Igraine

Welsh tradition

In medieval Welsh literature and genealogical tracts Eigyr is one of several children of Amlawdd Wledig. Her siblings include Gwyar, the mother of Gwalchmai (Gawain), who is mentioned in Culhwch and Olwen. The same source mentions Gormant son of Rica, half-brother to Arthur on his father's side, his father the chief elder of Cornwall.

Geoffrey of Monmouth

In the Historia Regum Britanniae, Igerna enters the story as the wife of Gorlois, Duke of Cornwall. King Uther Pendragon falls in love with her and attempts to force his attentions on her at his court. She informs her husband, who departs with her to Cornwall without asking leave. This sudden departure gives Uther Pendragon an excuse to make war on Gorlois. Gorlois conducts the war from the castle of Dimilioc but places his wife in safety in the castle of Tintagel.

Disguised as Gorlois by Merlin, Uther Pendragon is able to enter Tintagel to satisfy his lust. He manages to rape Igraine by deceit - she believes that she is lying with her husband and becomes pregnant with Arthur. Her husband Gorlois dies in battle that same night. Geoffrey does not say, and later accounts disagree, as to whether Gorlois died before or after Arthur was begotten (something that might be important in determining whether or not a child could be made legitimate by a later marriage to its true father). Uther Pendragon later marries Igraine.

According to Geoffrey, Igraine also bore a daughter Anna (referred to as Morgause in other works) to Uther Pendragon, and this Anna later becoming the mother of Gawain and Mordred. Yet Geoffrey also refers to King Hoel of Brittany as Arthur's nephew and presents a prophecy that to Uther's daughter will be born a line of seven kings, something true if Hoel is Anna's son, but not true if only Gawain or Mordred are Anna's sons. There is confusion here, especially as Welsh genealogies name an Anna as Hoel's mother, but one not connected to Uther Pendragon.

Robert de Boron

In Robert de Boron's later Merlin, Igraine's previous husband is an unnamed Duke of Tintagel and it is by him that she becomes the mother of two unnamed daughters. One marries King Lot and by him becomes the mother of Gawain, Mordred, Gaheriet and Guerrehet. A second daughter, also unnamed in some variants but in some named Morgaine, is married to a certain King Nentres of Garlot, who is identified with Budic II of Brittany. A third illegitimate daughter of the Duke of Tintagel is sent to a school and there learns so much she becomes the great sorceress Morgan le Fay.

"Morgan" and "Morgaine" are respectively the nominative and oblique forms of the same name. Indeed, no accounts outside of de Boron's Merlin mentions that Morgan le Fay is illegitimate and therefore in this version Arthur's stepsister. According to Robert de Boron, Igraine died before her second husband.

Vulgate Merlin

In the Lancelot-Grail Merlin, Igraine is provided with two earlier husbands, one named Hoel who is the father of two daughters: Gawain's mother and a daughter named Blasine who marries King Nentres of Garlot. After Hoel's death Ygraine marries the Duke of Tintagel and by him becomes mother of three more daughters: a third daughter who marries a King Briadas and becomes mother of King Angusel of Scotland (in no other extant text made Arthur's nephew), a fourth daughter named Hermesent who marries King Urien of Rheged and becomes mother of Ywain the Great and a fifth daughter, Morgan le Fay.

It is possible this Hoel derives from Geoffrey's confused statement that Igraine's eldest daughter had by her first husband Howel which was misunderstood to refer instead to a supposed first husband of Igraine named Howel/Hoel.

Other accounts

In the Post-Vulgate Cycle and Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, it is Morgan le Fay who becomes the wife of King Urien and mother of Ywain (and Malory adds this information). In other accounts Ywain is not Arthur's nephew, although sometimes is Gawain's cousin when their respective fathers are presented as brothers.

In the Brut Tysilio, Duke Cador of Cornwall is the son of Gorlois, one would guess by Igraine. The same appears in Richard Hardyng's Chronicle where Cador is called Arthur's brother "of his mother's syde." Opposing views appear in Layamon's Brut where Cador appears first as a leader who takes charge of Uther's host when they are attacked by Gorlois while Uther is secretly lying beside Igraine in Tintagel. In the English Alliterative Morte Arthure Cador is continually called Arthur's "cousin".

Thomas Malory's Morte d'Arthur names the first daughter Margawse, the second Elayne and the third Morgan le Fay with no mention of Morgan's illegitimacy. Lancelot is the son of Arthur's sister Clarine in Ulrich von Zatzikhoven's Lanzelet, Caradoc is Arthur's sister's son in the Prose Lancelot, Percival is son of Arthur's sister Acheflour in the English romance Syr Percyvelle. Arthurian tales are not consistent with one another and sisters of Arthur seem to have been created at desire by any teller who wished to make a hero into Arthur's nephew.

The Lancelot-Grail relates that when Igraine became Uther's wife she left behind in the dukedom of Tintagel a son of the Duke of Tintagel by a previous marriage. Some romances show her alive after Uther's death. In Chrétien de Troyes's Perceval, the Story of the Grail she and her daughter Gawain's mother are discovered by Gawain in an enchanted castle named the Castle of Marvels. Gawain had thought both his mother and grandmother to be long dead. This same account appears in Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival and in Heinrich von dem Türlin's Diu Crône. In both of these it is explained that Igraine was abducted (and it is hinted that she was willingly abducted) by the magician who has enchanted the castle. In the French Livre d'Artus, an incomplete alternate conclusion to the French Vulgate Merlin, it is mentioned that Ygraine dwells hidden in Corbenic, the castle of the Holy Grail. This is apparently a version of the same tradition since in the late Lancelot-Grail, the enchantments of the Grail castle are very similar to and seem to be based on the enchantments found in Chrétien's Castle of Marvels.

Modern fiction