Ser Mordred

The black-haired bastard child, fated to bring to ruin all his father has built.

Mordred is a dour, bitter young man with a deep chip on his shoulder. He reacts to most situations with sarcasm and disdain. He rarely gives a straight answer to any personal questions, and is quick to close up if he senses that his privacy is being infringed upon. He trusts no one, save two people: his half-brother Gawain, and his closest friend Sagramore; everyone else, he regards with cold cordiality at best and outright hostility at the worst. He isn’t a violent person by nature, and prefers to avoid physical altercations, but he’s infamous for his wicked silver tongue.

Mordred is a child who ought never have been born, or so the people say. His father and his mother were half-brother and -sister, both children of Queen Igraine, the former Duchess of Cornwall. Morgause, Igraine's eldest, and Arthur, her youngest, came together in lust and ignorance: neither knew of the other's identity until some months after the fact, and by that time it was too late. Morgause's womb had already quickened and she was pregnant with her brother's bastard: she was nineteen, Arthur fifteen. It was May Day when the baby was born. Mordred, he was called, and he was barely two hours into the world when Arthur, newly crowned King of Britain, issued a secret command that all boy babies born that May Day be given up. Morgause, yet unwed, had no choice but to sacrifice her baby when soldiers came to take him away. Over forty children were put in a leaky little boat and set out to sea to die, and all of them did but one. Mordred alone was alive when the little boat washed up on the shore off of Estangore, where he was found by a servant of King Brandegoris. Brandegoris' new wife Eirene, a princess from Byzantium, had just given birth to a stillborn infant the day before and was mad with grief. When Mordred was placed in her arms, she scarcely knew the difference between him and the child she'd lost.

For nine years, Mordred was raised alongside his adoptive mother's other son Sagramore, the child of Eirene's first husband, the late King of Hungary. The two were inseparable even though there was a five-year difference between them. Not even a week after Mordred's ninth birthday, however, Castle Estangore was host to a strange guest: a woman riding alone but for a few serving-girls. The lady introduced herself as Queen Morgause of Orkney, Mordred's true mother. Eirene was loath to give up the boy, but her husband knew that his visitor was the sister of the High King; that very afternoon, Mordred rode away with Morgause's party. Installed in a strange, new place full of strange, new faces, he was utterly at a loss. At Castle Lothian, he found that his mother had other children besides himself: four, to be exact, all younger than him. Gawain, the eldest of the four at eight, was a good deal taller than Mordred and already knew how to hold a sword. The second-eldest, Agravain, was six, also tall and quite a bully. After him was Gaheris, quiet and strange with one arm longer than the other, who was five. Last of all was Gareth, only two, with a sweet disposition that was loved by everyone. These four princes were the trueborn sons of King Lot, Morgause's husband; only Mordred was a bastard, and was no favourite of Lot's. He was, however, Morgause's favourite. She took time to instruct him herself in the art of Sight: a talent Mordred alone of her sons bore.

Growing up under the instruction of his mother, Mordred was filled with hatred for the father who tried to kill him. Revenge was his only purpose. When he was sixteen, he was sent with Gawain to Camelot, both to swear allegiance to Arthur and become knights of his Round Table. To Mordred's surprise, Arthur treated him with equal respect to Gawain, despite his being a bastard, and squired them both to his Companions: Gawain to Sir Pellinore and Mordred to Sir Bedivere.