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"The King does not understand the human heart."
The words landed before the visuals did — a single sorrowful male voice, low and heavy, filling the space around Maverick and the chat simultaneously. Then the airport was gone. The tarmac, the cold air, Artoria standing beside him — all of it replaced by darkness, and then by something else entirely.
The scroll opened.
It began with a girl.
Blonde, small, standing in a field somewhere in Britain that felt ancient even in the rendering — the kind of old that had weight to it, that made the light seem like it was falling from further away. Beside her, a man with the specific presence of someone who had been alive for too long and knew too much. He spoke to her with the measured patience of someone delivering news he expected her to already understand.
"Artoria. You could have lived a carefree life, like any other girl. Are you certain you want to pull out this sword? The path it leads to has thorns. And the ending is already written."
The girl's expression didn't waver. Her eyes were the clearest thing in the frame.
"Yes," she said. "I will become that ideal King."
He who pulls the Sword from the Stone shall be King of Britain.
She pulled it out. The girl, in the moment the blade cleared the stone, became something else — not less herself, but more, the way a decision you've been building toward your whole life feels when you finally make it. She dressed as a man at the magician's request, because Britain in that age would not accept what she actually was, and she accepted this condition the same way she'd accepted the sword: completely, without complaint.
The story unfolded.
The young King led her knights against the internal fractures of a nation still finding its shape, and then against the foreign armies that tested its edges. She won. She kept winning, the kind of winning that builds legends — twelve battles, each one adding another layer to the myth that was forming around her whether she wanted it or not.
But there was a moment.
In a duel with King Pellinore, agreed to be fought with lances, she reached for a sword instead. The victory mattered more than the agreement. The Sword from the Stone broke as a result — her first sword, the one that had made her — and she accepted that too, with the same complete lack of self-pity.
The great magician brought her to a lake.
"Which do you prefer — the sword, or the scabbard?"
"The sword. It is the sharper."
"The scabbard's value is ten times the blade. Whoever wears it cannot bleed."
"Without a sword, I cannot protect this country."
She chose the sword. She chose the sword every time there was a sword to choose, because that was who she was, and because the country needed the sword more than it needed her to be safe.
Britain entered its golden age. Foreign invaders repelled, new territory established, the Roman Emperor Lucius defeated in the field, a giant killed on Mount Michael. The Round Table convened. Knights of genuine worth gathered around it.
But humanity must eventually bid farewell to the gods. And the demise of Britain represented the end of the Age of Gods.
No amount of winning kept them at bay permanently. Twelve battles became thirteen, and then the country itself began to fracture from within. The Round Table Knights left Camelot one by one — some by command, some by choice — to search for the Holy Grail that might save what swords couldn't. Most of them didn't come back.
And then the other things.
The witch Morgan, using a potion, and from the King's bloodline, a son named Mordred — born from a betrayal Arthur hadn't consented to and couldn't undo. Guinevere discovering this. Guinevere, overwhelmed with grief, finding in Lancelot — the finest knight of the Round Table, the one Arthur had trusted completely — a consolation that became its own betrayal. Arthur, discovering the affair, not wanting to pursue it, understanding what had driven her there.
But thirteen knights had infiltrated the palace and caught them. And the King who was holy and pure, compelled by the dignity of the crown, helplessly sentenced Guinevere to the stake.
Lancelot couldn't allow it. He fought his way through the execution and took her to France. On the way out, accidentally, he killed Gawain's brothers — Gareth and Gaheris — who had not even wanted to be there. Gawain carried this with him, and he carried it to Arthur, and he turned it into a war.
Arthur led an expedition to France to confront Lancelot. And Mordred, left to manage the kingdom, took the opportunity to proclaim that Arthur had died and seize the throne.
The Battle of Camlann.
Both sides bled. The Round Table, which had once represented the finest of Britain, destroyed itself across that field. Arthur drove her spear through Mordred. Mordred struck a fatal blow in return.
The scroll's final image: a girl alone on Camlann Hill, kneeling among the dead of the country she had given everything to save, rain falling around her, head tilted back. Whether she was crying was impossible to tell. Whether she was regretting the same.
The camera pulled back. And kept pulling back. And the girl got smaller, and the hill got smaller, and Britain got smaller, until there was only the darkness again.
The airport returned. Artoria was beside Maverick, exactly where she'd been.
The chat needed a moment.
[Silence]: ...
[Silence2]: ...
[Lancelot]: LANCELOT. Arthur trusted him completely. Made him Guinevere's guard. And he—
[Defending_No_One]: I mean — I understand how it happened. I don't excuse it. But I understand it.
[Not_Accepting_That]: I don't understand it AND I don't excuse it
[Crying]: I'm actually tearing up. She did NOTHING wrong. Every single thing that went wrong was someone else failing her and then she had to clean it up.
[Mordred]: Mordred was literally handed the kingdom and STILL launched a rebellion. While Arthur was away. Fighting a war Gawain started.
[Magician_Opinion]: the magician who set all of this in motion is the one I'm most upset about. she could have lived a normal life. he put her on this path.
[Counter]: she chose the path. he asked. she said yes.
[Nuance]: she was a child when he asked
[Everyone]: GAWAIN
[Narration_Question]: "the King does not understand the human heart" — WHO SAID THAT. Who looked at everything she endured and landed on THAT as the summary.
[Answering]: someone who didn't understand her heart, presumably
[Still_Upset]: my Artoria clearly did nothing wrong and she has to carry that reputation forever, this is not okay, I am not okay
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