The Winter Prince * Chapter 4: The Bright One, Pt. 2

[simien_mtn_fox]

 

Medraut takes Lleu and Goewin to visit the local smithy. He is always taking them on outings. Here they are walking through the woods on their way there:

 

 

 

It is November. I have not got any "autumn" Playmobil so I kind of have to fake it (you may have noticed that the "dry leaves" on Goewin's skirt in the last post were in fact flowers).

 

Gofan, the smith, and his apprentice, Marcus, are busy making a gate:

 

But despite the furious clatter and the heat they were producing, the two were not particularly hard at work that day. In this late autumn time of hedge laying and hunting they had set aside the constant repair and production of harness and yoke fixtures, scythe blades and plowshares that kept the smithy busy earlier in the year. Gofan was teaching his young apprentice a more intricate work, and they were making a gate or screen of wrought iron.

 

 

 

(The gate is one of the few pieces that is not actually ours. We nicked it out of the next-door neighbors' castle.)

 

After a time the two men left their work quiet and came over to sit and talk with us.

 

 

 

Guess what they talk about? You guessed it, KINGSHIP. Again. The not-so-hidden agenda of ALL Medraut and Goewin's discussions about kingship is that neither of them thinks Lleu is up to the job, and this time, which is more or less in public, Lleu gets fed up listening to it. So he stomps away, presumably to stop himself smacking anyone, and Medraut comes after him.

 

 

Then Lleu surprises Medraut by talking about something else entirely. Well, maybe it's not such a surprise; part of what they were discussing was skill, work, and general usefulness to society.

"I wish I had made those mosaics," [Lleu] said. "I know they aren't perfect; you can see the mistakes, the wrong colors in places, uneven lines in the borders. But who does such work anymore, now that the Romans are gone? I wish I could see the pattern books they used. And the work of other artists, and other kinds of artistry. I wish I had seen the paintings that were on the walls before Father rebuilt the house."

After some big-brotherly reassurance from Medraut, Lleu goes back to the others, leaving Medraut "half smiling to think how absurd this was, that I should be working to convince Lleu of his worth."

And so a year has passed since Medraut came to Camlan, and Lleu is coming into his own. In the spring his father officially names him as his heir, the prince of Britain.

 

Lleu confronted the assembled crowd white-faced, but appearing strangely elegant; he stood slight and straight before his father, dressed simply and bearing no arms, his dark hair clipped short in the old style of a Roman soldier. He listened gravely as the high king informed him of the duties that were to be expected of him.

 

 
 

Then Ginevra armed him, as had his namesake's mother, binding to his side a real sword…

 

 

 

 After the pledges were finished Artos crowned his son with a thin fillet of gold and declared him prince of Britain.

 

 
 

Afterwards Goewin runs off to sulk.

 

 

 

Medraut finds her snuffling about how it's too bad Britain isn't under Roman administration any more, and he points out that the Romans left nearly a hundred years ago and it's not like it happened yesterday, and Goewin swears that after she's married:

"You can be sure I won't sit by as queen of Dumnonia and watch Britain trickle through Lleu's fingers. If I have to I'll take the kingship from him by force."

"Princess!" I exclaimed.

"If you don't destroy him first," she finished. "I hate living at the end of things!"

Medraut doesn't have to say any of it, you see, even though it's what he's thinking. She says it all for him. It's spring, though, so to cheer her up he tells her, "There is no end. Only the beginning of something else."

Director's notes:  Lleu's crown is my mother's wedding ring.  Mine is too small for his little plastic head.

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Deleted Scenes:

 

My children are so weird. This is what happens when you leave them alone with the Playmobil:

 

 

 

Sara's Set-Up: Everyone Attacks Goewin
 

(It's her father aiming the crossbow at her that I find most disturbing in this scenario.  I wouldn't put it past her brothers.)

 

 

  

Mark's Set-Ups: 1) Looters in a Ruined House
 

He was especially proud of the spilt milk.

 

 

  

 

2) The Boar of Doom Club
 

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