The stories
What actually happens
49 episodes, in the order the tradition tells them. Each one is retold plainly — what happens, to whom, and in what order — and then broken open: which authors tell it, how sharply their versions differ, where it sits in the primary text, and what it costs.
You can read straight through, or take any one of them cold.
Before Arthur
The chronicle floor: a silence, a battle list, and the moment the legend acquires a prophet.
- 01The silence of GildasThe one writer who might have known describes the great British victory and never mentions Arthur.
- 02The twelve battlesThe first Arthur on record is not a king but a war-leader with a list of victories.
- 03Vortigern's tower and the two dragonsA tower that will not stand, a boy with no father, and the moment the legend acquires a prophet.
- 04The prophecies of MerlinProphecy as an instrument of state — the future deployed to justify the present.
- 05Uther, Igraine, and the night at TintagelThe king wants another man's wife, and a magician arranges it — for a fee.
The making of a king
A sword, a table, an oath — and a blow that lays three kingdoms waste.
- 06The sword in the stoneA boy nobody has heard of pulls a sword out of an anvil because his brother forgot his.
- 07Excalibur and the Lady of the LakeArthur breaks the sword from the stone and is given a better one, on terms.
- 08The children of May DayTold that a child born on May Day will destroy him, Arthur has every one of them set adrift.
- 09Balin, and the Dolorous StrokeA good knight, cornered and weaponless, grabs the nearest spear — and lays three kingdoms waste.
- 10Guinevere, and the Table as a dowryArthur marries the woman he is warned about, and the Round Table arrives as her father's wedding gift.
- 11The Pentecostal OathThe Round Table is given a constitution — and the rest of the book records its breach.
- 12Wace invents the Round TableIn 1155 a Norman poet solves a seating problem, and creates the most durable image in the legend.
The flowering
The fellowship at its height, and the loves and tests that will undo it.
- 13Merlin and NimueThe greatest seer in the world walks into the one future he could see most clearly.
- 14Morgan le Fay and the stolen scabbardArthur's sister arranges for him to fight her lover — with his own sword in the wrong hands.
- 15The war with RomeRome demands tribute; Arthur conquers most of Europe — and this, not the affair, is where the chronicle tradition puts his fall.
- 16Gareth in the kitchenA young man asks for a year of food and drink, serves in the kitchen without complaint, and turns out to be Gawain's brother.
- 17Tristram, Iseult, and the potionTwo people drink the wrong cup on a ship, and are destroyed by a love neither chose.
- 18The Knight of the CartLancelot hesitates two steps before disgracing himself for the queen — and that hesitation is the only fault the poem finds in him.
- 19Yvain and the lionA knight wins a wife by killing her husband, loses her by forgetting a date, goes mad, and is rebuilt by a lion.
- 20Culhwch and OlwenThe oldest Arthurian story: forty impossible tasks, a giant who must die at his daughter's wedding, and a boar hunted across two countries.
- 21The beheading gameA green giant rides into Camelot at Christmas and offers to let any man cut off his head.
- 22The green girdleGawain keeps every article of the code for a year and fails anyway, because he does not want to die.
- 23Dame Ragnelle and the sovereignty riddleArthur's life depends on answering what women most desire — and the answer is sovereignty.
The Grail
The highest good, and what looking for it costs the people who stay behind.
- 24The bleeding spear, unaskedA boy watches a bleeding spear carried through a hall and says nothing, because he was told a knight does not ask.
- 25Parzival at MunsalvaescheA young knight is shown a suffering king and the Grail itself, and asks nothing — because he was taught it was rude.
- 26The question askedParzival returns, asks what ails his uncle, and the wounded king is healed — by compassion, not purity.
- 27Elaine of Corbenic, and the begetting of GalahadThe Grail's own guardians deceive the best knight in the world into fathering the man who will replace him.
- 28Galahad and the Siege PerilousA seat that kills the unworthy has a name written on it, and a sword in a floating stone waits for one hand.
- 29The Grail enters the hallThe vessel comes into Camelot in glory — and in the same chapter the king is grieving the vow it provoked.
- 30Lancelot at the chapelThe best knight in the world lies half asleep while the Grail heals a sick man in front of him, and cannot move.
- 31Bors's choice, and Percival's sisterA knight must choose between his brother and a stranger — and a woman gives all her blood for a lady she has never met.
- 32The achieving of the GrailThree knights reach the vessel. One dies of it, one becomes a hermit, and one goes home to tell them.
- 33The Grail as judgmentThe French Queste sets terms at the outset and never relaxes them: this is an examination, and most of the Round Table fails.
- 34The violent GrailIn Perlesvaus the Grail is not consoling: it is a cause, and men are killed for it.
The fall
A word said aloud, an accident in a crowd, and an adder in a bush.
- 35The poisoned appleA knight dies at the queen's dinner, and there is nobody left willing to fight for her.
- 36The Fair Maid of AstolatA girl asks Lancelot to love her, is refused kindly, and has herself rowed to court dead with the letter in her hand.
- 37The healing of Sir UrreThe whole fellowship is named, one last time — and the man who heals the wounded knight weeps as if he had been beaten.
- 38The ambush at the chamber doorAgravaine says out loud what the court has agreed not to know, and there is no way back.
- 39The rescue, and GarethLancelot saves the queen from the fire and kills the two men he loved most, unarmed and unrecognised.
- 40The Pope's peaceA negotiated settlement arrives and nearly works — and one man will not accept it.
- 41Benwick, and the death of GawainArthur besieges his best knight abroad while his son takes the crown at home — and Gawain dies asking Lancelot to come.
- 42Mordred takes the crownForged letters say the king is dead, and the country believes them — and prefers the new arrangement.
- 43The dream of Fortune's wheelArthur dreams that he is carried to the top of a wheel and thrown down, and understands what is about to happen.
- 44CamlannA treaty is agreed. A knight is bitten by an adder and draws his sword to kill it. Both armies attack.
- 45The sword goes backOrdered three times to throw the sword into the water, the last loyal knight cannot bring himself to do it.
- 46The barge, and AvalonA barge full of women in black hoods comes for the king — and one of them is the sister who spent the book trying to kill him.
- 47Rex quondam, rexque futurusMalory gives the most famous promise in English literature, and refuses to vouch for it.
- 48Amesbury, and the death of LancelotHe finds her a nun, and she will not look at him — and he does not survive it long.
After
What later ages did with the inheritance.
This is not a single story
Reading these in sequence produces something that feels like one narrative, and it is worth saying plainly that no medieval author wrote it. The arc here is assembled from a Welsh tale, four French romances, a German epic, two Latin chronicles, an English poem and one enormous English prose book, composed across five centuries by people with incompatible ideas about what the story meant.
Where they disagree, the disagreement is on the page. Where a version is missing, the gap is named. What you should not take away is a smooth composite — that composite is the thing this portal exists to take apart.