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PRINCE VALIANT ANNOTATIONS
The references used herein are to the Fantagraphics volumes. The volumes referenced are those books.
For instance, "1. Panel 1." means page 1, panel 1; and "83. Panel 2." indicates page 83, panel 2.
VOLUME FORTY-ONE: KING OF ATHELDAG.
1818. Panel 5. Helen of Troy, of course, was the beautiful woman whose carrying off by Paris to Troy led to the Trojan War. The immediate origin of the famous description of her face as launching a thousand ships is Christopher Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus, but an earlier version of it appears in Lucian’s Dialogues of the Dead.
1822. Panel 6. Dondaris is Foster’s invention, but the name may have been derived from that of the city of Perdondaris in Lord Dunsany’s "Idle Days on the Yann". Perdondaris was also a city of great wealth and splendor, and yet, like Dondaris (cf. #1834, Panel 7) it would undergo a tragic downfall, though in a much different manner (the consequences of making the cast-off tusk of a monstrous beast into a gate for the city walls; the beast destroyed the city while searching for its lost tusk). The similarity of names may be a coincidence, but given that Val’s following two adventures (the theft of the Singing Sword by Klept and the meeting with the King of Atheldag) both bear a strong Dunsanian influence, I think that Foster might indeed have been inspired to draw on Dunsany for the name of his imaginary kingdom.
1826. Panel 1. Foster’s description of Arn as fourteen is another example of his inconsistencies; he had portrayed Arn turning fifteen during his New World adventure in #1566, Panel 3 - printed six years earlier!
1836. Panel 4. Klept’s name is taken from the Greek word kleptein, which means "to steal", an appropriate (perhaps too appropriate) name for a professional thief.
Foster’s portrayal of Klept appears to have been inspired by two master thieves from Lord Dunsany’s tales in The Book of Wonder. The first, Thangobrind from "Distressing Tale of Thangobrind the Jeweller", not only specializes in thefts of jewels like Klept, but is even constantly praised for his ingenuity and craftiness in such narrator’s remarks as "O, but he loved shadows!" (Wonder Tales, p. 5), "O, Thangobrind, Thangobrind, was ever a jeweller like you!", and "Oh, he was cunning!" (p. 6). Klept receives similar applause in Foster’s description of his theft of the Singing Sword. The second, Mr. Nuth from "How Nuth Would Have Practiced his Art upon the Gnoles", shares with Klept the practice of charging his clients twice, once for the deed itself, and afterwards for blackmail.
1842. Panels 4 - 6. The custom of Atheldag, whereby all visitors must tell a tale at the city gates in order to enter, is most likely another borrowing from Lord Dunsany. In Dunsany’s "The Idle City", the city of the title has a similar custom, demanding tales from travellers as the price of admission. Even the purpose of this custom is the same, to provide wondrous stories to tell the king whenever he is restless over the death of his queen (though the king in Dunsany’s story, unlike Foster’s King Dashad, did not - so far as we know - have his queen executed).
1843. It is tempting to wonder whether Foster here took inspiration yet again from Lord Dunsany, in the old soldier’s account of how King Allaine sought to conquer Time. In Dunsany’s "The Land of Time", the young king Karnith Zo of Alatta similarly decides to overthrow Time, and marches with his army upon Time’s home; he and his men, like King Allaine and his army, are conquered by Time instead.
1844. Panel 1. Alfred (last seen in #1116, Panel 2) reappears in Prince Valiant here. The panels illustrating his story from #1035-37, however, are new ones (drawn by John Cullen Murphy), rather than reprints from the original story.
1845. Panel 1. The opening of the High Priest’s tale may have been inspired by the badger’s story to the Wart in Chapter 21 of T. H. White’s The Sword in the Stone. The badger tells how, when God first created the animals, they were all "embryos" (just as the animals are depicted in Panel 2), but God gave each one of them gifts of their choosing, in the form of tools through which they could survive. Man alone chose to ask for no tools from God, but chose to remain in the form that he was in, to build his own tools instead. The darker side of the High Priest’s tale, about human warfare, might have been influenced by the epilogue that White wrote to the badger's tale when he revised The Sword in the Stone for inclusion in The Once and Future King, in which the badger sadly comments to the Wart about the human race’s penchant for warfare.
1846. Panel 2 - 3. Val’s comments on the woe that the Singing Sword brought echoes his words in #1123, Panels 3-4.
Val’s account of his youth here differs from the original strip in implying that Val first came to Camelot after attaining the Singing Sword.
VOLUME FORTY-TWO: ARN’S TRIP TO THULE.
1860. Panel 2. This is the second time in Prince Valiant that Percival is mentioned (see the annotation for #83, Panel 7), and the first time that Galahad is (see the panel for #2161, Panel 2).
Panel 3. The crocodile was, of course, the one which Val slew while Gawain’s squire; the poets conveniently also neglected to mention that he was assisted by Gawain and Negarth.
1861. Panel 2. This is the only time that Aleta’s uncle (whom Foster did not even bother providing a name for) is referred to in the strip.
1873. Panel 2. Astonishingly, Arn and Boltarson make no mention of the fact that they had already become friends, and journeyed together to North America; it is almost as if they are meeting for the first time. (Indeed, their past acquaintance is not once alluded to during their journey to Thule, either.) Perhaps Foster had forgotten their adventures side by side in the New World while writing this page. (It is also worth mentioning that not once does Foster call Boltarson anything other than "Boltarson" - it is as if he had forgotten the name "Hatha" as well.)
1874. Panel 1. Arn had, of course, already "prove[n] his manhood" on many adventures independent of his father by this time (from his first mountain-climbing adventure all the way down to his assistance of King Gian of Dondaris) - but presumably even this was not enough for him.
1875. The mention of Andorra is another anachronism. This principality in the Pyrenees was not founded until 1278 - and never had a king of its own, being jointly ruled over by France and the Bishop of Urgel in Spain from that time until 1993 (when it adopted a parliamentary form of government).
1892. Panel 4. Midsummer Day is a traditional celebration of the "midpoint of summer", in the sense of the time when the days are longest and the sun highest in the sky. (On the modern calendar, Midsummer Day falls on June 24.) It was customarily a time of festivities - as depicted here in Prince Valiant. On the evening preceding it, bonfires would be lit (supposedly to drive dragons away), as depicted in #1893, Panel 2, and people would run through the fields carrying blazing torches. It was also a time when the fairy-folk were supposed to be unusually active. After Europe became Christianized, Midsummer Day became viewed as the birthday of John the Baptist, in order to "convert" what had once been a pagan holiday.
The mention of bonfires during the night on #1893, Panel 2, suggests that Foster erred in portraying Arn and Lydia as first meeting on Midsummer Day; it would have been more likely the day before.
1893. Panel 2. Bonfires were part of the traditional Midsummer Day celebrations (see the annotation for #1892, Panel 4, above). The presence of a bonfire during the night indicates that Arn and Lydia must have actually met on Midsummer’s Eve.
1894. Panel 1. Geoffrey is mistaken in describing Lydia’s name as Egyptian; the name "Lydia" is of Greek origin. (Not that this is the first time that a Greek name has been mistakenly connected to Egypt; a far better-known example is that of the famous Cleopatra, who, despite being a queen of Egypt, was Macedonian Greek in descent, and bore a Greek name.) He is at least correct about the scarab being Egyptian, though.
1897. Panel 4. Foster’s re-introduction of the Inner Lands brings a fresh inconsistency in Prince Valiant. This time, the Inner Lands mentioned here (and in the story of Grimner’s intrigues that cover the next few pages) are not, apparently, the kingdom of Hap-Atla (though they bear the same name and adjoin Thule), but are instead a territory inhabited by nomadic raiders who look more like Huns or Mongols than like Norsemen. Evidently Foster had forgotten his original depiction of the Inner Lands, several years earlier in the strip.
1898. Panel 2. Haakon’s description of the tribesmen of the Inner Lands as coming from the eastern steppes supports all the further what the drawings of them suggest, that these are a "Mongoloid" people similar to the Huns or the Tatars.
VOLUME FORTY-THREE: BLOOD AND TEARS.
1911. Panel 3. Clovis was the King of the Salic Franks from 481 to 511. He was a strong ruler, noted also for being extremely cunning, ruthless, and machiavellian, even by the standards of the Dark Ages. He conquered most of Gaul, overthrowing the Roman ruler of Soissons, Syagrius, in 486, and thereby helped to transform it into "Frankland" or France. In 496, at the urging of his wife Clotilda, he converted to Christianity and saw to it that his Frankish subjects also became Christians. Clovis was perhaps one of the most noteworthy rulers in western Europe in the late 5th and early 6th centuries. It is a pity that Foster only mentioned him in passing here, and did not present some of his story on-stage, as he had done with the assassinations of Aetius and Valentinian III, the Vandal sack of Rome, and the life of St. Patrick earlier in the strip.
The mention of Clovis, incidentally, shows that Foster is playing fast and loose with time not only in the lives of his characters, but in the use of real 5th century history in the background. Arn was born in the second winter after his parents’ wedding, which took place during Genseric’s sack of Rome; this would make his birth no later than early 457. He is still in his teens, so, from the perspective of chronology, his adventures must be taking place during the 470’s, the decade preceding the beginning of Clovis’s reign. Furthermore, the allusion to Clovis indicates that he is already ruler over Gaul or France, meaning that Arn’s arrival in Paris cannot be earlier than 486. Evidently Foster was not particularly concerned over squaring the timeline of his strip with the timeline of real history (and the long gap in Prince Valiant chronology between the murder of Valentinian and the sack of Rome by the Vandals, during which time Val has time enough to go adventuring throughout the Mediterranean and Middle East, journey to Africa with Boltar, go back to Britain and Thule, and then return to the Mediterranean and North Africa for another round of adventures, shows that this was certainly not the first time that Foster had done this).
1914. Panel 5. Paul not only anachronistically mentions friars (see the annotation for #112, Panel 1), but seems to view friars and monks as the same. In fact, while there were similarities between them, they were not identical. Monks remained in their monasteries, while friars roamed the land, having no fixed abode. (Indeed, the life of a friar, precisely because of its wandering nature, might have appealed to Paul if it were not for the religious duties that went with it - and it must be admitted that, during the Middle Ages, there were many friars who cared so little about those duties as to become "unrepentant rascal[s]" themselves.)
Panel 7. We learn only two pages later that Paul had already donned armor, though secretly.
1915. Panel 2. Paul’s family indeed must have been pious, naming him after two apostles and two Evangelists.
1921. Panel 1. This is the only time in Prince Valiant (so far as I can tell) when bathroom functions are alluded to, if subtly.
1922. Panel 6. Many historians now doubt that the feudal system, as we know it, actually existed, regarding it as an over-simplification of the reality developed in early modern times.
1924. Panel 2. Nevers is a real town, to the south of Paris, where the Loire river (which Arn and Paul followed to reach it) joins with the Nievre.
1936. Panel 5. Foster errs in describing Gawain’s encounter with twenty knights as having been at Nevers; the tournament took place at Lyons.
1937. Panel 3. The name "Easterlings" appears in Prince Valiant for the first time, here applied to what appears to be a tribe of Asian nomadic horsemen, similar to the Huns and Mongols. This name pre-dates Foster; it can be found in Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene, Book Two, Canto x, stanza 63, line 2, where Spenser speaks of King Constantine of Britain (the father of Uther Pendragon, and grandfather of King Arthur) defeating "Those spoilefull Picts, and swarming Easterlings", the latter referring to the Huns (whom Spenser, following Geoffrey, portrays as invading Britain in an alliance with the Picts - an alliance unknown to history). For that matter, J. R. R. Tolkien in his The Lord of the Rings also applied this name to a set of human tribes from the east of Middle-earth who were allied to the Dark Lord Sauron in his wars with Gondor.
1940. Panel 7. Foster’s tale of the Valley of Content and Alrick’s departure from it is still another story most likely derived from Lord Dunsany. In "Poltarnees, Beholder of Ocean", Dunsany tells of the Inner Lands, three inland kingdoms with no access to the sea, except via the great mountain of Poltarnees. At regular intervals, young men from the Inner Lands will, out of curiosity, climb Poltarnees to behold the sea, and never return, being so overwhelmed with its beauty and mystery that they leave the Inner Lands forever to dwell by the sea. The main character, Athelvok, is such a youth, who departs the Inner Lands for the sea via Poltarnees, despite his love for the beautiful princess Hilnaric, just as Alrick’s curiosity about the outside world proves stronger than his love for the beautiful princess Karinena.
1946. Panel 2. This scene raises a question about the passing of the seasons during Arn’s adventures in Gaul. Only ten pages before, it was Midsummer Day in Thule. Now northern Gaul is in the grip of winter. Either Arn and Gawain’s journey northwards from Valence lasted much longer than the strip makes it appear, or else Foster had become careless about chronology again.
Panel 7. Clovis the Frank is once again alluded to (see the annotation for #1911, Panel 3). Note that Foster is here portraying the Frankish king as ruling over a France whose culture and customs are definitely those of the High Middle Ages, or even the late Middle Ages, rather than the historical 5th century, making his realm far more cultivated than it most likely was in actual history. (Foster had done the same thing with King Arthur, but there he had medieval romance to support him; Clovis, however, was never transplanted by the legend-makers to a mythical Golden Age of Chivalry as Arthur was!)
VOLUME FORTY-FOUR: KARAK THE TERRIBLE.
1949. Panel 4. The mention of bonbons is another anachronism, and far more serious than the familiar transplanting of knights, castles, tournaments and other elements of medieval life to the 5th century. Bonbons are generally made from chocolate, which was unknown to medieval Europe. Furthermore, the word "bonbon" does not even appear in English until 1796, well after the end of the Middle Ages. They would be as out of place in this setting as powdered wigs.
1951. Panel 4. The name "Jarnsaxa" is Old Norse for "iron knife", but also appears in Norse mythology. In the Prose Edda of Snorri Sturluson, Jarnsaxa was a giantess upon whom Thor fathered a son named Magni, who was of such strength that when he was only three years old, he was able to pull the body of a mighty frost giant named Hrungnir off his father, when all the other gods had failed to do so. (The gender of the original Jarnsaxa makes it odd that her name should be borne by a Viking chieftain; presumably its warlike sound was of greater importance than the fact that its first bearer was female.)
1953. Panel 4. Thanet is an isle off the Kentish coast, best-known for being the place where Hengist and Horsa were said to have landed in the tales about them, and which, under the terms of their alliance with Vortigern, was the first grant of land made to them and to their followers. No reference to this event is found during Arn’s visit here, however.
Panel 5. There are no known Roman fortresses at Thanet, but there were several along the Kentish coast, built as defenses against the Saxons.
1960. Panel 6. Hap Atla’s name is changed here to "Halp Atla", presumably a slip of Foster’s. The Inner Lands reverts to being his kingdom rather than a place of origin for nomadic raiders, as it was in the tale of King Grimner.
1973. Panel 2. Pegasus was the celebrated winged horse of Greek mythology. According to legend, after Perseus slew the Gorgon Medusa, Pegasus sprang up from her blood. He roamed the skies, only alighting to drink from a spring at Helicon (some tales say that a blow from Pegasus’s hoof would cause a fountain to rise from the ground). The Greek hero Bellerophon, charged with the task of slaying the Chimera (a monstrous combination of lion, goat, and serpent) then ravaging Lycia, came to Helicon to tame Pegasus, aware that he would need the beautiful flying steed’s help to complete his mission; with the aid of a golden bridle given to him by Athena, he accomplished this feat. Mounted on Pegasus, Bellerophon overcame the Chimera; afterwards, allowing his success to go to his head, he had Pegasus bear him to the summit of Mount Olympus. Zeus, angry at Bellerophon’s presumption, sent a gadfly to sting Pegasus, who threw his rider off his back. Bellerophon survived the fall, but only barely, and spent the remainder of his days in ignominy, while Pegasus entered the service of the gods.
Panel 3. Bucephalus was the famous steed of Alexander the Great. When Alexander was still a boy of around twelve, his father, Philip of Macedon, purchased Bucephalus from a horse-trader, only to discover that the great horse refused to let anyone mount him, and threw all his would-be riders. Philip was about to conclude that he had wasted his money when the young Alexander volunteered to tame the horse. Alexander had noticed that all of his predecessors had made the mistake of letting Bucephalus see his shadow, which had apparently frightened him and thereby made him less than receptive towards his riders; he therefore carefully positioned the horse so that his shadow would be behind him, while speaking to him gently all the while. In this way, Alexander was able to tame Bucephalus, to the surprise and admiration of King Philip. When Alexander grew up and embarked on his conquest of Persia, he rode Bucephalus into all his major battles until the latter died.
Galan’s adventures on his rocking-horse may have been inspired by another Dunsany story, "Blagdaross". The title character is a rocking-horse that was once ridden by a young boy who daydreamed, while doing so, that the rocking-horse was a mighty horse taking him on numerous adventures, even imagining him to be Bucephalus as Galan does in this panel (and also the steeds of St. George and Roland, or Rosinante, the horse of Don Quixote). When he grows up, however, he loses interest in Blagdaross and throws him away. Dunsany’s story ends happily, however, for the rocking-horse is discovered by two boys who eagerly play with him in the same fashion as their predecessor, to the rocking-horse’s delight.
Panel 8. For information on Jason and Perseus, see the annotation on #1703, Panel 1. Galan’s dream of possibly "rescu[ing] fair Helen" suggests that he is thinking of participating in the Trojan War on his next adventure.
1975. Panel 7. The story of the Lady of Quality supposedly took place while Val was still Gawain’s squire, and yet there is nowhere during that time in the early days of the strip when this adventure could have taken place. Val’s first adventure with Gawain after arriving at Camelot was the "fake quest" to Eeriwold, followed by the mission to rescue Ilene’s parents from the ogre of Sinstar Wood, followed immediately afterwards by the encounter with Morgan le Fay, the search for Prince Arn of Ord which quickly turned into the failed attempt to rescue Ilene, and finally the tournament at Caerleon. Foster must be engaging in retrocon once again.
1981. Panel 7. Judging from the details of his raids as given by Boltar, Bella Grossi’s style of empire-building more resembles that of Attila the Hun than that of Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar. He is portrayed as merely ravaging and destroying the lands that he attacks (such as North Africa and Rome), with no sign of leaving behind a force to occupy and administer these same lands as conquered territories, as Alexander and Caesar did on their own expansionist campaigns.
1984. Panel 1. Leofric’s name comes from Anglo-Saxon England. Its best-known bearer in history was Earl Leofric of Mercia in the 11th century, most famous for being the husband of Lady Godiva (the same Lady Godiva who, according to legend, rode naked through the town of Coventry in exchange for his promise to repeal the heavy taxes that he had imposed upon the townspeople).
1985. Panel 6. Note that there are two hints in this panel of Dupuy’s treachery. One, explicitly stated in the following panel, is his contradiction of the report given by the men from Val’s ship concerning Bella Grossi’s progress. The second and more subtle hint is the overly nonchalant way in which he reports on the progress; it is hard to imagine a both loyal and intelligent man (and Dupuy is certainly no fool) saying so carelessly, "Oh, working its way nearer... It might never get here!" about the approach of a serious threat to his homeland.
VOLUME FORTY-FIVE: THE MARK OF CAIN.
TITLE: The title of Volume 45 is a reference to the biblical story of Cain and Abel (Genesis 4: 1 - 15). After Cain murdered his brother Abel, God punished Cain by condemning him to the life of a homeless wanderer. Cain expressed his fear that he would be killed in retribution for his act, whereupon God "set a mark upon Cain" that warned all others to leave him alone. This title refers to the story of Fulla and Hantz within the book itself, where Hantz, like Cain, murders his brother, and is sentenced, also like Cain, not to death but to permanent exile.
1994. Panel 8. A mujik (also spelled "muzhik") is a term for a Russian peasant. Since Bella Grossi is from the Mediterranean rather than from Russia, this word is not an accurate term to apply to him - but still does a good job of provoking his anger!
1999. Panel 7. We have another error here in Foster’s mention of the "winter equinox". The correct term is "winter solstice"; equinoxes only take place in spring and autumn.
2000. Foster uses this "anniversary page" to recapitulate Val’s career, complete with many reprinted panels from the past thirty-eight years of the strip. The captions contain many signs of retrocontinuity, however, which are worth commenting on along the way.
Panel 1. A reprint of #1, Panel 10.
Val is here described as five years old at the time of his arrival in the Fens with his parents at the beginning of the strip. This contradicts the internal chronology of Prince Valiant as given in its early years. Foster had stated then that Aguar and his followers spent twelve years of exile in the Fens. If Val was five when they first came there, then he would have to have been seventeen when they returned to Thule to face Sligon. But he was portrayed in the strip as eighteen upon his return to Thule after travelling throughout Europe and beyond three years later.
Panel 2. A reprint of #3, Panel 9.
Panel 3. A reprint of #16, Panel 3.
Panel 4. A reprint of #19, Panel 1.
Panel 5. A reprint of #21, Panel 3.
Panel 6. This panel contains reprints of both #71, Panel 7 (Val’s fight with Thagnar’s men at Dundorn Bridge) and #103, Panel 5.
Foster engages in the second "continuity error" on this page here, when he describes Val as fighting against Saxons at Dundorn Bridge (in the original story, they were Vikings), "until help arrived" (no help arrived in the original story; Val finally sank from exhaustion and was taken by the Vikings alive to Thagnar).
Panel 7. This panel contains reprints of both #155, Panel 2 (the picture of Karnak) and #885, Panel 5.
The text contains the third "continuity error" on Page 2000. Val never harassed Attila himself, who died during the siege of Andelkrag, before Val founded the Legion of Hun-hunters; his Hunnish adversaries were Karnak and his master Kalla Khan in Pannonia. Aetius’s defeat of Attila at the Battle of Chalons (though alluded to in #187, Panel 5) would have to have taken place before Val’s battles with the Huns, since it occurred in 451, the year before Attila’s invasion of Italy (which took place in Prince Valiant just before Val’s arrival at Andelkrag) and two years before Attila’s death; consequently, the outcome of the Battle of Chalons cannot have been due to Val’s actions. To make matters worse, Foster mispells "Aetius" as "Ateus" - and, as the finishing touch, uses a drawing of Karnak to represent Attila!
Panel 8. A reprint of #287, Panel 9.
Panel 9. A reprint of #1860, Panel 5.
Panel 10. This is a new drawing rather than a reprint. It also contains the fourth "continuity error" on this page, for when Val first visited the Holy Sepulcher, he had been temporarily parted from the Singing Sword thanks to Angor Wrack, and was consecrating a scimitar instead.
Panel 11. A reprint of #434, Panel 5.
Panel 12. A reprint of #60, Panel 6 - though referring in the text to the events during Val’s visit to Merlin on #317.
Panel 13. A reprint of #1249, Panel 2.
It is also worth noting that the order of events on the lowest third of the page is in a muddle. They appear there as follows: Val meets Boltar, sacks Saramand, visits the Holy Sepulcher, is permanently united with Aleta, hears Merlin’s comment that Aleta needs no sorcery to enchant him, and has a family with her. But in the original strip, those events took place in this order: Val visits the Holy Sepulcher, meets Boltar, hears Merlin’s comment about Aleta, is permanently united with Aleta, sacks Saramand, and has a family with Aleta.
2003. Panel 6. Foster reuses the panel (and text) of Oom-Fooyat’s wedding to Winnie from #639, Panel 5.
Unfortunately, Foster gives no explanation for why Oom-Fooyat and Winnie had left Illwynde to settle in London (though it probably does not matter to the story).
2004. Panel 5. Obviously Val’s unfortunate horse cannot be Arvak (whose own death would take place a few years later in the series, in any case) - though it raises the question of where Arvak was at the time, and why Val was not riding him on the journey to London.
2009. Panel 7. Although Lydia is the ostensible reason for Arn’s journey, he never reaches her; apparently the story of Fulla and Hantz’s feud drove her entirely out of Foster’s mind. Lydia would not reappear in the strip, in fact, until #2173, on the eve of her tragic death.
2017. Panel 4. In Foster’s description of Hashida’s uncertainty over whether the creatures he is conjuring up really exist or not, we see once again the strong spirit of ambiguity that generally pervades the fantasy sequences of Prince Valiant.
2030. Panel 5. For Mrs. Grundy, see the annotation for #925, Panel 1.
VOLUME FORTY-SIX: SUNKEN TREASURE.
2040. Panel 3. Foster makes another slip of the pen here, when he has Zilla say that the earthquake that destroyed the palace and buried its treasure had taken place a hundred years before. In #2038, Panel 7, the earthquake was dated to eighty years before instead.
Panel 6. Zilla errs in saying that "every flower is compared with a precious jewel" - it would be more accurate to say "every flower but one". The exception is "jonquil’s gold", for gold is a precious metal rather than a jewel.
2045. Panel 7. The description of Sherif Karmish’s followers as Ottomans is another anachronism. The Ottoman Turks were named after a leader of theirs in the late 13th and early 14th century, one Osman, and developed into a powerful force in the first half of the 14th century, taking over what remained of the Byzantine Empire, and capturing Constantinople itself in 1453. They would not have been found in the Near East during the late 5th century (and Sherif Karmish himself is a Muslim or "pseudo-Muslim" aristocrat or official more suited to the era of the Crusades or the Ottoman Empire afterwards than to the close of the 5th century).
2050. Panel 7. Helene, last heard from in #897, Panel 5, returns to Prince Valiant.
2051. Panel 4. Foster clearly remembered that he had earlier described Dionseus as being from Samos (see #887, Panel 4), when he depicted Dionseus and Helene living here in exile.
2056. Panel 6. Thessalonica is a city in Macedonia (named after Thessaloniki, the sister of Alexander the Great, whose husband, Cassander, founded the city). It was the leading city in Macedonia during Roman times, but achieved perhaps its greatest fame when St. Paul wrote a couple of letters to the early Christians living there, preserved in the New Testament as First and Second Thessalonians.
2059. Panel 4. It is appropriate that Val’s friend and ally in the war between Hajas and Kasov, introduced here, should be named "Telamon", since the pirate who leads Val to this war is named Ajaxos. Telamon’s namesake in Greek legend was the father of Ajax, who was second only to Achilles among the Greek champions who fought in the Trojan War. Did Foster deliberately choose the name of "Telamon" for Hajas’s nephew because he had named the pirate captain in the same story "Ajaxos", or is it a coincidence? Sadly, this is another question that can never be answered now.
2074. Panel 3. The Bulgars were one of the peoples from the Asian steppes moving into Europe during this period of history; they followed the Huns westward in the late 4th century A.D., retreated with them, and moved southwards afterwards where they entered into contact with the Eastern Roman Empire and were employed by it to fight against the Ostrogoths. The Bulgars became so intrigued by the Eastern Roman Empire’s wealth, however, that they attempted to seize its provinces closest to the Danube. They were eventually defeated by the Avars around 560, but recuperated in the early 7th century to form a major khanate under their leader Kurt. After Kurt’s death (around 642), they broke up into five smaller units; three of these were absorbed by their neighbors and faded out of history, a fourth migrated northwards into Russia to become the Volga Bulgars, and the fifth eventually became the nation of Bulgaria.
2077. Panel 4. Foster errs in describing Arn as having "spent most of his childhood" in Camelot; if anything, Arn had spent very little of his childhood there. He was brought there for a time as a baby upon his parents’ return from the New World, but after that, he spent all of his childhood and much of his boyhood in Thule, the Misty Isles, and the Inner Lands (or in transit from one of those places to another). He did not set foot in Camelot again after his initial visit until his preadolescent years, beginning with a brief stay in #1229-30, followed by longer visits there afterwards with his family.
Panel 5. Sir Dinadan is one of the most remarkable supporting figures in Malory. Unlike most of his fellow knights of the Round Table, he was not a conventional champion, eager to do battle and break a lance in the lists, but a cautious, prudent man, who preferred to avoid fighting (particularly jousting for sport) whenever possible - although he was an able enough warrior when he needed to be, as in protecting others from a villainous robber-knight (when Dinadan and Gareth took part in a tournament once together, they made such good account of themselves that King Arthur, watching them, compared them both to "eager wolves"). He also had a sense of humor, and would often make various quips and jests, to the delight of his fellow knights and ladies. These even extended to practical jokes; on one occasion, Dinadan had Sir Dagonet disguise himself as Sir Lancelot and challenge the cowardly King Mark of Cornwall to battle, resulting in Mark immediately turning tail and fleeing for his life. (Dinadan had a tendency to get as well as he gave, however; on one occasion, Lancelot, wearing a maiden’s gown over his armor, unhorsed Dinadan in a tournament and proceeded to afterwards force him to don woman’s attire, which so amused Queen Guinevere and the rest of the court present that they fell to the ground laughing.)
Dinadan stood out from his fellow knights in another way; he had little interest in romance, commenting that the love of ladies only made trouble for knights, and produced more misery than joy. (This earned him his share of rebukes from those knights and ladies with a more conventional outlook on such matters.) He was still well-loved by Arthur’s court for his sense of humor, in spite of his unorthodox sentiments. (Sadly, Dinadan was treacherously murdered by Mordred and Agravain during the Quest of the Holy Grail, because he had unhorsed them both once - after they had challenged him.)
Dinadan’s inclusion in an adventure concerning minstrels and wandering entertainers has a particular appropriateness to it, due to another deed of his in Malory. He composed a song about King Mark, focusing on his various villainous and treacherous actions, and taught it to a minstrel named Eliot. Eliot, in turn, taught it to other minstrels, who journeyed throughout Arthur’s kingdom, singing it everywhere; all who heard the song were amused except, of course, for King Mark. It is certainly tempting to wonder if this was why Foster chose Dinadan for the role of Arn’s companion in the tale of Bertram and Lazare.
Foster takes a liberty with Malory, however, in making Dinadan Arthur’s court jester; in the original medieval romances, that role was filled by Sir Dagonet (who was portrayed in that function twice earlier in Prince Valiant, both in #101, Panel 3, and #482, Panel 3).
2078. Panel 3. There is an apparent disagreement between the picture and the text here. Dinadan speaks of how he had discovered Maurel’s treachery in concealing his soldiers in the forests near Camelot, but the picture shows Merlin, rather than Dinadan, speaking to Arthur. Perhaps Foster meant the picture to depict, not Arthur receiving Dinadan’s warning, but his conferring with Merlin about it afterwards; if so, he unfortunately failed to make it clear in the text.
VOLUME FORTY-SEVEN: QUEEN OF THE AMAZONS.
2080. Panel 1. Poitiers is a town in western France, best known as the site of a major victory by Edward the Black Prince over the French in 1356, during the Hundred Years’ War.
2082. Panel 3. Santiago de Compostela, a town in northwestern Spain, was one of the foremost sites of pilgrimage in the medieval period (alongside Jerusalem and Rome) because it was believed to house the remains of the Apostle St. James. (Although James was put to death by King Herod Agrippa in Judaea - cf. Acts 12: 2 - later tradition claimed that he had done missionary work in Spain before his martyrdom.) However, St. James’ purported tomb was not discovered until 813, meaning that pilgrims would not have been wending their way to Santiago during the lifetime of Prince Valiant and Arn.
Panel 6. Foster yet again anachronistically places friars in 5th century Europe.
2086. Panel 6. Friar Guibert is referring, of course, to the famous fable by Aesop.
Panel 7. It is an odd coincidence that the abbey which Friar Guibert guides Arn, Dinadan, and Gaston to should have for its patron saint a namesake of the local lord (Sir Raymond).
2088. Panel 5. Foster makes another slip of the pen in naming the original "king of the minstrels" as "Bertram"; in his first mention of the man, on #2083, Panel 1, he bore the name of "Bertrand". This is a minor inconsistency, however, for "Bertrand" is a French variant of "Bertram".
2091. Panel 6. Orpheus was the greatest musician of Greek mythology. He accompanied Jason and his Argonauts on the Quest for the Golden Fleece, and his music saved them from the Sirens. Afterwards, he fell in love with the lovely Eurydice and married her, but shortly afterwards she was bitten by a poisonous snake and died. Grief-stricken, Orpheus ventured into the underworld to win her back, and appealed to Hades, the god of the dead, playing such sweet music as to touch even his heart. Hades agreed to let Eurydice go, but on the condition that she followed Orpheus up to the surface world and he did not once look back at her. Unfortunately, just as Orpheus had almost returned to the world of the living, he did look back, to make certain that Eurydice was still following him, and thus lost her forever. He wandered about grieving, until he was set upon by the Maenads (crazed female followers of Dionysus) who tore him limb from limb.
Orpheus never actually became a god, so Lazare’s description of him as "god of music" is inaccurate. He was, however, the center of a secret cult in ancient Greece known as Orphism, or the Orphic Mysteries.
2105. Panel 3. Gunther’s angry complaints about "infidels" are probably another anachronistic reference to Muslims in Jerusalem - though Foster takes care not to specify the exact religion of the aforesaid "infidels".
2105. Panel 6. This is a well-known biblical description of the Holy Land.
2106. Panel 4. Foster here errs in speaking of Gunther’s "home in Gaul", since he had already stated earlier (in #2094, Panel 4) that the fanatical young Gothic knight came from Germany. For that matter, Foster’s description of Gunther as having his own home (complete with a great hall and hunting parties) clashes with the earlier statement that, as the youngest son in the family, Gunther was living the life of a wandering knight without any lands of his own. Of course, Foster might have had in mind the fact that, with his father and older brothers dead, Gunther would now inherit the family estate.
2109. Panel 7. Acre was a prominent town in the Holy Land during ancient and medieval times. Its capture by the Muslims in 1291 is generally held to have marked the official end of the Crusades.
2110. Panel 5. Foster again (as in #2106, Panel 4) speaks of Gunther as though he was a landed nobleman rather than a landless knight, and this time not even Gunther’s presumed inheritance of his father’s estate can explain this. He had left Germany in pursuit of the murderers of his father and brothers so quickly that he had not had time to serve as "lord of the manor" on the family lands. Most likely Foster must have forgotten by this point the details of Gunther’s backstory.
2111. Panel 3. Khazan II is Foster’s invention, although the Persians often were indeed at war with the Eastern Roman Empire.
2112. Panel 3. Khazan’s titles of "Defender of Heaven" and "Destroyer of the Unbeliever" evoke an Islamic conqueror, rather than a ruler living two hundred years before the career of Mohammed. A Persian leader in the late 5th century, of course, would be a Zoroastrian rather than a Muslim.
2119. Panel 7. Valeta anachronistically parodies the title of Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh (published in 1946).
2121. Panel 5. Foster alludes once again to the legend about Aleta being a mermaid’s daughter (see #923, Panel 2).
VOLUME FORTY-EIGHT: RETURN TO CAMELOT.
2124. Panel 4. Since Karen and Valeta are the only girls present and Karen is initially mistaken for a boy (see Panel 5), Assur’s use of the plural is puzzling.
2130. Panel 7. Hagen (who appears only on this page in the strip) appears to belong more to Thule than to the Misty Isles in terms of setting. The name "Hagen" is a German one (its best-known bearer being the Hagen of the Nibelungenlied and Wagner’s Ring Cycle) rather than a Greek one, and Hagen’s appearance and attire seem more suited to northern Europe during the Dark Ages than the classical (or even late classical) Mediterranean.
2134. Panel 4. The mention of meters in this scene is another anachronism. The metric system was a product of the French Revolution, and would not have been used at any point during the medieval period.
2144. Panel 4. It is tempting to wonder whether Foster was once again drawing upon Lord Dunsany for inspiration. The young stranger’s tale of having to return the pearl to the spider-idol is strongly evocative of Dunsany’s "Distressing Tale of Thangobrind the Jeweller", where the professional jewel-thief Thangobrind is commanded to steal a valuable diamond from the idol of the spider-god Hlo-hlo. While the young stranger’s mission is the reverse of Thangobrind’s (in that he must return the precious jewel to the spider-idol rather than take it), it echoes Dunsany’s story, particularly in his fear that the spider-idol is pursuing him (as Hlo-hlo’s idol pursues Thangobrind). The stranger was more fortunate than Thangobrind, however; he escaped!
Panel 6. Foster may have borrowed the Desert of Lethe’s name from Greek mythology. The original Lethe was a river rather than a desert, one of the five rivers of the classical underworld (the other four being Styx, Acheron, Cocytus, and Phlegethon). Whoever drank from it forgot everything.
Panel 7. This scene was most likely influenced by the scene in #238, Panel 7, when Val received a similar greeting upon arriving at Belsatan’s tower.
2145. Panel 8. The young traveller disappears without a word of explanation immediately afterwards; there is no trace of him on the next page or any of the pages after that. Presumably Foster forgot all about him immediately afterwards (and it must have helped that the man had fulfilled his role in the story by recounting the tale of the spider-idol for some variety, and was therefore no longer needed).
2147. Panel 5. The presence of the title of "caliph" in the 5th century is another anachronism. This title was bestowed upon whoever was to be the successor to Mohammed as the "Commander of the Faithful", earthly leader of the Muslims (the word "caliph" is even derived from the Arabic Khalifah, meaning "successor"). Mohammed’s career was two hundred years after the time of Prince Valiant, so there could obviously be no successors to him during the period covered by the strip. Presumably Foster was using "caliph" simply to denote an exotic-sounding monarch from the distant east, without worrying greatly about the literal meaning of his title (and after all the elements of Islamic culture that he had already introduced into Prince Valiant, it was certainly too late for him to begin worrying about such things now).
2148. Panel 1. While Caliphs were found in various parts of the Muslim world, such as Baghdad, northern Africa, and Spain, Afghanistan, so far as is known, never enjoyed one.
2151. Panel 3. Normandy is again anachronistically mentioned (for the first time that it appeared in the strip, see the annotation for # 707, Panel 7).
2152. Panel 1. King Claudas was the adversary of King Ban of Benwick, Lancelot’s father, in both Malory and the Prose Lancelot. According to Malory, Claudas was almost constantly at war with both King Ban and his brother King Bors (the father of Sir Lionel and Sir Bors de Ganis); when Arthur sought the aid of Ban and Bors to help him defeat the rebellious eleven kings under King Lot, he agreed to assist them against Claudas in return (Claudas was getting the upper hand in the war, being wealthy enough to afford a larger army than Ban and Bors). Later on, Arthur went to war with Claudas on the Continent and defeated him, although Malory does not provide the details. His son, Claudin, was one of the three knights from Gaul who joined Galahad, Percival, and Bors in achieving the Holy Grail at Carbonek.
The Prose Lancelot provides further details about Claudas. He was described in its pages as the King of the Waste Land, a part of Gaul that had been devastated during a series of wars during Uther Pendragon’s reign; Claudas was bent on expanding the boundaries of his domain at the expense of his neighbors (such as Ban and Bors), perhaps partly because of the desolation of his own lands. The Prose Lancelot depicted him as an ambitious and ruthless man, yet with many virtues intermingled with his flaws. It also recorded how Claudas finally succeeded in conquering Benwick while Lancelot was still a baby (leading to Ban’s death and Lancelot’s being raised by the Lady of the Lake), though Arthur would later (with the aid of the grown-up Lancelot) succeed in recovering this land and vanquishing Claudas.
2154. Panel 4. Foster anachronistically calls the body of water between Britain and France "the English Channel", even though England did not exist yet in the 5th century.
2161. Panel 2. Sir Galahad makes his only on-stage appearance in Prince Valiant.
Galahad was the son of Sir Lancelot by Elaine of Carbonek, the daughter of King Pelles. When Lancelot visited Carbonek on one of his adventures, Elaine fell in love with him, but Lancelot was unresponsive towards her, due to his allegiance to Queen Guinevere. King Pelles was aware of this and supported his daughter in her desire for Lancelot, because he knew that the knight who would achieve the Holy Grail would be born from their union. Pelles and Elaine proceeded to consult Elaine’s nursemaid Brusen, a skilled sorceress and herbalist; she magically deceived Lancelot into mistaking Elaine for Guinevere and sleeping with her, thereby begetting Galahad upon her.
When Galahad grew up, he was brought to Camelot for Pentecost by a wise old hermit named Naciens, and presented to King Arthur and his court as the pure knight destined to most fully achieve the Holy Grail. Galahad proved his worth there by two miraculous feats. The first was to seat himself in the Siege Perilous without being harmed, showing that he was indeed the knight for whom it had been made. The second involved a wonder that had taken place earlier that day; a sword in a floating stone had appeared in the river just outside Camelot, with an inscription stating that only the worthiest knight in the world could draw it forth. Arthur, believing this personage to be Lancelot, urged him to withdraw it, but Lancelot, aware that the sword was not meant for him, refused; at Arthur’s bidding, Gawain and Percival both attempted to pull out the sword, but both failed. Galahad now came to the floating stone and drew out the sword, which he took for his own.
At dinner that day, a vision of the Holy Grail appeared in the great hall, spurring all of the knights of the Round Table, including Galahad, to vow to go in quest of it. Galahad’s adventures on the quest were many - and more fortunate than the events that befell the other knights of the Round Table upon it. He received a white shield with a red cross that had been specially prepared for him in the time of Joseph of Arimathea, drove seven robber-knights out of the Castle of Maidens, and brought many strange phenomena scattered throughout Britain to an end. Accompanied by Sir Percival and Sir Bors, he finally came to Carbonek, there healed the Fisher King who served as the Grail’s custodian (in some versions of the story, though not all, his own grandfather King Pelles), and celebrated the Grail Mass with his companions (as well as with nine other knights from abroad, three from Gaul, three from Denmark, and three from Ireland). Afterwards, at the bidding of God, Galahad, Percival, and Bors accompanied the Holy Grail to the city of Sarras in the Middle East. The local king, Estorause, a pagan tyrant, immediately had the three knights thrown into prison; the Grail succoured them there, and a year later, Estorause, on his deathbed, repented and freed them. Galahad was afterwards chosen by the people of Sarras for their new king; a year later, having set the kingdom into order, he voluntarily laid down his life and was taken up to Heaven alongside the Holy Grail.
Galahad has since become a byword for purity and chastity, both of which virtues he excelled at. While one of the best-known knights of the Round Table, he was only at King Arthur’s court for one night before departing from it forever; modern-day pop culture versions have frequently ignored this and portrayed Galahad as a regular resident at Camelot (just as they often delay the passing of Merlin). Foster only included Galahad as an on-stage character in Prince Valiant in this scene, although in a tournament that is evidently not on the eve of the Quest of the Holy Grail (the only tournament at Camelot that Galahad, in Malory’s account of Arthur’s reign, could ever have participated in).
2166. Panel 5. Foster’s description of the Danes imitating the Vikings suggests that he counted only those sea-raiders from Norway as Vikings, instead of those from all of Scandinavia.
VOLUME FORTY-NINE: ROAD TO SORROW’S END
2169. Panel 6. Morgan Todd’s full name is inadvertently omitted to simply "Todd".
2170. Panel 1. Foster slips (most likely unwittingly) into retrocon again when he describes Tillicum as having been "brought from across far seas" by Boltar, assuming that he here alludes to her American Indian origins; Tillicum came to Europe, of course, with Val and his family, and did not even meet Boltar until their journey from Britain to Thule.
Foster also had apparently forgotten that Galan had visited Thule before.
2175. The "log fortress" was never shown in the strip; even when Vikingsholm was first introduced in Prince Valiant (upon Val and Prince Arn’s visit to King Sligon in #81), it was depicted as a stone castle.
2177. Panel 1 - 3. We do not know why Foster killed off Lydia (unlike the case of Ilene’s similar untimely end, where we do know the reason why), but this passage offers a possible explanation for his decision; although Lydia’s love for Arn was genuine, there was something unsettling in Haakon’s readiness to use it to his advantage. Presumably Foster wanted Arn to find a love untainted by such political schemings.
2181. Panel 3. King Hrothgar bears the same name as the great Danish king in Beowulf who built the mead-hall of Heorot, and who suffered a series of raids from the monstrous ogre Grendel, until the latter was slain by Beowulf. However, it is clear that the Hrothgar of Prince Valiant is not the Hrothgar of Beowulf or intended as an adaptation of that character; the only similarities between them are the name and the Scandinavian setting in which both live. The hall of the Hrothgar of Prince Valiant is poor and crude, enjoying none of the splendor of Heorot, and Hrothgar himself possesses none of the nobility and wisdom of his namesake in Beowulf, being a brutal and lecherous old man, utterly devoid of honor. He is even subject to King Aguar, who can strip him of his title as if Hrothgar was merely one of his nobles rather than an independent king. (This argues all the more that this Hrothgar is not the same as the legendary ruler at Heorot, who dwelt in Denmark rather than Norway.) It is therefore most likely that Foster was merely following his habit of name-borrowing again, only this time quarrying his names from Anglo-Saxon poetry rather than Arthurian romance. One cannot help but think, however, that he might have done better to bestow the name of a far less famous figure from Beowulf upon his villain.
Panel 7. Foster again erroneously gives the title of "druid" to a Viking priest. Having the druid "chant[ing] runes" is also inaccurate; runes were not poems or spells but the lettering system of the Norsemen (although it was believed that they had magical powers, having been discovered by Odin after he hung himself from the World Ash Tree Yggdrasill in pursuit of wisdom and knowledge).
2184. Panels 5-6. Hrothgar’s strategy against Earl Cnute’s town seems to have been borrowed by Foster from a similar strategy said to have been adopted by Harald Hardraada, the adventurous Norwegian king who was slain at the Battle of Stamford Bridge in 1066, when he besieged a town in Sicily.
2192. Panel 7. Do not feel too sorry for Arn here; he would finally (under the Murphys, and outside the boundaries of this work) find lasting love, with a beautiful huntress named Maeve. Of course, this romance would have its own complications: for one thing, Maeve’s father was none other than Mordred!
2197. Panel 6. Note that Galan is among the family members welcoming Arn upon his return to Camelot; Foster had evidently forgotten that he had sent the boy to Thule with Arn several pages earlier. (In fact, Galan last appears in Thule in #2175, Panel 4; presumably he went back to Britain while Arn was morosely wandering about and then thwarting Hrothgar’s lustful designs on Grace.)
2202. Panel 2. Although Arn had indeed been Gawain’s squire for this length of time, he had spent much of it away in Thule on his own, something that Foster had presumably forgotten again.
2209. Panel 7. Arthur speaks of the "noble and his lady" prematurely; Sir Vanoc and Lady Enid do not make their request until #2212.
VOLUME FIFTY: VIKINGS ON THE ISLE OF MAN.
2212. Panel 2. Lady Enid’s name is borrowed from that of the heroine of one of the better-known minor Arthurian tales. She was the daughter of a once-wealthy lord who was overthrown by his ambitious nephew and reduced to penury; Enid lived with her father in his impoverished state until a knight of Arthur’s court named either Erec or Geraint (depending upon which version of the story one reads - see the following paragraph), visiting their household, fell in love with her and took her to wife. Unfortunately, Enid’s husband spent so much time with her that he began to neglect his knightly duties; many of his people began blaming Enid for it, which troubled her greatly. One morning, Enid lamented her part in her husband’s sloth and inactivity; he overheard her, and in anger, set off on a series of adventures, making her accompany him. (Some versions of the story have him misinterpret her words as suggesting that she was unfaithful to him, and make this the motivation of his anger, but others do not.) After several exploits (including defending the ever-faithful Enid from a couple of lecherous noblemen) the two were reconciled.
The story seems to have originated with Chretien de Troyes, who made it one of the first of his Arthurian verse romances, Erec and Enide. He named Enid’s husband Erec, making him the son of a certain King Lac. When the story was retold by an unknown Welsh romancer (and came to be part of the Mabinogion), Erec was renamed Geraint, and was identified with a half-historical half-legendary prince of Devon who was slain in battle against Saxon raiders at a place called Llongporth. (Geraint’s death is recounted in an old Welsh elegy - which also mentions "Arthur’s men" as present; this could explain how Geraint came to be drawn into the Arthurian cycle.) Tennyson, from there, adapted the story for two of the poems (originally one poem, which he later split into two) for his Idylls of the King, "The Marriage of Geraint" and "Geraint and Enid"; his adaptation of the story ensured that Enid’s husband would be better known by the name of Geraint to an English-speaking audience.
Of course, the Enid of Prince Valiant cannot be the Enid, since her husband’s name is given as Vanoc rather than either Erec or Geraint; this is merely yet another case of name-borrowing. (As with the case of Hrothgar, however, I wonder whether Foster might have made the mistake of borrowing too prominent a name from legend.)
2227. Panel 1. Sir Lionel (mentioned only here in Prince Valiant) was a cousin of Sir Lancelot’s, the son of Lancelot’s uncle King Bors of Gaul, and older brother to Sir Bors de Ganis (one of the three knights of the Round Table who achieved the Holy Grail, but who, unlike Lionel, was never mentioned in the strip).
Lionel appears several times in Malory. He accompanies Lancelot on a quest shortly after the war with Emperor Lucius, and while Lancelot sleeps, challenges the robber-knight Sir Tarquine to battle; Tarquine, however, defeats Lionel and carries him away to his castle as a prisoner, where he strips the hapless knight and scourges him naked with thorns - a fate that he visited upon all of his captives among the knights of the Round Table - until Lancelot slays Tarquine and frees Lionel and the other prisoners. Later on, Lionel plays a small part in the Quest for the Holy Grail (a quest where he does poorly). He is captured by two knights and (again) scourged with thorns; Bors, coming upon him and seeing his plight, is about to go to his rescue when he sees a damsel being carried off by a lustful knight who clearly intends to rape her, and chooses to save the damsel instead. He afterwards fears that he has done the wrong thing in abandoning his brother, but is assured by a holy man that he made the right choice. Lionel sees it otherwise and comes after Bors in a vengeful mood, intending to kill him; when both a hermit and Sir Colgrevance, a minor knight of the Round Table, protest Lionel’s wish to slay Bors, he kills them, and is only prevented from killing Bors himself by an act of divine intervention that parts the brothers and heals Lionel of his anger and hate.
In the civil wars that end Arthur’s reign, Lionel holds with Lancelot, his cousin, and goes with him into exile in Gaul; Lancelot appoints Lionel King of France. When Lancelot and his followers come to Britain after Arthur’s final battle, Lionel is killed at London in a skirmish against unnamed opponents (in the Prose Lancelot, these opponents are the surviving followers of Mordred, under his two sons), and thus never joins Lancelot in holy retirement at Glastonbury, as his brother Bors does.
2229. Panel 3. Foster again (cf. #1373, Panel 5) makes the total number of the Round Table knights one hundred, rather than one hundred and fifty as in Malory.
2233. Panel 5. The "little folk" of Ireland are re-introduced into the strip, this time fully on stage (as opposed to being merely glimpsed, as in Val’s first visit to Ireland, in #584, Panel 3). No explanation is given as to why they had come to the Isle of Man from Ireland (the fact that the little man says "back to Ireland" - emphasis mine - indicates that they had originally come from there).
2239. Panel 4. Gawain’s mention of Karran’s arrival at Camelot during the tournament at Pentecost contradicts the earlier account, where the tournament clearly takes place during or shortly after winter, rather than in late spring (when Pentecost falls on the church calendar).
2244. Panel 6. Present-day Dublin was probably founded by the Vikings in the 9th century, which would make its presence in Prince Valiant yet another anachronism. But there are indications that Dublin had existed in some form even before the Viking incursions; the Greek geographer Claudius Ptolemy had mentioned it, for example, in his writings around A.D. 140.
2245. Panel 5. Since harpies originated from Greek mythology rather than from Irish (see the annotation for #1382, Panel 5), they would be unexpected servants for a Druid. Of course, we could assume that Rory is speaking of creatures from Irish legend similar to harpies, that were merely called "harpies" in the text as a translation convention.
Panel 6. St. Patrick’s mission to Ireland is once again referred to in Prince Valiant.
2249. Panel 2. This is still another retrocon; the fight between Val and Salam Fulda here recounted was never portrayed in the strip.
2252. Panel 3. St. Gall is a town in what is now Switzerland; St. Gallus, after whom it was named, was an Irish monk who reportedly came here in 612 to found an abbey, making the town (or at least its name) an anachronism. The "Magyar thugs" are also an anachronism, since the Magyars did not begin raiding Europe until a few centuries after the 5th.
2257. Panel 3. An allusion to the biblical story of Samson in the Book of Judges (Chapters 13-16). Samson was vowed to the service of God at birth as a Nazarite, which meant, among other things, that he must never cut his hair. He was gifted with great strength, to such an extent that he could defeat numerous Philistines with nothing more than the jawbone of an ass and uproot a city’s gates from off their hinges. The Philistines, however, learned through their spy Delilah that Samson’s strength would only last so long as he never cut his hair as part of his religious vows; an accomplice of Delilah shaved Samson’s head in his sleep, and he was thus easily captured by the Philistines, blinded, and set to work as a slave. However, Samson’s hair grew back during his servitude, restoring to him his strength, and when the Philistines brought him out to mock during one of their festivals, he pressed with both of his hands upon the pillars of the temple in which they held this festival, causing the temple to come crashing down upon the heads of both the Philistines and himself.
2262. Panel 2. Foster’s successors, John Cullen Murphy and his son Cullen Murphy, here mistakenly describe Mordred as Arthur’s half-brother than Gawain’s. (The Murphys, in general, made far less use of the Arthurian legend than Foster did, and deviated from it dramatically on many occasions, including, in 2004, having King Arthur peacefully abdicate the throne in favor of Val and Aleta’s granddaughter Ingrid, instead of being mortally wounded in his final battle with Mordred.)
Note also that Gawain is portrayed here as (apparently) the leading knight of the Round Table, the one to organize those loyal to Arthur; it is almost as though the other canonical high-ranking knights, such as Lancelot and Kay, are gone from court. (And, indeed, Gawain was the only traditional knight of the Round Table to appear in Prince Valiant after Foster’s retirement, apart from a very occasional mention of Lancelot or Tristram - another example of the post-Foster deviations from Arthurian legend.)
Panel 6. On this occasion, Foster had made the slip of describing Mordred as Arthur’s half-brother, a slip that he never made elsewhere in Prince Valiant. Since the Murphys were harking back to this event here, could their own error regarding Mordred’s family connection to King Arthur have been based on Foster’s mistake?
2263. Like Prince Valiant himself, Lord Trueheart is an example of a character whose name is really a description of his character rather than a true name. (Though one must wonder what Lord Trueheart was doing among Mordred’s followers, if he was indeed such a loyal man. The best explanation could be that an actual act of murder would appall many who would have no problems with taking advantage of the consequences of the death of a man in power if it came about through natural causes.)
2270. Panel 3. This scene is an especially dramatic divergence from the traditional plotline of the Arthurian legend (though it would become one of many under the Murphys - see the commentary on #2262, Panel 2 above). In the medieval accounts, Mordred was never exposed and banished from Camelot, but remained one of Arthur’s knights until Arthur, going to war in Gaul (either against the Romans or against Lancelot, depending upon which version of the legend one reads), made him his regent - and was quickly betrayed by him, leading to the fateful Battle of Camlann between them. This event now becomes impossible in Prince Valiant with Arthur’s pronouncement of a sentence of exile upon Mordred.
In the following years of the strip (not included in the Fantagraphics reprint) Mordred would continue his war upon Arthur, though now in the form of leading outside invasions into Britain, at one point even succeeding (temporarily) in capturing Camelot and forcing Arthur and his court into exile in Thule, where Aguar hospitably received them (recalling how he had found refuge in Britain during Sligon’s usurpation at the beginning of the strip) and later helped Arthur recover his kingdom. As the years went by, Mordred’s malice worsened, until his ambition changed from conquering Britain to destroying it, leading him to embark upon such schemes as importing vast amounts of rabbits into the island to devour the crops and bring about a kingdom-wide famine; Val foiled Mordred’s plan by importing enough of the rabbits’ natural enemies to stabilize their population, thus preventing them from continuing to threaten Britain’s food supply. None of these conflicts bore much similarity to the wars between Arthur and Mordred in medieval legend, however.
Arthur compares Mordred to Judas Iscariot, the betrayer of Jesus Christ and thus (from the standpoint of medieval Christendom, at least) the greatest traitor of all time.
2271. Panel 6. Fantagraphic Books chose an appropriate place to end its reprint of Prince Valiant here, with Arthur’s words to Val about the service that both he and the Singing Sword have done him so effectively summing up the strip.
On this closing note, we might add that Foster had his own ideas (which went unrealized, however) for ending Prince Valiant. His plans were for Aguar to be slain in battle ("as that’s the only thing that could be for a king like that", as Foster put it - Kane, p. 186) and Val to succeed him to the throne. Aware that his new royal responsibilities would no longer permit him to go adventuring, Val would then pass the Singing Sword on to Arn. Foster always put off depicting those events, though, and in the end, they never entered the strip. Prince Valiant still adventures in the Sunday comics to this day.
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