The best and fastest way for this to grow is for you to share the posts within your networks. A forward goes a long way, and the more subscribers we get, the more I’ll be able to write. The writing may change in the next few months to be a bit more entertaining (we hope) so tell your friends!
“Guard yourselves,” Morgan said. “Change is coming. Dark times are on their way.”
“They’re pretty dark already,” Dinadan said. “Some change would do Britain good.”
“Maybe,” Morgan said. “But be careful what you wish for.”
Margaret Atwood wrote decades ago that the core theme of Canadian literature, if there is a national theme, is survival. Survival in the face of a dangerous, cold, and deadly climate. Survival despite a geography that makes unity more challenging and farming much harder than it is in the United States or our European progenitor. Survival from external threats, be they American, Fenian, or fascist. Survival from internal divisions: geographic, linguistic, and cultural.
The Bright Sword, published in 2024 and written by Lev Grossman, is not a Canadian literary novel trying to tell a Canadian story. The writing is fluid, the dialogue modern Millennial snot with 2000s vernacular and plenty of swearing (to punctuate this point, in the Historical Note, Grossman waves away criticism of a specific instance of ahistorical nomenclature with a breezy “Don’t @ me”). The protagonist and primary narrator is cynical, nihilistic, survived a traumatic childhood, and is desperately searching for a life with deeper meaning. The American author wrote an Arthurian reimagining that is Millennial to its core.
The retelling begins in a world that is no longer Arthurian. The king is dead. The world of righteousness and heroism is dead alongside him. It isn’t coming back. The Christian, Arthurian Britain, where heroes of the Round Table righted wrongs and God bestowed miracles upon the land is dead when Collum, the narrator, shows up at Camelot. Adventure ensues as he and the remaining knights try to restore it, but the book is one tale after another showing the reader the inevitability of no return.
Eventually, the remaining heroes realize this. Instead, they push through and realize they will survive in a new world if they adapt. Rose coloured glasses are lamentably thrown off. As King Arthur, in a flashback, says, “It was the future that required attention.”
And they do survive. Just like Canada and Canadians always have, and will.
Yesterday, the United States imposed new tariffs on Canada after a trade deal fell through due to last-minute demands of Canada that would have degraded sovereignty in such a way as to be close to ending it. These, and the response Canada has promised, will hurt economically. While there are, of course, negatives to unhindered free trade, it remains the best way to increase prosperity and grow economies in an international trading system. Limits must be placed for national security, cultural, and political reasons (see the last Alberta Review on Lament for a Literature), but generally speaking, when free trade is done between honest and honourable nations, both sides benefit immensely.
This was especially true in North America. It was perhaps the best test case ever for free trade’s benefits.
In The Bright Sword, the heroes all experienced a world that prospered under a predictable rule of law, highly moral leadership, and a spirit of honour and adventure, creating a sense of united nationhood. And then it disappears because of the absence of one man, the legendary King Arthur. In this retelling, he is not dead. Not right away. He’s just dying in a faraway, magical land.
And ain’t that just the world we now live in? The world so many of us grew up in, a rules-based order led by a—mostly—moral superpower that was driven by alliances and creating prosperity as widely as possible, is gone. Not completely gone, of course. Some nations, like our own, remain committed to the ideals of liberal economics and free trade (the surviving knights of the Round Table, post Battle of Camlann), but it feels like it is dying in a faraway land. Meanwhile, the kingdom is under the control of a new force, one where the old ethics and morals are dead. God has abandoned Camelot. And our heroes must survive.
The Bright Sword is a fantasy novel set in a fantasy land. While Arthurian legend may be part of Canada’s British heritage, the author is American, the story is fantastical, and the story itself is meant, primarily, to entertain while adding a modern twist to an ancient legend. But the beautiful thing about stories is that if the right one hits you at the right time, it can say something profound about the time you’re living in, nonetheless. Sometimes, it can even act as a guide.
In the novel, the heroes must give up on rebuilding the old order with the old king when he finally succumbs to his wounds. As a result, they end up in a halfway position—Guinevere is queen, but knows the old ways must die:
“I wonder if even Arthur would’ve kept things the same.” Guinevere traced the fine tangled figures on Excalibur with her fingertip. “He said it in the dream, the world is sea-changed. And seeing Lancelot on the throne certainly made the Camelot of old look a good deal less appealing. It’s a new age, and I suppose even I am forced to concede that we no longer live in a province of the Roman Empire. It’s apparent that Britain is...a more complicated land than I understood it to be. So I suppose I will have to be a more complicated queen.”
The book ends with the understanding that the old Britons are being supplanted by the Angles and Saxons. But Arthur’s Britons would adapt, intermingle, and survive in their own way.
Survival, adaptation, and the idea that you can’t go back. The themes of The Bright Sword are all timely today. But there’s one more prevalent theme to the book: the idea of an “age”, and their begginnings and endings. There is a Roman Age, an age of anarchy before Arthur, the Arthurian Age, and the age that comes after him. Transitions are the toughest, most uncertain times. But transitions give way to new ages. Some are good, some are bad. It’s been clear for a while that the old age of geopolitics has ended, and we remain in a period of transition. But even within transitions, there are inflection points. Yesterday was one.
”Maybe so,” Arthur said softly. “But we can’t go back, Lance. Even God can’t go back, only onward. That is the adventure.
Alberta Review relies on subscriptions to operate (we hate ads, and they’re kind of pointless). Please consider subscribing to support the publication.
Alberta Review is in no way associated with previous iterations of the publication Alberta Review.