“Child of the Northern Spring” is the story of Guinevere, who would marry King Arthur. In past stories, we haven’t learned much about Guinevere. She is portrayed as a high-spirited, fun-loving woman who runs off with Lancelot, and that’s really all we know about her. This novel seeks to give her a background and a personality, and explain how she came to be who she was.
Her father was the King of Rheged, and they didn’t live in a palace, like most kings. Instead, they moved from place to place as his business required it. Guinevere grew up wearing breeches and riding horses, a bit wild, to her governess’s disapproval, but she had to be herself. When she reached marriage age, she had a few suitors, but none of them were to her liking and she managed in one way or another to chase them away.
Meanwhile, Arthur, the High King, had decided that it would be to his best military advantage to marry a girl from her area of the country, and so he came to meet her. He was taken with her spirit and her beauty, and arranged a marriage with her. We see her journey to Arthur’s land, the experiences she has along the way, her interaction with Merlin, and the wedding itself.
The land was full of Pagan practices at the time, and the book shows a struggle between the new ways of Christianity and the old ways of the Pagans. Guinevere believes in the Goddess and prays to her regularly, but Arthur is seeking to learn a little bit about Christianity so he can better understand his people. The tone of the book is a little bit earthy, as the Goddess believes highly in fertility and such things are spoken of naturally. In fact, if content is a concern, you might skip pages 387 and 388, although I didn’t find them too offensive.
I found this book fascinating. It was interesting to me to conjecture about Guinevere – all this time, we’ve heard stories about Arthur, but she has been a mystery. The only thing that disappointed me in the story was that the legend of the sword in the stone wasn’t used. I’ve always liked that tale but in this book he came about his kingdom, and Excalibur, another way. Sigh. But it was a good book and I will definitely be reading and reviewing the two books that follow it in the trilogy.
(This book was published in 1987 by Poseidon Press.)
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