A report on Mordred, King Lot, Gaheris, Le Morte d'Arthur and Morgause

A nephew of King Arthur, Gaheris is the third son of Arthur's sister or half-sister Morgause and her husband Lot, King of Orkney and Lothian.

In some versions of the legend, including the seminal text Le Morte d'Arthur, she is the mother of Gawain and Mordred, both key players in the story of King Arthur and his downfall.

He is the younger brother of Gawain and Agravain, the older brother of Gareth, and half-brother of Mordred.

As Modredus, Mordred was depicted as Arthur's traitorous nephew and a legitimate son of King Lot in Geoffrey of Monmouth's pseudo-historical work Historia Regum Britanniae which then served as the basis for the following evolution of the legend since the 12th century.

Le Morte d'Arthur depicts Gaheris as little more than a supporting character to Gawain, with the murder of Morgause an odd exception.

She is furthermore a sister of Morgan le Fay and the wife of King Lot of Orkney, as well as the mother of Gareth, Agravain, and Gaheris, the last of whom murders her.

Later variants most often characterised him as Arthur's villainous bastard son, born of an incestuous relationship with his half-sister, the queen of Lothian or Orkney named either Anna, Orcades, or Morgause.

He is generally depicted as the husband of Arthur's sister or half-sister, often known as Anna or Morgause.

The names and number of their children vary depending on the source, but the later romance tradition has given him the sons Gawain, Agravain, Gaheris, Gareth, and Mordred.

In a popular telling originating from the French chivalric romances of the 13th century, and made prominent today through its inclusion in Le Morte d'Arthur, Mordred is knighted by Arthur and joins the fellowship of the Round Table.

Notably, it is Mordred who stabs in the back and kills Pellinore's son and one of the best Knights of the Round Table, Lamorak, in an unfair fight involving most of his brothers (one of whom had even murdered their own mother for being Lamorak's lover).

This version of Lot's story was taken up by Thomas Malory for his seminal English complication Le Morte d'Arthur, in which Merlin notes Lot (originally Lote) of Orkney as Arthur's strongest early enemy that unfortunately must be slain on the day of their battle for Arthur to live.

Moorman identified three main motifs going through the work: Sir Lancelot's and Queen Guinevere's affair; the long blood feud between the families of King Lot and King Pellinore; and the mystical Grail Quest.

Furthermore, it tells of begetting of Arthur's incestuous son Mordred by one of his other royal half-sisters, Morgause (though Arthur did not know her as his sister); on Merlin's advice, Arthur then takes every newborn boy in his kingdom and all but Mordred, who miraculously survives and eventually indeed kills his father in the end, perish at sea (this is mentioned matter-of-fact, with no apparent moral overtone).

Lancelot's rescue party raids the execution, killing several loyal knights of the Round Table, including Gawain's brothers Gareth and Gaheris.