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Description
Morgan le Fay (literally "Morgan the Fairy") is one of the more finicky characters from Arthurian mythos, which is really saying something. Depending on the author, she is either a benign side character lending magical support to Arthur's party, or she is a wicked sorceress scheming in the shadows to topple everything Arthur stands for. Even her origins are frustratingly murky. On the surface, Morgan really, really looks like a reflex on the Irish goddess Morrígan. Despite her popularity in modern media and neo-pagan circles, the Morrígan is a bit of an obscure character. Then again, all the old Celtic gods are kind of obscure, to be fair. The Morrígan is a shape-shifting psychopomp of fallen warriors, very Odinic in nature, and is most famous for her complicated relationship with the hero Cú Chulainn. It's not hard to see the parallels between this goddess and the fairy queen who escorts Arthur to his final resting place. The names could be etymologically linked too… maybe. Turns out this is one of those debates you can chuck into a room of linguists if you're a sick bastard who likes blood sports.

See, that "rígan" part is pretty simple, it just means "queen", cognate with Latin "regina". It's the "mor" part that gives us trouble. Usually it's translated to the word for "phantom" (from the same Proto-Indo-European root which gives us the "mare" in English "nightmare"), or a Celtic root meaning "great". There is an alternative proposal, however, which attempts to read this root with a short vowel. This interpretation would make it a cognate with the root "mori", meaning "sea" (from the same root as Latin "mare"). This would go a long way to synchronize the Morrígan with Morgan, whose name means something like "sea-born". Not everyone is convinced by this argument, though, and assert that the similarities between the two characters are superficial. There is also another interesting note I came across that one of the Ladies of the Lake (Morgan's council), Nimue, has a suspiciously similar name to Nemain, a goddess from Irish mythology often portrayed as one of the three goddesses who make up the Morrígan. As far as I've been able to tell, though, these names are etymologically distinct, so that could also be a coincidence, if a frustrating one. Feel free to prove me wrong. I'm willing to run with the "sea queen" connection for worldbuilding purposes, but there's enough reasonable doubt there that I wouldn't exactly bet my house on it or anything. It definitely feels like some French dude heard the story of the Morrígan through a door and thought hey that's good material. There's some connection there, but no one can quite suss out the mechanism. It's like finding some weird fossil from the start of the Triassic. This is either one character fossilized in the process of separating into two distinct entities, or two characters in the process of becoming one. Since Christianity kinda stamped these beliefs into extinction mid-development, we'll probably never get the context we need to say for sure. Goddammit, this is the Frigg/Freyja debacle all over again >n<

So okay, all that headache out of the way, what do we know of Morgan le Fay in our historical sources? She first appears by name in the works of 12th century writer Geoffrey of Monmouth, whose Historia Regum Britanniae is one of the primary foundations of Arthurian literature. She operates on the Island of Avalon, where she serves as chief sorceress of the nine Ladies of the Lake. This is where a mortally wounded Arthur is carried to by Morgan herself after the Battle of Camlann, heavily mirroring the Morrígan and Cú Chulainn. In fact, Morgan is largely depicted as a positive figure in these early tales, and even serves as a great healer to Arthur and his knights. At most, she has a bit of a rivalry with Arthur's wife Guinevere, but it's not yet anything malicious. Chrétien de Troyes makes Morgan out to be Arthur's sister, and by extension also the sibling of the confusingly named Morgause. Morgause is the mother of the treacherous Mordred, and though modern media often conflates the two sisters into one, all our medieval sources treat them as separate characters. More on that in my blurb on Mordred.

Morgan starts to emerge from the planet of hats in the poems of the Vulgate Cycle, which is also where her villainous nature begins to take shape. Robert de Boron's Merlin, for example, explains that Morgan was dumped at a nunnery by Uther Pendragon in her early years. The eponymous wizard then rolls up, presumably in a sweet new hot rod and sunglasses, and is like "hey babe, what say you and I bust out of this joint?" Morgan thus chucks off her habit, hops in the back seat, and is whisked away by her new boyfriend, who tutors her in all manner of magic. Merlin, however, is a toxic sleaze, so this is hardly Morgan's only fling in the literature. Medieval authors of course took this as the vile seductress, unfaithful thot but we're sex positive here at Avapithecus, so good for her. Gal's exploring. Unfortunately, her exploration eventually leads her to develop a crush on one of Arthur's knights: Lancelot. But uh oh, Lancelot is already having an affair with Arthur's wife Guinevere! Tune in tonight at 6:30 for the wacky antics these crazy kids get up to in order to escape the love triangle! *shitty sitcom music*

Actually, it's not all that comedic. Morgan's attempts to destroy these cucks end up being one of the major factors in turning all the Knights of the Round Table against one another. This of course culminates in the Battle of Camlann, where her brother is slain thanks to her actions. Perhaps that is why she is still depicted as carrying him to his final resting place even in works that make her the villain, the guilt of a jealous sister. That's just my take, though.

Design notes, I think that, ironically, designing Morgan had much the same challenge as designing her brother Arthur. In many ways, Morgan le Fay is the archetypal witch character that springs to mind when someone asks you to imagine a medieval sorceress. Most medieval sources are extremely unhelpful, because to medieval artists, "generic woman" is pretty much synonymous with "evil witch". Thanks patriarchy. Initially, I planned to supplement the design with archaeological finds based on the Morrígan, but these are basically nonexistent save for a few stick figures, so I had to change course. The oldest reference image I ended up using was an illustration from a 1494 manuscript of Lancelot depicting the eponymous knight bidding goodbye to Morgan. In that image, he has this sort of gold-rimmed black nun's habit, which I actually really liked, and gave me the idea to run with this sort of color-inverted nun aesthetic. I figured it was fitting given her backstory and characterization. For her leather accents and pieces of jewelry, I primarily referenced three sources: her dangly belt things from a 1888 painting by Frank William Warwick Topham, her corset from an 1880 (or 1900, internet can't seem to agree) painting by John Roddam Spencer Stanhope, and her neck and arm jewelry from the illustrations of Howard Pyle. The colors were by far the most annoying part. This was one of those pieces that looks really good in lineart but can be difficult to actually layer when it comes to coloring. Partially inspired by the colors from W.H. Margetson's 1914 illustration of Morgan, I ended up settling on a teal. I sort of imagine this being more like the iridescent sheen of a crow's feathers, but I couldn't figure out a clean way to portray that in colored pencil (which you can probably tell based on her feather cloak). It's a little messy, but I do like her outfit in general, so it may just be the cape that's throwing me off. Might be one to revisit some day, but it suffices for now.

Description
Morgan le Fay (literally "Morgan the Fairy") is one of the more finicky characters from Arthurian mythos, which is really saying something. Depending on the author, she is either a benign side character lending magical support to Arthur's party, or she is a wicked sorceress scheming in the shadows to topple everything Arthur stands for. Even her origins are frustratingly murky. On the surface, Morgan really, really looks like a reflex on the Irish goddess Morrígan. Despite her popularity in modern media and neo-pagan circles, the Morrígan is a bit of an obscure character. Then again, all the old Celtic gods are kind of obscure, to be fair. The Morrígan is a shape-shifting psychopomp of fallen warriors, very Odinic in nature, and is most famous for her complicated relationship with the hero Cú Chulainn. It's not hard to see the parallels between this goddess and the fairy queen who escorts Arthur to his final resting place. The names could be etymologically linked too… maybe. Turns out this is one of those debates you can chuck into a room of linguists if you're a sick bastard who likes blood sports.

See, that "rígan" part is pretty simple, it just means "queen", cognate with Latin "regina". It's the "mor" part that gives us trouble. Usually it's translated to the word for "phantom" (from the same Proto-Indo-European root which gives us the "mare" in English "nightmare"), or a Celtic root meaning "great". There is an alternative proposal, however, which attempts to read this root with a short vowel. This interpretation would make it a cognate with the root "mori", meaning "sea" (from the same root as Latin "mare"). This would go a long way to synchronize the Morrígan with Morgan, whose name means something like "sea-born". Not everyone is convinced by this argument, though, and assert that the similarities between the two characters are superficial. There is also another interesting note I came across that one of the Ladies of the Lake (Morgan's council), Nimue, has a suspiciously similar name to Nemain, a goddess from Irish mythology often portrayed as one of the three goddesses who make up the Morrígan. As far as I've been able to tell, though, these names are etymologically distinct, so that could also be a coincidence, if a frustrating one. Feel free to prove me wrong. I'm willing to run with the "sea queen" connection for worldbuilding purposes, but there's enough reasonable doubt there that I wouldn't exactly bet my house on it or anything. It definitely feels like some French dude heard the story of the Morrígan through a door and thought hey that's good material. There's some connection there, but no one can quite suss out the mechanism. It's like finding some weird fossil from the start of the Triassic. This is either one character fossilized in the process of separating into two distinct entities, or two characters in the process of becoming one. Since Christianity kinda stamped these beliefs into extinction mid-development, we'll probably never get the context we need to say for sure. Goddammit, this is the Frigg/Freyja debacle all over again >n<

So okay, all that headache out of the way, what do we know of Morgan le Fay in our historical sources? She first appears by name in the works of 12th century writer Geoffrey of Monmouth, whose Historia Regum Britanniae is one of the primary foundations of Arthurian literature. She operates on the Island of Avalon, where she serves as chief sorceress of the nine Ladies of the Lake. This is where a mortally wounded Arthur is carried to by Morgan herself after the Battle of Camlann, heavily mirroring the Morrígan and Cú Chulainn. In fact, Morgan is largely depicted as a positive figure in these early tales, and even serves as a great healer to Arthur and his knights. At most, she has a bit of a rivalry with Arthur's wife Guinevere, but it's not yet anything malicious. Chrétien de Troyes makes Morgan out to be Arthur's sister, and by extension also the sibling of the confusingly named Morgause. Morgause is the mother of the treacherous Mordred, and though modern media often conflates the two sisters into one, all our medieval sources treat them as separate characters. More on that in my blurb on Mordred.

Morgan starts to emerge from the planet of hats in the poems of the Vulgate Cycle, which is also where her villainous nature begins to take shape. Robert de Boron's Merlin, for example, explains that Morgan was dumped at a nunnery by Uther Pendragon in her early years. The eponymous wizard then rolls up, presumably in a sweet new hot rod and sunglasses, and is like "hey babe, what say you and I bust out of this joint?" Morgan thus chucks off her habit, hops in the back seat, and is whisked away by her new boyfriend, who tutors her in all manner of magic. Merlin, however, is a toxic sleaze, so this is hardly Morgan's only fling in the literature. Medieval authors of course took this as the vile seductress, unfaithful thot but we're sex positive here at Avapithecus, so good for her. Gal's exploring. Unfortunately, her exploration eventually leads her to develop a crush on one of Arthur's knights: Lancelot. But uh oh, Lancelot is already having an affair with Arthur's wife Guinevere! Tune in tonight at 6:30 for the wacky antics these crazy kids get up to in order to escape the love triangle! *shitty sitcom music*

Actually, it's not all that comedic. Morgan's attempts to destroy these cucks end up being one of the major factors in turning all the Knights of the Round Table against one another. This of course culminates in the Battle of Camlann, where her brother is slain thanks to her actions. Perhaps that is why she is still depicted as carrying him to his final resting place even in works that make her the villain, the guilt of a jealous sister. That's just my take, though.

Design notes, I think that, ironically, designing Morgan had much the same challenge as designing her brother Arthur. In many ways, Morgan le Fay is the archetypal witch character that springs to mind when someone asks you to imagine a medieval sorceress. Most medieval sources are extremely unhelpful, because to medieval artists, "generic woman" is pretty much synonymous with "evil witch". Thanks patriarchy. Initially, I planned to supplement the design with archaeological finds based on the Morrígan, but these are basically nonexistent save for a few stick figures, so I had to change course. The oldest reference image I ended up using was an illustration from a 1494 manuscript of Lancelot depicting the eponymous knight bidding goodbye to Morgan. In that image, he has this sort of gold-rimmed black nun's habit, which I actually really liked, and gave me the idea to run with this sort of color-inverted nun aesthetic. I figured it was fitting given her backstory and characterization. For her leather accents and pieces of jewelry, I primarily referenced three sources: her dangly belt things from a 1888 painting by Frank William Warwick Topham, her corset from an 1880 (or 1900, internet can't seem to agree) painting by John Roddam Spencer Stanhope, and her neck and arm jewelry from the illustrations of Howard Pyle. The colors were by far the most annoying part. This was one of those pieces that looks really good in lineart but can be difficult to actually layer when it comes to coloring. Partially inspired by the colors from W.H. Margetson's 1914 illustration of Morgan, I ended up settling on a teal. I sort of imagine this being more like the iridescent sheen of a crow's feathers, but I couldn't figure out a clean way to portray that in colored pencil (which you can probably tell based on her feather cloak). It's a little messy, but I do like her outfit in general, so it may just be the cape that's throwing me off. Might be one to revisit some day, but it suffices for now.