Morgause ( ) is a popular name of a legendary queen and member of King Arthur's family in the Matter of Britain literature, where she is always a queen and usually Arthur's sibling. However, her name varies between texts and traditions, including Anna, Gwyar, or simply as the Queen of Orkney, as does the issue of her children, other than commonly Gawain. In most cases, she is the wife or widow of Lot, ruling over a northern realm such as Orkney, Lothian, Scotland, or Norway. She often has sisters, notably Morgan, with whom she is being sometimes conflated into a single character by modern authors.
In medieval chronicles and Arthurian romances based on or inspired by Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae, as well as in the Welsh tradition, she is typically depicted as the daughter of Igraine, either the daughter or step-daughter of Uther Pendragon, and the full sister or half-sister of Arthur. Occasionally, she may be Uther's sister and Arthur's aunt. Her other children often, but not always, include Mordred.
In a later tradition, originally popularised by French prose cycles, Mordred is the offspring of Arthur's own accidental incest with his estranged half-sister, whom Thomas Malory's seminal Le Morte d'Arthur calls Morgause, queen of Orkney. There, her biological father is Gorlois, her full sisters are Morgan and Elaine, her other lover is Lamorak, and her sons include Agravain, Gareth, and Gaheris, the last of whom murders her.
Earlier characters Chronicles In Geoffrey of Monmouth's 12th-century Cambro-Norman Latin chronicle Historia Regum Britanniae, she is named Anna (Anne). There, she is depicted as the only daughter of the King of the Britons, Uther Pendragon (Uter Pendragon), and his wife Igraine (Ygerna), thus making her King Arthur's full younger sister. She is initially described as the arranged wife of King Lot (Loth) of Lothian (Lodonesia), given to him by Uther as a reward for his war aid. In a conflicting account, however, Geoffrey has her married to King Budic II of Brittany (Budicius), with whom she has the son Hywel the Great (Hoel I). Later in the Historia, Geoffrey writes of Loth as being married to a sister of Ambrosius Aurelianus (probably a mistake intended to mean a sister of Arthur from the time of Aurelianus) and the father of Gawain and Mordred (Modredus). Lewis Spence connected her with the Celtic goddess Ana (the Irish Anu).
In Layamon's Brut, a Middle English chronicle based on Geoffrey's Historia, Anna and Lot, king and queen of Scotland, have five unnamed daughters as well as two sons, Gawain and Mordred. Wace's Norman chronicle Roman de Brut, also based on Geoffrey, names Anna as Gawain's mother and queen of the Scots (even though Lot is not truly a king there, being a regent without any actual governing power due to his disability). However, Wace does not mention her relation to Mordred, uniquely describing him as a brother of Arthur's wife, Guinevere (this strange connection has been variably interpreted, including but not limited to both of them being children of Anna and Lot).
Thomas Grey's Anglo-Norman chronicle Scalacronica mentions Arthur's eldest sister as bestowed by him on Lot. In Alain Bouchart's Breton Grande Croniques de Bretagne, "Anna or Emine" is Uther's eldest child, who later marries Budic and gives birth to Hoel, while the wife of Lot is Arthur's other, younger sister, whom the author does not name.
In John of Fordun's Scottish chronicle Chronica Gentis Scotorum, Arthur was the bastard son of Uther, making his legitimate daughter Anna and her son by Lot, Mordred, the rightful heirs to the throne. This motif also appears in later Scottish narratives, including Hector Boece's Historia Gentis Scotorum, where Lot is king of the Picts with Anna (later called Cristina) as his queen. Boece, and his translators, too depict her as Uther's rightful heir but turn her into his sister (Arthur's aunt).
Welsh accounts In the Old Welsh texts, the precursor of Gawain, known as Gwalchmei (Gwalchmai) ap (fab, vap) Gwyar, is the son of Gwyar (meaning "gore". or "spilled blood/bloodshed".). Culhwch and Olwen, an early Welsh Arthurian tale considered to predate Geoffrey's Historia, names Gwalchmei and his brother Gwalhafed (Gwalhauet) as the sons of Gwyar. Gwyar is likely the name of Gwalchmei's mother rather than his father, as matronyms were standard in the Welsh Triads. Matronymic naming conventions were common in early Ireland and sometimes used in Wales, as can be seen in the cases of Math fab Mathonwy and Gwydion fab Dôn..
Gwyar is indeed used as a female name in some Welsh texts, such as one version of the hagiographical genealogy Bonedd y Saint. It identifies her as the wife of Geraint ab Erbin. Here, she is a daughter of Uther's father Amlawdd Wledig and thus Arthur's aunt.
The fragment known as The Birth of Arthur substitutes Gwyar for Geoffrey's Anna and names her as Gwalchmei's mother.. It also names Budic II (Ymer Llydaw) of Armorica as her first husband, and their son as Hywel the Great (Hoel Mawr). Following Budic's death, Gwyar marries Lot (Lleu ap Cynfarch, Lieu ap Cynvarch), with whom she has three daughters (Gracia, Graeria, Dioneta) and two sons, Gawain (Gwalchmei) and Mordred (Medrawd). Here, Gwyar also is only one of Arthur's half-sisters, being a daughter of Igraine (Eigyr) and Gorlois (Gwrleis). Furthermore, Gwyar has a sister also named Dioneta, who is sent off for education to the Isle of Avalon (Avallach), leading to the elder Dioneta's identification with Morgan.
Some Welsh adaptations of Geoffrey's Historia, such as the Brut Tysilio, explicitly identify Gwyar with Anna, even using both names interchangeably for the wife of Lot. Other sources do not follow this substitution, however, indicating that Gwyar and Anna may have originated independently..
Early chivalric romances Her early relationship with Lot is elaborated on in the Latin young-Gawain romance De Ortu Waluuanii, which describes how a teenaged Lot fell in love with Anna when he was a royal hostage prince serving as her page at the court of Uther. Alternatively, in the Old French Les Enfances Gauvain, Lot meets her when he is a squire. In the Old French Perlesvaus, where she is unnamed, Lot is already a king when he, too, becomes the father of Gawain from an initially illegitimate union before the marriage. A similar theme of Gawain's birth and youth as their (at first) illegitimate and estranged son also appears in De Ortu and Les Enfances.
In the Old French works of Chrétien de Troyes and his direct continuators, she, Arthur, and Morgan all are biological children of Uther Pendragon and his widow Igraine (Ygerne). She seems to have at least one more sister besides Morgan. Through her late husband Lot, she is the mother of four of Arthur's Knights of the Round Table: Gawain, Agravain, and the early versions of the characters that would later become best known as Gaheris and Gareth (Guerrehes and Gaheriet). Mordred, however, does not appear in these texts at all.
In addition to the sons, Clarissant (Clarissans, the wife of Guiormelant and mother of Aguigenor) and Soredamor are named as her daughters, along with her unnamed third daughter. Chrétien's own and unfinished Perceval, the Story of the Grail, where she is unnamed, features Gawain's family's women living captive in the magical Castle of Wonders (Château Merveil) until he liberates them. One of her daughters, Soredamor (Soredamors), is notably the mother of Arthur's knight Cligès, the eponymous hero of Chrétien's earlier work, Cligès.
In Wolfram von Eschenbach's Chrétien-inspired Middle High German romance Parzival, Sangive (Sangîve), the daughter of Igraine (Arnive, Arnîve) and Uther Pendragon (Uterpendragûn), is wed by Arthur to Florant of Itolac, also known as the Turkoite (Turkoyt; probably meaning a Turkish origin) following her prior marriage to King Lot of Norway. Through Lot, she has three daughters: Cundrie (Cundrîe; not to be confused with Cundrîe the Sorceress, an entirely different Parzival character by the same name), Itonje (Itonjê), and Soredamor, and two sons: Gawain (Gâwân) and Beacurs (Bêâcurs, Bêâkurs), the new king of Norway. In the story, having been (similarly as in Chrétien's account) freed from the magical Castle of Wonders by Gawain, Itonje marries Gramoflanz and the other daughter is given to Duke Lischois at the same time as when Sangive marries Florant.
Using a modified versions of Wolfram's story and characters in his Meleranz, German poet Der Pleier has Seife (Seifê; also Saive, Seive) as the wife of King Lot (Lôt) and the mother of Gawain (Gâwan, Gawein), Beatus (Bêâtus, Beacuß), Itoni (Itonî), and Gundri (Gundrî). However, he also names one of Arthur's other sisters, Anthonie (Anthonjê, Antonie), as the mother of Gaharet (Gahariet; Wolfram's Gaherjet / Gaherjêt the cousin of Gawain, a figure corresponding with Lot's sons Gaheris and Gareth in other romances) by the king of Greenland (Gritenland, Grîtenland, Grunland). Arthur's third sister is Olimpia (Olimpîâ), the wife of the king of the Franks.
The earliest known form of a Morgause-style name is Morcades (Norcadés), given to her by the anonymous author of the First Continuation of Chrétien's Perceval. She appears as Morcades (Morcadés, Morchades, Orchades) in Les Enfances Gauvain (where her castle is called Bel Repaire), and in Heinrich von dem Türlin's German Diu Crône (where she is humiliated by Keii in the cup test episode).
It is likely that this was originally a place name, as 'Orcades' coincides with the Latin name for Scotland's northern Orkney islands, the lands often described as being ruled by Gawain's parents. Medievalist Roger Sherman Loomis suggested that this toponym was corrupted first into the variants of Morcades (including Morgades) and finally into Morgause due to the influence of the name Morgan,R. S. Loomis, Scotland and the Arthurian Legend. Retrieved 26 January 2010. and that her character was derived from the goddess Deichtine.
Merlin-inspired tradition In the 13th-century Old French Vulgate Cycle, and its subsequent rewrites, the parents of Arthur's siblings are Igraine and Gorlois of Tintagel, Duke of Cornwall (or just an unnamed Duke of Tintagel). No longer their full brother, Arthur is fathered on Igraine by Uther Pendragon, here the killer of their father Gorlois. Most or all of Arthur's half-sisters are then married off by their stepfather, the high king Uther, to his subordinate kings.
This motif originated from the fragmentary poem Merlin attributed to Robert de Boron (and its more complete prose rendering). There, out of Arthur's three half-sisters by the Duke, only Morgan ("the Fay") was named but the one wed to Lot was noted as the eldest among them. Lot's unnamed wife gives birth to four sons, apparently all fathered by him: Gawain, Mordred, and Gareth and Gaheris (Gareés, Gaheriez).