Morgan le Fay is one of the most enduring and malleable figures in Arthurian tradition. Originating in early Celtic myth as a healer and ruler of Avalon, she is first depicted in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Vita Merlini as a wise and benevolent enchantress. Over time, however, her character underwent a dramatic transformation. By the late medieval period, especially in the works of Chrétien de Troyes and Thomas Malory, Morgan had been recast as a dangerous sorceress: a figure driven by envy, lust, and revenge. In Le Morte d’Arthur, she becomes a recurring antagonist who seeks to expose Queen Guinevere’s affair with Lancelot, a motive traditionally framed as malicious rather than moral.
This reconfiguration of Morgan from healer to threat has often been read as a reflection of broader cultural anxieties about female power, especially when that power resists domestication or operates outside sanctioned structures. Scholars such as Maureen Fries and Richard Cavendish have argued that Morgan came to embody male fears of the unruly woman: one whose knowledge, sexuality, and refusal to conform disrupted the fragile codes of chivalric order. Her vilification maps onto a familiar pattern in Western cultural history, where women associated with truth-telling, autonomy, or alternative ways of knowing are cast as untrustworthy or mad.
The poem that follows offers a narrative retelling of Morgan’s attempt to reveal the adultery of Lancelot and Guinevere. It is structured in paired lines. Each first line adopts the voice and style of Malory’s tradition, echoing the formal diction and moral certainty of medieval Arthurian romance. Each second line presents Morgan’s own perspective, using many of the same key words but rearranged to convey resistance, insight, and agency. In this structure, Morgan is both the subject of the legend and its speaker; her voice emerges through and against the frame that sought to contain her. The poem aims not simply to revise her reputation, but to demonstrate how the language of condemnation can be inverted – how the same terms used to erase a woman may also be used to restore her.
Morgan Speaks
Each stanza unfolds in two voices. The first line reflects the patriarchal narration drawn from Malory’s tradition. The second line offers Morgan’s voice in reply, reclaiming language, meaning, and agency.
1.1
Great envy did Morgan le Fay bear the queen, and plotted her downfall with dark purpose.
1.2
They called it envy, when I foresaw the queen’s downfall drawing near.
2.1
She whispered of betrayal in the king’s court, driven by spite and malice.
2.2
Spite whispered through the court, my truth their cruel decree.
3.1
Her magic summoned deception - a wicked trap to expose the queen's dishonour.
3.2
My magic summoned a trap to draw out their deception.
4.1
Morgan conjured visions to shame noble Guinevere, that her honour might be undone.
4.2
Guinevere’s shame conjured visions - I cast them into the light they feared.
5.1
She accused Lancelot of lust and treason, making known his hidden failings.
5.2
Lust and treason accused Lancelot - I only gave them voice.
6.1
Her sorcery threatened Camelot’s honour, drawing forth its secret shames.
6.2
Camelot’s honour was threatened, not by sorcery, but broken vows.
7.1
The court condemned Morgan as bitter, jealous, and mad, ungoverned by reason.
7.2
Bitter, jealous, mad: the names they gave what they refused to understand.
8.1
She was banished, her truth buried beneath her crimes, for the realm’s good.
8.2
My crimes were truth they needed buried - I was only unrelenting.
9.1
Morgan disappeared, her wicked plots defeated, her evil brought to naught.
9.2
They called it defeat, but I walked away, my path my own.
10.1
In the end, she came to Arthur not with rage, but regret, beside the death-bound barge.
10.2
I came to Arthur not in regret, but to mend the wounds rage left behind.
11.1
She carried him to Avalon, the wound beyond all healing, as the legends still recount.
11.2
To Avalon I carried him, the wound I alone could tend.
12.1
They say she vanished, her power undone, and was seen in the world no more.
12.2
My power was never undone - it only passed beyond their sight.
Alongside this project, Kate Coldrick also writes about education, culture, and inclusion at katecoldrick.com
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