Bards & Blood: Week 14 of Pendragon Cycle

As we get closer to the unveiling of the trailer for this revolutionary series, The Pendragon Cycle, each layer of the story is peeled away. Bitter battles, loyal friendships, and beautiful loves are revealed.

The well-crafted narrative is forming whether you've read the books or not, at least for those who are watching. And the unique nature of this particular Arthurian telling is blooming like a flower. It is... historical yet not, gritty and realistic yet not, idyllic and heroic yet not, and it is believable and human and yet totally not.

These seeming paradoxes and contradictions are why I have asked people before if they believe this to be more than just historical fiction or sword & sandal action. I ask instead if it is something more transcendent like mythopoeia, the invented literary genre-turned film genre when people like George Lucas make a genre-busting mythical fantasy in space like Star Wars.

Invented by Inklings, JRR Tolkien & CS Lewis, Mythopoeia is a literary genre punctuated by storytelling so entangled with the heart of a culture, and so enraptured by the mythical themes of a people that these influences can even shine within a new narrative, yet feel old. Why? Because it is so innocently & purely influenced by a society's myths that it can reproduce the spirit of that society within a newly invented story yet retain the tone of the old folk tales within it.

Clearly Arthur is not a new myth, but an old one. Yet the way this legendary heroic tale is being retold, you'd think it to be newly invented.

And now I am making it sound entirely alien to the reader, but this ought not be so. It is so well known to us that it feels that this was always the true story, since what it does is borrow from true history, while also adding new elements to it that can only be described as alternate history. The "Atlantis" portion of the story being most guilty of this "alternative" version of the legend.

The legend of Atlantis cannot be described as completely invented, however. Oh no. This is found in curious & historical readings, such are many an ancient document that we cannot fully translate in meaning, even if we can translate in fact.

Then there's the magical elements found in the Merlin portions of the Arthurian legend. All very fantastical, yet we know that old pagan and spiritist religions existed at this time. So, why do we doubt that this is how many from this period may have interpreted a man with spiritual power?

Christians believe in miracles and pagans believe in spirits and gods that require sacrifice. The effects of such a belief may end up looking identical to any random witness that lived at that time.

Watching this video you'd think that these old practitioners of their faiths came back from the dead and directed the show themselves. It's truly inspirational and I will bet that this show could end up playing in theaters, considering the quality we are seeing in these updates.

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