Sir Bedivere the Cupbearer
… Sir Bedivere was King Arthur’s cupbearer. Evidence of cupbearers serving at medieval courts survives from ancient times. They are there in the Old Testament, when Solomon met Sheba. They are there in the Iliad, pouring ambrosia into golden goblets for the gods on Mount Olympus. They were there in ancient Egypt, standing beside the Pharoah in a gold-glimmering throne room.
There is even a report, roughly contemporary with Arthur, of a “Count of the Cupbearers,” serving in Visigothic Spain. This meant there was literally a corps of cupbearers with a nobleman at their head, who served as Chief Cupbearer. The other cupbearers would have waited on the king's royal guests.
It is likely that this arrangement, with Bedivere as Chief Cupbearer, is what would have obtained in King Arthur’s court…
Guinevere: Not Such a Ninny After All
Hello, everyone, and welcome to Camelot Chat! I’m your hostess, Shannon Watson; and today, we will be continuing our discussion from last week about Queen Guinevere... except, this week, we will be talking about Guinevere’s secular totems and what they tell us about her function as queen.
Last week, we mentioned the Cult of the Severed Head, and how Guinevere rode about with the embalmed severed heads of her enemies swaying from the pommel of her saddle. So: either the queen or someone in her entourage was a headhunter: one of the ancient caste of warriors who took the heads of their enemies in battle and preserved them, thereby keeping their power…