Bors's choice, and Percival's sister
A knight must choose between his brother and a stranger — and a woman gives all her blood for a lady she has never met.
The Grail quest contains two moral problems that are better than anything else in the cycle, and neither of them is about purity.
The first belongs to Bors. Riding, he sees his brother Lionel stripped, tied on a horse, and being beaten with thorns until he bleeds — and at the same moment, in the other direction, a knight carrying off a woman who is screaming for help. He can reach one.
He chooses the woman.
Lionel survives, and never forgives him. Later he attacks Bors, kills a knight and a hermit who try to intervene, and Bors will not raise a weapon against his own brother. The cycle does not resolve this comfortably, and it should not: Bors made the correct decision and it cost him his brother, and the text lets both facts stand.
The second belongs to Percival's sister, who has no name of her own. She guides the three knights, explains the ship and the sword, and cuts off her hair to weave a new belt for it. Then they come to a castle with a custom: any gentlewoman who passes must give a dish of her blood to cure the lady of the house, who is sick with leprosy. The knights refuse and fight. She stops them.
She volunteers. She is bled until the vessel is full, and it is too much, and she dies of it — and the lady of the castle is cured. Before she dies she asks to be put in a boat and set adrift after them, and to be buried in the spiritual place. Her body arrives at the Grail city ahead of them and is buried there.
She achieves as much as Galahad does, at a higher price, and the text does not give her a name.
The one knight who comes home from the quest is the one who had to choose between his brother and a stranger, and the woman who does most for it is bled to death for a custom and never named.
In the sources
- MaloryEnglish · c. 1415–1471
the right choice, and the brother lost
Bors saves the stranger, and pays for it with his brother for the rest of the book. The text refuses to make that costless.
“ye have nigh slain me with the avow and promise that ye have made; for through you ye have bereft me the fairest fellowship and the truest of knighthood that ever were seen together in any realm of the world”
Le Morte d'Arthur, XIII.vii · read in place - The Grail RomancesFrench romance · c. 1200–1230
blood given, and no name recorded
Percival's sister gives everything the quest demands and the Queste never names her — which is either the sharpest thing in the cycle or its worst blind spot.
“no one ought to enter upon such a lofty service before being cleansed and purged of all villainy and mortal sins. This Quest is not a quest for earthly things, but is to be the search for the deep secrets and confidences of Our Lord”
The Quest of the Holy Grail, Quest of the Holy Grail - The VulgateFrench romance · c. 1215–1235
kinship as the fault line
The cycle's fellowship is a web of blood loyalty, and here it is put under load: the brother, or the stranger.
“the White Knight loved the queen and was fairly sure that the queen loved him as well”
Lancelot-Grail (the Vulgate Cycle), [12]