Author: Heather Munns

     There is a firm statement about war hidden within the passages of fiction in The Once and Future King. This is a very important idea in discovering why Arthur acts the way he does, and also gives us some insight to the book's somewhat conspicuous appearance in the film X2: X-Men United. There are three different groups in the book that have different ideas about what is right to fight for and when fighting should happen. These groups are paralleled by very similarly thinking groups in the movie.

     Magneto embraces the "anything goes" idea of warfare that is displayed by the old order in Arthur's time. The humans have wronged them for centuries, so they must defend their honor and get their revenge. They wage war for centuries, despite how small or large the reason may be. They also fight despite however long ago the offenses were committed. They are like the Gaels, those holding grudges forever against the Saxons for pushing them out of their lands, wanting to regain their power over all the lands. Magneto wants the same thing, mutants to be in power, to obtain all the lands, to rule the earth. There is also a link between Magneto and the children of Morgause and Lot. Magneto seeks a war, presumably to exact revenge upon mankind for the ills done to him during World War II and throughout his childhood and his entire life (as we see glimpses of in X-Men, the first movie). The children of Morgause and Lot seek always to take their revenge on the Pendragon family, for ills done to their grandmother by Uther, Arthur's father.

     You can also think of the U.S. Government, led by Stryker, as the old nobility faction, those that did not join with Arthur, but were not part of the Gaels. These noblemen were more prone to think like the Gaels in their ideas of warfare. The Gaels wanted the end of Arthur, while the nobility just wanted to be able to kill whoever they wanted at whatever time they wanted to. Stryker wanted Cerebro to kill all the mutants and Magneto wanted to use it to kill all of the humans. Their solution to their different problems was the same. It just happened to be that they were on opposite sides. They had the same mentality. The old nobility just wanted to be strong, wanted to exert their power wherever they wanted, like Striker. The old nobility had to be tamed by Arthur in order to achieve his purpose of peace. These men would wreak havoc just because they could. In X-Men, both the X-Men and the government had to fight against this group because of the damage they could do.

     Arthur's group of loyal knight, the Gauls (those who have taken control of the land, and continue to do so throughout the course of Arthur's reign) can be likened to Xavier's students and X-Men. Arthur's mentor, Merlyn, trained him to think, directing him to think about war. Arthur was raised with the idea of war as a 'noble and fun thing to do', that war was grand and that battles should happen frequently. Through Merlyn's tutilage and a variety of magical transformations and experiences, Arthur sees that war is not always a good thing (which is clearly a reflection of T. H. White's opinions during World War II). The concept of war prior to Arthur's influence involved needless killing and recklessness. He tried to stop this and tried to put an end to all war, but his attempts failed as his kingdom fell back into war and ruin at the end of the story. Xavier also tries to adjust man's inclination to not be accepting of their differences; an inclination leading to hatred and hostility. Arthur and Xavier have the same vision of an utopian society where everyone gets along. We can only hope that Xavier's efforts do do not conclude as Arthur's did.

     Arthur tried, with many evolving attempts, to destroy man's tendency to wage war. First he institutes the Round Table with the desire to channel aggressive instincts for good; first getting things in order. Then everything got in order and they all became reckless. Next he tried to channel the might of the knights toward spiritual quests. They were sent out to find relics; most especially the Holy Grail. Neither of these attempts worked, as the knights came back beaten, empty handed, and discouraged, but Xavier is employing very similar techniques. His round table is his school, and more specifically, the X-Men. Xavier leads them to channel their powers towards helping people and fighting off forces that would harm or destroy. There is also a connection with the old and new knights of the table as the teachers and students at Xavier's school. There were 150 seats at the Round Table, and as part of his establishing this new order, he chose the best knights he could find to sit with him and start things. These first knights became legends to the younger knights, just as the X-Men became to Xavier's students. With the introduction of a new character, we have the introduction of the second evolutionary step in Xavier's fight against the tendency to hate. A new X-man, the teleporter, joins the team and he enlightens some to more spiritual thinking, using religion to vanquish the hate inside them (very similar to some of the processes the knights had to go through to purify themselves before seeking the relics).

     We find Xavier in an interesting position in an interesting position as a combination of Arthur and Merlyn. Xavier is the head, the leader, the director of the school and the X-Men, but he is also their tutor. He teaches them to think, and at the end, we can assume that he is using The Once and Future King as a method of teaching that war is bad, that his students may learn the things that King Arthur wanted his knights to know. There is a very interesting scene at the end of the movie that shows Xavier's Marlyn-like character. He and his X-Men appear in the President's office, seemingly stopping time and people's thoughts. They seemed to appear and disappear out of nothing and here he gives his advice, his effort to stop mankind from provoking a war against the mutants. He is almost magical in the way that he comes, calmly and wisely, doing what he thinks is best for the world and then leaving, without a trace remaining of his presence aside from the change evinced in the President.