Morgan le Fay: The Enchantress of Avalon and Arthur's Great Rival
No figure in the Arthurian world fell so far, or reveals so much by her falling, as Morgan le Fay . When she first steps into literature—in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Vita Merlini , around 1150—she is nothing less than the presiding spirit of the blessed isle: Morgen , first of nine sisters who rule the Isle of Apples, "fairest of them all," a healer beyond every physician, a shape-shifter who flies on strange wings, a scholar of astronomy and mathematics who teaches the stars to her sisters. It is to her that the wounded Arthur is carried after his last battle; she examines the wound, pronounces it curable, and undertakes the long healing herself. Three centuries later, in Malory, she has become the king's implacable enemy: a scheming adulteress who steals Excalibur and its scabbard, arms her lover to kill her brother, sends the burning mantle to consume him, and plots against the Round Table with an inventiveness that never rests. And yet—this is the mystery no medieva...