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Main Characters
Morgaine
- Adaptational Sympathy: She provides one of the earliest examples of Morgan le Fay getting this treatment. Here, Morgaine is presented sympathetically despite doing increasingly manipulative and questionable things, and is more of an Anti-Hero than a villain. She genuinely loves Arthur and only turns against him because he backs the Christian Church, who are persecuting her own pagan religion and destroying her culture (Morgaine is a priestess of Avalon, so it's kind of her duty to protect her people as well). Morgaine is also tricked into having sex with Arthur against her will by her scheming aunt and is horrified when she realizes what happened, even giving Mordred up for adoption (unfortunately, her wicked aunt raises him and is not a good influence).
- Aloof Dark-Haired Girl: Much is made of her pale complexion, dark hair and eyes and serious, quiet, unreadable personality. The reader is privy to her inner monologue and emotions, but chapters from other characters’ perspectives show that she is considered rather indifferent and intimidating.
- Anti-Hero: Not initially, but she grows ruthless as the story goes, and many of her actions start to become questionable.
- Brother–Sister Incest: She sleeps with Arthur, after being tricked by Viviane.
- Cain and Abel: She and Arthur are willing to kill each other at some point, though it's unclear which one is the Cain and which the Abel.
- The Chain of Harm: Several of the terrible things she does to people around her are things Viviaine or her mother did to her as a child or young woman:
- Igraine largely loses interest in her after marrying Uther, and Viviaine did not raise any of her own children. In adulthood, Morgaine births Gwydion, then leaves him to be fostered by Morgause, even as she acknowledges that other characters, such as Lancelet, were traumatized by their fostering situations.
- Is forcibly separated from her brother at a young age to be brought up in Avalon. Later, she'll take Nimue from her family and siblings at an even younger age for the same reason.
- Forces Lancelet into a non-consensual sexual situation akin to the one she and Arthur were forced into, and for similar reasons.
- Cool Big Sis: Arthur adores her (a bit too much), and even Gwenhwyfar looks up to her for a time.
- Deadpan Snarker: Seems to be a common trait among the priestesses, but Morgaine even manages to be snarky in the middle of summoning the Goddess. "You have called upon the Goddess, o ye willful priests, but would you dare her presence if she should come?"
- Easily Forgiven: Downplayed. She winds up estranged from Arthur, Gwenhwyfar, and Lancelet for a number of years after manipulating Lancelet into marrying Elaine, among other things. But she does eventually reconcile with them and they do forgive her, even Lancelet, despite messing with Lancelet's life in particular in a huge way.
- Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: She is pale with dark hair and eyes, like the fairy folk, which got her bullied as a child. Other characters consider her intimidating, uncanny or scary.
- Manipulative Bitch: First tries it to get Lancelet to sleep with her, then on bigger goals.
- Maternally Challenged: Takes little involvement in her son Gwydion's life, leaving him to be raised by Morgause. Moreover, seems to genuinely not quite understand most parents' attachment to their children (perhaps due to her own upbringing). She seems genuinely confused as to why Elaine is reluctant to simply hand over her five-year-old daughter on a minute's notice to be raised in Avalon, and similarly, many years later when she finally tells Lancelet she had taken Nimue to Avalon (Elaine had told him she'd sent her to a nunnery), Morgaine seems confused by his shocked reaction, and basically goes "yeah I did that, but it's done and doesn't matter now."
- Moral Myopia: She is willing to walk over people when she thinks it would help Avalon and her religion, and is furious when any Christian goes Knight Templar themselves.
- Promotion to Parent: As early as a five-year old she is already a surrogate mother to Arthur, though it doesn't last long.
- Surprise Incest: With Arthur, courtesy of their aunt Viviane.
Arthur Pendragon
- Brother–Sister Incest: He sleeps with Morgaine, after being tricked by Viviane.
- Cain and Abel: He and Morgaine are willing to kill each other at some point, though it's unclear which one is the Cain and which the Abel.
- The Chosen One: Obviously. He is King Arthur.
- Nice Guy: He wants to make everyone happy, especially his wife - he even initiates a Three-Way Sex with her and his best friend and later green lights their affair - but not only he doesn't succeed, but he pisses off the Avalon side with his actions.
- Second Love: With Gwenhwyfar. An unusual example, since they become each other's second loves without getting over their respective first loves, forming a 'second love, second place' type of feeling.
- Surprise Incest: Has it even worse than Morgaine, since he recognizes her first as his surrogate mother, then his sister.
Gwenhwyar
- Damsel in Distress: Gwenhwyfar not only can't fight or do magic, but is physically fragile and believes a woman shouldn't take any action anyway, so she requires rescuing several times.
- Female Misogynist: She is so brain-washed by The Dung Ages church and has so much self-loathing accumulated that she will be the loudest advocate of female submission and inferiority... without realizing she is just terrorizing her kingly husband to do as she wishes.
- Freudian Excuse: At one point a priest suggests that she has been unable to conceive with Arthur due to God judging her as sinful and unworthy of a child. This idea likely fuels much of her religious extremism, and while she always remains pious, it likely isn't a coincidence that she starts to let go of some of this moralistic thinking once she's aged out of her childbearing years - once there's no longer any chance of her having a child no matter what she does, she stops fighting so hard for God's "approval".
- The Fundamentalist: She wants to be a saintly high queen. She ends up a lunatic.
- Got Over Rape Instantly: After Gwenhwyfar is kidnapped by Meleager she is rescued by Lancelet, but not in time to prevent her rape. Gwenhwyfar begs Lancelet to "take this unclean feeling from" her and he does, practically over Meleager's dead body.
- Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Subverted. She looks the part and wants to do good, but her image of "good" is seriously warped.
- Heel Realization: Realizes late in the book that for all her prayer, religious devotion, and, uh, husband-nagging, God has not only never given her her longed-for child, but allowed her to get raped and brutalized by her alleged half-brother. She similarly observes that while Lancelet has tried to live his own life honourably, God has left him lonely and broken in his older years, and would view their affair - seemingly the last bit of love and comfort Lancelet has in his life, and with her own husband entirely condoning it - as sinful. With this, while she does remain pious (and actually retires to her old convent at the end of the book), she realizes that God does not simply reward the good and punish the wicked the way the priests had taught her, and that she may as well make decisions that feel moral to her even if the Church would disagree.
- Hysterical Woman: Prone to screaming, panicking and impossible to reason with.
- I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Finally runs away with Lancelet in their old age, but realizes that Lancelet ultimately won't be able to bear the guilt of betraying Arthur, so elects to return to her childhood nunnery to spare Lancelet's reputation.
- It's All About Me: She is unaware of that until the end of the book, but through the story she basically guilt-trips and manipulates Arthur and Lancelet to try to make her feel better.
- Love at First Sight: With Lancelet in Avalon, with a bit of Rescue Romance.
- Princess Classic: A deconstruction. She is beautiful, pious and devoted to conservative ideals, but these traits only make her harmful.
- Prone to Tears: In her youth. She is afraid to even leave her castle.
- Proper Lady: Advocates being this, with heavy emphasis on "submissiveness to the husband" part.
- Properly Paranoid: She is suspicious regarding the Avalonian and thinks they are backward and traitorous. The narrative paints her as unreasonable only for the Avalonian keep turning around and proving her to be right, sometime within the same chapter.
- Silk Hiding Steel: Eventually. At the end of the book she realizes her inner strength and joins the convent to preserve Lancelet's reputation.
- Too Dumb to Live: Just who goes to the castle of a violent, Obviously Evil thug barely escorted?
Lancelet
- The Ace: He's an excellent warrior, charismatic, incredibly handsome, the object of desire for nearly every woman in the book and possibly a few men, and is the closest friend and kinsman to the most powerful man in the country.
- Broken Ace: Goes through a Trauma Conga Line through his life that increasingly affects him mentally in his later years, in addition to the death and estrangement of most of his family. Gwenhwyfar reflects at one point that as "sinful" and "immoral" as the Church would claim their affair to be, ending things with him when he has already lost everything else feels even more cruel.
- The Charmer: He is quite flirtatious and it's hard to name a woman in the series who doesn't want to get on with him.
- Gayngst: He is not quite on terms with his bisexuality, which is not surprising given the time and place of the story
- Have I Mentioned I Am Heterosexual Today?: Lancelet is very ostensibly a ladies' man. He is even a little ostensible with his (not so) Courtly Love for the queen - he is willing to fuel suspicions about adultery to cover his attraction to the king.
- Love at First Sight: He dropped Morgaine like a hot potato at the moment he first saw Gwenhwyfar.
Viviane
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: She doesn't quite get why Morgaine is so upset about being tricked into incestous sex. She even expresses a little annoyance over the fact that superstitious girl just doesn't see how it creates a perfect, pure-blooded royal heir.
- Deadpan Snarker: Most of the priestesses have their moments, but "if your priests are right, I am already thoroughly damned and you may save your breath" probably takes the cake.
- Good Is Not Soft: If there is something to be done to the good of Avalon, Viviane is on it, and being her sister or surrogate daughter doesn't save you if she has to walk over you.
- Inadequate Inheritor: Niniane is this to Viviane. Subverted when Kevin reminds us that someone of Viviane’s magical power and spiritual prowess is only born once in a thousand years, and Morgaine remarks that Viviane’s powers are almost inhuman.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: She does some morally questionable things, but really only because she tries to save Avalon.
Morgause
- Affably Evil: She is a nice, sociable woman willing to take care of her pregnant niece, loving her sons and a surrogate son, preventing knights from treating Gwen barbarically (after betraying her), having good relationships with her husband and consort... And she is apparently a good ruler of Lothian after Lot's death.
- Ambition Is Evil: Morgause just wants to be the woman behind the most powerful man in Briton, be it her husband, son or surrogate son.
- Evil Matriarch: She sees her sons as possible veins to power.
- Evil Redhead: She is redheaded and villainous.
- Fiery Redhead: Of the sexual temper variety.
- Hormone-Addled Teenager: In the beginning. She doesn't get over the "hormone-addled" part, though.
- Mrs. Robinson: She prefers taking lovers much younger than her, having a relationship with Lamorak and even hitting on her nephew Lancelet.
- Really Gets Around: Her sexual reputation is legendary.
- Silver Vixen: Morgause stays hot into her sixties, in a world when women in their early twenties are treated as over their prime, and those in their thirties as middle-aged.
- Unholy Matrimony: With Lot. They are a pair of ambitious schemers, they are both constantly philandering, and they are the only (next to Igraine and Uther) good functioning married couple) in the story.
Avalon
Taliesin
- Mentor Archetype: Avalon might be a matriarchy, but Taliesin is such a fatherly figure even to Viviane, and due to his open mind can find a common ground with both the believers of the Old Religion and Christians, that he is respected and revered among everyone.
- Nice Guy: He is the most peaceful, non-judgmental and open-minded character in the story.
Kevin the Harper
- Beauty Equals Goodness: Gwenhwyfar, in one of her more Jerkass moments, thinks that she hates looking at his deformed appearance and justifies it with this, saying to herself that God wouldn’t make a good person so ugly.
- Elegant Classical Musician: Only when he plays the harp he appears beautiful
- Evil Cripple: Downplayed, but his deformities have made him despised and being despised has made him bitter and cynical. He eventually gives up entirely on being seen as a good person and embraces being a Well-Intentioned Extremist.
- I Can't Believe a Guy Like You Would Notice Me: He expresses it to Morgaine, and she latter orders Nimue precisely to exploit this weakness of him.
- Inadequate Inheritor: He's generally considered a step down from Taliesin, despite becoming Merlin after him and trying to follow in his footsteps as a royal adviser and peacemaker. For one thing, Taliesin was diplomatic enough to maintain good relations with the Christian priests. Kevin, on the other hand, is too sharp-tongued and sarcastic to get along nearly anyone, least of all his theological opposites.
- Merlin and Nimue: It's a retelling of the Arthurian Legend.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: He steals Avalon's Holy Regalia because he foresees Avalon's fall and wants to save them. He is right. He dies for it anyway.
- When She Smiles: Morgaine notes that without his perpetual scowl Kevin looks completely different and it's clear he would have been handsome if not for his accident.
Raven
- Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: Raven has a white skin, raven hair, doesn't speak and can be seriously unsettling.
- Mad Oracle: Raven is neurotically afraid of the outside world and when she talks she either cries or babbles cryptically, but she is an infallibly accurate seer. Morgaine refers to her as a prophetess.
- The Ophelia: Raven is weird, hard to understand, mentally ill and sees the future.
- The Quiet One: Due to her vows of silence Raven almost never speaks.
Niniane
- Inadequate Inheritor: Everyone just regrets that she is not Viviane. She is aware of that and resents Morgaine for abandoning Avalon and forcing her to take charge. Subverted somewhat when Kevin and Morgaine reflect that someone of Viviane’s extreme magical abilities is only born once every thousand years and it would be unfair to compare anyone to her.
Nimue
- Driven to Suicide: After betraying Merlin with whom she has fallen in love, she cannot live with herself and drowns in Avalon's lake.
- Merlin and Nimue: It's a retelling of the Arthurian Legend.
- Together in Death: She commits suicide after Kevin is taken to be executed; Morgaine even comments to herself that she is glad that Kevin doesn't have to go to the afterlife alone.
Kings
Uther Pendragon
Lot
Pellinore
Uriens
Leodegrance
- He-Man Woman Hater: Has a low opinion of women in general, rants a few times about "feminine nonsense", and is arguably the source of Gwen's own self-hatred of femininity
- Hidden Depths: Despite his misogynistic feelings, he does genuinely want the best for Gwenhwyfar and it's implied he cared deeply for Gwenhwyfar's mother.
Knights
Cai
- Overshadowed by Awesome: He is mainly known as Arthur's foster brother.
Gawaine
Gaheris
- Adaptational Heroism: He doesn't get much attention, but he doesn't kill his mother in this version and there is no indication of his other heinous actions from the original legends.
- Jerkass: He doesn't have many lines, but the one he has consists of saying that the queen should Stay in the Kitchen. Then again, given Gwen's personality...
Aggravaine
Gareth
- Big Fun: Of the tall and muscular variety. He has a very sunny personality.
- Fiery Redhead: Gareth is energetic.
- Happily Married: Entirely off-screen, but he speaks of his wife and home life with fondness.
- Nice Guy: One of the happiest and friendliest characters.
Galahad
- Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: A Rare Male Example. He is a golden haired, Knight in Shining Armor-type incarnation of Incorruptible Pure Pureness.
Mordred
- Arch Nemesis Dad: Guess. He is
Mordred, after all. - Bastard Bastard: The narration is clear on that Morgaine should have gone with that abortion.
- Bratty Half-Pint: As a child. He does what he pleases, keeps secrets, lies to and manipulate others and doesn't respect anyone.
- Daddy's Little Villain: To Morgause, although he proves to be more uncontrollable and ungrateful than she though.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: He idolizes Gareth and is heart-broken when the latter is killed.
- Happily Adopted: It looks like he is as well-suited for Morgause's son as Lot was for a husband until it's revealed he's been nursing a grudge for her too.
- He-Man Woman Hater: When he runs out of people he could blame for his unhappiness, he decides that's all because those damn whores won't Stay in the Kitchen.
- Luke, You Are My Father: To Arthur.
- The Resenter: He takes the case of his parentage badly, to say the least.
- Toxic Friend Influence: To Arthur, mainly, but his later name literally means "the one who gives ill advice".
Balan
Balin
Others
Igraine
- Beware the Nice Ones: Igraine is a Proper Lady, but after her husband pushes her too far, his home life is destroyed.
- Fiery Redhead: It's not obvious at the first sight, but she is quite passionate.
- Parental Favoritism: She loves Morgaine and considers Arthur only the heir she had to give Uther... until Uther comes into proximity, then she switches into...
- Parental Neglect: ...handing her infant son to her 5-years old daughter and forget about them both completely.
Gorlois
Elaine
- Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Subverted, like with Gwenhwyfar. Elaine is beautiful, loving and sweet, but won't shy away from taking an advantage of a Love Potion to snatch a husband.
Accolon
- Bros Before Hoes: No. Even when said "bro" is his father.
- Likes Older Women: Is quite fine with the fact that Morgaine is older and smarter than him.
- Flirty Stepsiblings: Due to his father marrying a woman closer in age to Accolon himself, the one he was in love with to boot.
- Sacrificial Lion: His fight with Arthur ends canonically.
Avalloch
Maleagant
- Bastard Bastard: An illegitimate child as well as a genuinely ill-mannered and violent person.
- Freudian Excuse: He usurps the throne of Summerland, and captures and rapes Gwen all because Gwen's father won't acknowledge him as his son.
- Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: According to him, he's the illegitimate son of King Leodegrance; According to Leodegrance and Gwenhwyhar, his mother cheated on Leodegrance with another man and that man is most likely his father. Which side is right is never really resolved, though the latter opinion is the one believed by most people.
- Obviously Evil: A violent, ill-tempered thug, and even ugly, if the former characteristics haven't tipped you off.
