Stephen Lawhead’s Pendragon Cycle, and Persia Wooley’s Guinevere books.
You are of course free to dislike the book, but I’m struggling to remember even one female character who was depicted as a “nobly-suffering victim”. Igraine comes across as much less of a nobly-suffering victim than she is in any of the medieval stories I’ve read.
I don’t recall there being anything about the evils of inheriting property from one’s father in The Mists of Avalon, either.
I haven’t read all five of them yet, but I’ll join in the chorus recommending them.
Arthur Rex by Thomas Berger is very entertaining.
Both Morgaine and Igraine are portrayed as the victims of their own fate, with no choice but to take the actions that doom them. It’s one of the major themes of the book. Gweniver (can’t remember MZB’s respelling) and Elaine get the same treatment, although lesser intensity. Morgause and Viviane don’t suffer from victimization, really, but they’re both quite unsympathetic characters inasmuch as they’re mainly trying to manipulate everyone else. The mute priestess whose name I can’t remember is pretty much a cipher whose main role is to sacrifice herself. I don’t recall much of the storyline for Nimue & Nineve (of whatever MZB respellings for them).
You’re aware, of course, that I did not use “patrimony” in its context of inheriting property from one’s father. Although that is what Arthur’s story is, really; his birth is contrived so as to inherit the Uther’s kingship, from whence the rest of his story flows.
… do you mean patriarchy?
Give Tennyson’s Idylls of the King a miss.
… Yes. Yes I did. d’oh
Thirded. I first devoured it in high school and still go back to it every decade or so. It’s a slightly tongue-in-cheek but basically respectful retelling of the tales of Camelot; Berger gets the voice of a portentous omniscient medieval narrator exactly right. My only criticism of the book is that Arthur sometimes comes across as a bit of a fool, and sometimes a bit of a wimp, rather than a great king worthy of legend. Still very much worth a read.
And of course you must see the movie Excalibur ASAP.
Being a pawn of fate is not unique to the women in the book, though. Arthur and the other male characters also have their destinies to fulfill, and Arthur in particular is doomed to die tragically. IIRC there is a fair amount of “Woe is me, I’m the helpless pawn of fate” stuff from Morgaine, but she’s not an entirely reliable narrator and by the end of the book she realizes she made some serious mistakes in life.
It would be pretty easy to write a book based on Arthurian legend where most of the significant female characters are damsels in distress. If you look at the way Igraine for instance is depicted in the medieval stories, she’s quite passive. Uther rapes her, kills her husband, and marries her. After Arthur is born she either conveniently dies or goes off to live in some enchanted castle away from most of the action. To the best of my recollection, none of the medieval authors indicated that she had much of an opinion about any of this. She presumably suffered nobly through it all. But in Mists of Avalon Igraine is not depicted as an innocent victim who’s constantly taken advantage of and abused by the big bad men. She’s to some extent manipulated by her sister and then, despite her initial reluctance, falls in love with Uther and willingly has sex with and then marries him.
Now, if you think the female characters in this book are unsympathetic then I won’t argue with that. I think one or two of them weren’t even intended to be likable, and I can see how the others might rub some readers the wrong way. But it’s simply not true that they’re presented as if they’re “supposed to be nobly-suffering victims”. I’d say a major theme of this book is that the female characters aren’t just passive princesses (or wicked witches). They all have agendas of their own and act in pursuit of their personal goals.
Thinking of medieval literature, Chretien de Troyes might be a better place to start than Malory. I took a medieval lit class in college about Arthurian literature, and it’s my recollection that the romances of Chretien de Troyes were the assigned readings most popular with the class. This may have been partially just because they’re short, but they’re also entertaining stories about knights going on adventures without a lot of gloom and doom.
De Troyes has been credited with inventing the character of Sir Lancelot, although I’m not sure if there’s scholarly consensus on that. His “Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart” is apparently the first known literary work with Lancelot as a major character, and also the first to feature a Lancelot/Guinevere romance. So in terms of influence on later Arthurian literature this story is a very big deal. I may be mixing it up with one of our other readings, but IIRC there’s also a scene that might make you laugh if you’ve seen Monty Python and the Holy Grail. (One thing I learned from that class is that the Monty Python movie is a lot closer to the medieval source material than one might assume.)
I had a hard time plowing through Chretien de Troyes. And with Wace, and Layamon. Geogffrey of Monmouth was MUCH easier.
Another vote for Mary Stewart, who BTW, is still alive at the age of 97.
If you can stomach his digs at “the wicked Jews, whom one should kill like dogs.” I recall that line from his Perceval. And there weren’t even any Jews in the story, AFAICR, it was just the sort of thing he liked to blurt now and then regardless of context.
Anyone who’s going to read medieval European literature has to be prepared to stomach some weird, gratuitous anti-Semitism. De Troyes was far from the worst offender in that regard.