January 16th, 2010 11:36 pm
baseball cards are a huge business. For ages children have collected cards that come in bubble gum packets. topps baseball cards are taken from the shelves and carried to the cashier with nickels and dimes saved for just this purpose. Now children are able to collect trading cards of players from nearly every sport. A lot of adults enjoy the pastime of collecting as well. Why not develop trading cards in other areas of interest, like Cards of the Arthurian Legends?
There could be a collection of knights of the Round Table. It could contain a selection of interesting statistics, including the number of crusades, the battles fought and quests endeavored, the dragons slain and the damsels saved. There exist a lot of stories of St. George and the Dragon. Why not put St. George, and the dragon for that matter on a trading card? The knights of King Arthur would be a fantastic collection to pursue. There are at least 35 different Arthurian knights alone. Who wouldn’t desire a card of Ywain the Bastard? Ywain was a Knight sired out of wedlock by King Urien of Gore, a name and title that sounds like a bad horror film. Ywain the Bastard was a vibrant and loyal knight that was mortally wounded by another knight during the quest for the Holy Grail. Ywain was accidentally killed by his cousin, Gawain. Gawain was also a knight of Arthurian legend. Ywain was known as the polite Knight and the Knight of the maidens.
The tales of the Knights are full of magic, romance and noble, though often misguided deeds. The legends are packed with betrayal, adultery, violence and other less then chivalrous behavior. The lineage of the knights is a complex family tree with interweaving roots and branches. A collection of trading cards, might help the young mind trying to grasp the complexity of the Arthurian Roundtable. It could also raises some questions that parents might not be ready to answer. Explaining the relationship between King Arthur, Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere and Arthur’s decision to burn her at the stake might perplex both parent and child. For those not versed in Arthurian Legend, Sir Lancelot was King Arthur’s most beloved and trusted knight. Guinevere, the raven haired beauty and Lancelot fell in love despite their wish to be noble and upright members of the court. It was this love affair that brought down the Arthurian Kingdom. That’s great stuff to accumulate in trading cards.
Guinevere opens up the door to and brings up the subject of the women of Camelot. There are many that are flesh and blood and many that are magical beings, and some that are both. Morgan LeFay was King Arthur’s half-sister and and legend has it that she had possessed the gift of healing. Because King Arthur was near death from a battle wound; Morgan took him to the city of Avalon. There is the Lady of The Lake, likely a conglomeration a different women according to the stories. In one legend she is Merlin’s apprentice, betraying him when she got all he could give her.
The people and the stories of the Knights of The Round Table are enough to create a giant stack of trading cards and a new way to introduce the Arthurian stories to new generations.