Galahad and the Siege Perilous

At Pentecost the knights find that gold letters have appeared on the empty seat at the Round Table — the Siege Perilous, in which no man may sit and live: this is the siege of Galahad, the haut prince.

Then word comes of a marvel in the river: a great stone floating on the water, with a sword thrust into it and writing on the pommel saying that no man shall take it but the best knight in the world.

Arthur asks Lancelot to try. Lancelot refuses, and his refusal is the most important line in the chapter: he says that the sword is not his, and that whoever tries and fails will receive a wound from it that he will not soon recover. He knows. He has known since Corbenic.

Gawain tries anyway, at the king's urging, and cannot move it, and is told he will pay for it later — which he does, at Benwick, by Lancelot's hand.

Then an old man brings in a young knight in red arms, without shield or sword, and leads him to the Siege Perilous, and lifts the cloth, and the name on it is his. He sits down and nothing happens to him. He goes to the river and takes the sword out of the stone as though it had been resting there.

The scene is deliberately constructed as a repetition. Twenty books earlier a boy pulled a sword out of a stone and became king. Now another young man does exactly the same thing, and what it establishes is not a kingdom but a hierarchy — and every knight in the hall has just been measured against him and found wanting.

Arthur understands immediately. Malory has him weep at the sight of Galahad, and say that he has always known that this day would come, and that it means the fellowship is finished.