as a bridge between past, present, and future. Their critical decisions link the pair across millennia. Whether readers see the decision to give up the Grail as noble or misguided, Cochran and Murphy present it as the ultimate sacrifice: wary of the power and corruption an unending life could lead, both Arthurs turn away the chance to rule forever.

 

VI. Galahad’s Bridges Between Death and Redemption

The Forever King’s Galahad, and therefore Hal Woczniak, has a similar experience with his own death. But where Arthur’s decision to eschew immortality changes the world as he knows it, Galahad’s choice is taken away from him. Ambushed by Saladin, he dies, just as he is about to reclaim the Grail for his king. Hal experiences the memory of Galahad’s death at Saladin’s hand, then relives it when the modern-day Saladin once again attacks him with a deadly blade. Beaten, exhausted, and quite literally torn to shreds, Hal starts to understand that he, like his soul’s original incarnation, has done all he can to protect Arthur:

The Grail Quest ends differently for Malory’s Galahad. In the Morte, Galahad is successful in finding the Grail, but his Grail Quest also ends in his death – with a catch. The Morte’s Galahad was so holy, so pure, that when he decided his time on earth was through,

Galahad was still a young man when he died, but his legend far outlives him. Sir Bors, the only surviving Grail Knight, brings the tale of the Sangrail back to Camelot, where King Arthur, Launcelot, and the rest of the court celebrate the story and, thereby, Galahad’s own legend.

In homage to the Morte¹ , Cochran and Murphy write that, after Galahad’s death, local legends report that his spirit was “lifted to heaven by a host of angels,” which irks the man truly responsible for the original Galahad’s death:

This reference to the awe surrounding Arthur’s life is also a nod to the enduring nature of Arthurian legends. Later in the book, Cochran and Murphy write that the lives of King Arthur and his most loyal knights were much simpler than the legends led listeners to believe. However, Arthur, Galahad, and all their reincarnations are presented as so noble, so “valiant, knight, and true,” that it is inevitable not only that they will be remembered, but that their lives will inspire similar stories for the rest of time (418).

 

VII. Concluding Thoughts: The Round Table Around the World

The enduring nature of Round Table legends, and especially characters like the noble King Arthur and the valiant Sir Galahad, speak to larger meanings in human history. There is a tendency in storytelling across the ages to focus on characters made into heroes by their own fierce skills and fiercer morals: Gilgamesh, Odysseus, Beowulf, even modern creations like Percy Jackson or Atticus Finch. It says something about human interests, and the things people find most important, that the same story is told over and over again, just with different names, faces, and outcomes. Arthurian legends in particular are some of the most enduring, passed down through oral storytelling, collected by writer-documentarians like Thomas Malory, and reimagined by authors like Molly Cochran and Warren Murphy.

So why are these stories still so popular today? The Forever King’s Merlin offers an excellent answer to this question when, upon their first arrival to the ancestral grounds of Camelot, he tells Hal,

With so much chaos, violence, and discrimination in the news, Merlin’s words are more than applicable to today’s world. It is comforting to believe in a time when peace and justice actually united the world, even if readers will never know for sure whether that time, or its focal characters, truly existed. King Arthur represents all the best qualities in a leader: fairness, grace, strength, intelligence, and, above all, love. All the modern retellings, twists, and academic studies – even writing this paper – just go to show the deep-seated nature of these ideals, as well as a shared desire to keep believing in them. They show that mankind, with all its flaws, someday wants to be better. They show how desperately, more than a thousand years after the tales’ first discovery, the world still wishes to keep Arthur’s legends alive.

 

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Footnotes

¹ Cochran and Murphy sneak in a few clever nods to the Morte throughout The Forever King. One of the most subtle (and most satisfying) comes at the end of the book, during Saladin’s final swordfight with Hal. For a moment, it looks as if Arthur Blessing will be able to find a peaceful resolution, but Saladin attacks while his guard is down. Cochran and Murphy describe his treachery as “as sudden as the bite of an adder” (407). This is a nod to the adder bite that breaks the fragile peace between Arthur and Mordred at the end of the Morte and, ultimately, leads to both Arthur’s death and the downfall of Camelot.

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Works Cited

Batt, Catherine. “Memory and Losing One’s Head in Malory’s Morte Darthur.” Arthuriana, vol. 29, no. 1, 2019, pp. 58-76.

Cochran, Molly, and Warren Murphy. The Forever King. Tor Books, 1992.

Costache-Babcinschi, Alexandra. “Dream Reading in Arthur of Little Britain and Other Medieval Romances: The Narrative and Discourse Logic of Prophetic Dreams.” Proceedings of the 11th International Conference Synergies in Communication (SiC), University of Bucharest, 2023, pp. 44-50.

Dobrotă, Corina. “Legend and History about King Arthur: A Myth and its Metamorphoses.” Traductologie Și Pluralism Civilizațional/Lingvistic, intertext 3-4, 2016, pp. 161-166.

Kapelle, Rachel. “Merlin’s Prophecies, Malory’s Lacunae.” Arthuriana, vol. 19, no. 2, 2009, pp. 58-81.

Malory, Thomas. Le Morte D’Arthur, vol. 1. J. Cowen, 1970.

Malory, Thomas. Le Morte D’Arthur, vol. 2. J. Cowen, 1970.

Stone, Brian. “Models of Kingship: Arthur in Medieval Romance.” History Today, vol. 37, no. 11, 1987, pp. 32-38.

Violette, Stephanie V. “Le Morte Darthur and the Extratextual Significance of Prophecy across the Centuries.” Quidditas, vol. 37, 2016, pp. 25-39.

Whitman, Jon. “Envisioning the End: History and Consciousness in Medieval English Arthurian Romance.” Arthuriana, vol. 23, no. 3, 2013, pp. 79-103.