The Course of True Love

Reading a legendary love story is a bit like flipping a coin. Heads, they survive; tails, they die miserably. For all that people like hearing about a young couple in love, they sure do have a lot of stories that end in tears and heartbreak. And for that certain subsection of these tales - the star-crossed lovers - everything they do to fix their situation just ends up drawing the noose even tighter around their necks.

Deirdre and Naisi, Breogan

Take Deirdre and Naisi, the great tragic lovers of Irish mythology. The cards were stacked against them from the start; poor Deirdre wasn't even a day old before druids prophesied the bloodshed that would result from her incredible beauty. Locked up away from the world, promised to a king with a yen for a trophy wife, Deirdre decides that she deserves a say in her own fate and promptly falls in love with the equally-gorgeous Naisi. Like any knight in shining armor worth his salt, he throws caution to the winds and elopes with her. So far, so good, right?

Well, there's that king. He's not happy about this interloper. And he's also not above using treachery, magic, and plain old pettiness to avenge his wounded pride. By the time the story's done, Naisi and his brothers have been murdered, and Deirdre - who tried belatedly to warn them of the dangers of hanging out with her - has died of a broken heart, but only after having been married for a year to King Backstabber. And the worst part is that they go into danger knowing that they could die. Deirdre's ominous dreams, the warnings of Naisi's brothers, even the prophecy that started the whole shebang are all openly discussed and perfectly interpreted. They know exactly what faces them, and they still can't change their fates.

Lancelot and Guinevere, Herbert James Draper

For that very reason, Lancelot and Guinevere fight tooth and nail against their forbidden passion. They too can see with perfect clarity the chaos that it could bring: the destruction of the Round Table, the death of Arthur's dream, the confusion and anarchy of civil war. Lancelot, sworn to be Guinevere's knight from the moment they meet, goes out questing again and again to remove himself from temptation. (Of course, lesser temptations present themselves all the time, but the strength of his love for Guinevere - unacknowledged, unconsummated, and for all he knows unreciprocated - lets him steer clear.) Guinevere wrestles her demons in silence, molding herself into a perfect queen and Arthur's mainstay. But when they finally give in and become lovers, all their good work goes for naught. Just as their secret passion tormented them earlier, now their betrayal of Arthur cuts them both. Tons of versions (Tennyson most notably) turn Guinevere into a jealous shrew, quarreling with Lancelot over the strength of his love at any opportunity. And it's their affair that provides the crack through which Camelot is broken open - again, the very outcome the lovers foresaw and dreaded, come about directly through their own actions.

In comparison, the Weaving Princess and the Cowherd seem positively peaceful. They don't cause any wars; there's no blood shed on their behalf; they don't even die. But it's still tricky to get more star-crossed than them. They're total workaholics - her cloth and his cows are the best in the world - until she gets wistful about the fact that her crazy work schedule means she'll never have time to fall in love. Her father, the Sky King, brings the two of them together, and it's love at first sight, which means they both take an indefinite vacation from weaving and tending the herd. From being exemplars, they become a cautionary tale, and the Sky King goes to the opposite extreme: he puts a river between them and forbids them ever to cross it. Only when his daughter begs him to let her see her beloved again does he allow them to meet for one day out of every year, and then only if there are enough magpies to make a bridge for her to cross the river. No magpies, no reunion. And it's really hard to blame either lover for this bittersweet end to their story. Yes, if the Weaving Princess had just been satisfied with a life chained to her loom, or if the lovers had only acted in moderation, none of this would have been necessary. But you can't fault them for wanting to fall in love, or for being carried away by a grand passion. Unlike Deirdre and Naisi, who walk with open eyes toward their fate, the Weaving Princess and the Cowherd get blindsided by every twist in their path. Their actions still create their lousy situation, but much less deliberately.

Romeo and Juliet, Frank Dicksee

We probably don't even need to discuss Romeo and Juliet. But you can't mention impulsive star-crossed lovers and not talk about them. They get married the day after they meet, and separated the following morning. They concoct wild schemes of escape and reunion. And their own unwillingness to move "wisely and slow," as Friar Laurence urges, leads to their horribly early deaths. Juliet prefers a faked death to coming clean to her (admittedly terrifying) parents; Romeo can't even wait a day after hearing of it before making rash plans to kill himself. Given how early and often these two threaten suicide, it's a miracle they make it through Act Four still alive.

But here's the catch. Even though pretty much everyone can agree that each pair of lovers creates their own problems, no story ever takes them to task for the impulsiveness and recklessness that leads them to separation and/or death. Deirdre and Naisi are fulfilling a prophesied fate; Lancelot and Guinevere are used as pawns by Mordred; the Weaving Princess and the Cowherd are perhaps most sympathetic because they're most human, stumbling through life with no foreshadowing and reacting to things as they happen. And Romeo and Juliet get romanticized to a ludicrous extent. They were incredibly lucky that the greatest poet of the English language made their story famous. Without Shakespeare's exquisite words, they'd be a couple of innocently moronic teenagers who made their bed and now have to lie in it. As it is, they're the English byword for true love, with countless silly songs using their names as shorthand. (No, Taylor Swift wasn't the first one to misread the play. She's just the most obvious.)

So even when the lovers themselves contribute materially to their own destruction, they're not really blamed. Storytellers may be trying to hammer home a moral about rash impulse, but even they fall under the spell of an all-consuming love. It's an easy thing to do. Two people who sacrifice everything, including themselves, for each other, is an incredibly attractive story. In fact, the lovers who make that sacrifice get immortalized far more readily than those who don't. Prince Charming and his princess of choice have a zillion iterations; Romeo and Juliet are unique, and instantly recognizable. It's as if the making of that sacrifice elevates a particular love above all the other couples who, for all we know, would have given their lives for each other just as readily. But it wasn't asked of them, and so they're not the celebrated ones.

Romeo and Juliet, Joseph Wright

It's much easier to swoon than to question. Rationality has no place in a tale of grand passion and high stakes. But there's probably a reason that those lovers die young and wildly. They don't just make their fates; they make their world. The rules they live by are not the rules that the rest of us cleave to. Theirs is an all-or-nothing world (with the exception of the Weaving Princess and the Cowherd, who get dragged out of that world and forced into a compromise that tortures them eternally). We swoon because we admire their absolute conviction, their refusal to have only some when they want all. But while theirs may be a world that two people can live in, it's not one that fits well with the rest of us. In their refusal to surrender to outside demands, these lovers lay down an ultimatum to themselves. And if they are to hold true to each other and their wild and reckless love - which is what their world is built around - they must follow through.

The Problem With Gawain

I have a problem. It's very serious. Ladies and gentlemen, I confess to you all that I am a Gawainaholic.

You wouldn't think it would really be a problem. Gawain's one of the shining stars of Camelot. He has more adventures than anyone but Lancelot, and his pedigree is better than that French interloper's, anyway. His marriage to Lady Ragnell is one of the great love stories of the whole cycle, and unlike most of the others it even has a happy ending. He's there at the beginning, and he lasts almost until the bitter end.

Sir Gawaine Finds the Beautiful Lady, Howard Pyle

But while those are among the many reasons why I love Gawain, there are also the inevitable issues of character continuity in a story cycle tweaked over centuries with no initial canon. The interpretation of my favorite knight's character runs the gamut from dreamy ideal knight to dimwitted oaf to bloody avenger. It's very hard to reconcile the bold idealist of "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" with the end of Malory, when Gawain pursues vengeance against Lancelot even when it costs his life and the security of Arthur's rule. Even allowing for the inevitable jading of a youth as he matures, that is a huge change in personality from the kid who's heartbroken when he fails to do the right thing. Later variations of the Loathly Lady story even impose a random separation between Gawain and Ragnell, where she leaves him after a certain number of years because she "must." (There is no truly official Arthurian canon - even Malory wrote long after the legends had mutated beyond any original form - so I ignore this nonsense utterly. In my Arthuriana, Gawain and Ragnell live happily ever after forever.)

It's pretty easy to see where this change happens. The instant Lancelot comes on the scene, everyone else gets massively downgraded. It makes sense, of course; the greatest knight in the world is going to trounce everyone else in everything, be it chivalry, honor, or feats of arms. He's the greatest for a reason. But Gawain takes the brunt of that hit. He doesn't just lose prestige at court, he loses character depth. The day before Lancelot arrived, he was upstanding, honorable, valiant, and badass. By the next morning, he becomes crass, boastful, and kind of an idiot.

Hey, French troubadours! I'll still like your character even if he's not the only nice guy in the bunch. I PROMISE, OKAY?

Orkney Princes, LilyBotanica

It's also no coincidence that in his later, less glorious years, Gawain is deeply identified with the rest of his siblings, the bold and problematic Orkney princes. The children of the traitorous Morgause and Lot turn out very flawed (with the exception of Gareth, who of course is Lancelot's best friend and of course gets accidentally killed, which provides the reason for Gawain's loss of reason at the end of his life). Agravain is generally seen as all bad, mainly because he hangs out with Mordred, who's also in a way part of the Orkney brood. Gareth is a sweetheart, Gawain often a blustering bruiser, Gaheris a nonentity who can go either way. But despite their many good points (not least of which is their loyalty to Arthur), the Orkney princes are instrumental in the downfall of Camelot. Gaheris (or on occasion Agravain) ropes his brothers into a blood feud with their mother's lover, which results in the death of Lamorak and the exiling of a few of the Orkney princes. Gareth's death at rage-blinded Lancelot's hands shatters what goodwill is

The Joust, Mariusz Kozik

left, driving Gawain to an obsessive quest for revenge that pits Arthur against Lancelot, sends Guinevere to a nunnery, and leaves Britain undefended when Mordred makes his move. You'd think we'd have heard something about Gawain's intensely close relationships with his brothers before - you know, a touching farewell when he heads off to face the Green Knight, or a bawdy commiseration as he prepares to marry hideous Lady Ragnell - but no. Gawain is a lone wolf when heroic. And all his less-than-heroic deeds tie directly back to the demands of his family when they do decide to pop up.

The Green Knight, Julek Heller

I blame a lot of Gawain's character deterioration on the troubadours who wanted to puff up Lancelot. With the exception of the doomed love for his queen, Lancelot just acquired wholesale most of Gawain's heroic traits: the solitude on a quest for honor, the widely acknowledged superiority of strength and will, even the reputation for heedless acts of courage. But that's not fair to Lancelot, who's very much a character in his own right.

It's much more interesting to look at Gawain as the embodiment of Camelot, in microcosm. At first, young and on his own, he achieves incredible glory through his own bravery and resolve. He basks in the glow of his accomplishments without resting on his laurels, building a reputation for honor as his fame spreads. And it's through the direct intervention of familial ties, that the seeds are sown for his downfall.

I don't know about you guys, but that sounds a lot like Arthur, and the course of Camelot itself, to me.

Not that it's intentional. I don't think the storytellers shaped Gawain's tale like this on purpose. It's far more likely that they realized they'd forgotten about their initial Best Knight and pulled him back in for the climax, disregarding his early characterization. But I also don't think it's an accident that Gawain is destroyed by his devotion to his family, just as Arthur (and Camelot by extension) is destroyed by his son's betrayal. At its core, the Death of Arthur is a dysfunctional family drama played out on a world stage. As Arthur's nephew, Gawain is implicated in that drama and doomed by it.

It all comes down to family. The youthful idealism of the beginning is broken by the betrayal of kin at the end. It holds true for every member of Arthur's family. But Gawain, who has a place with the heroes as well as with the villains, is the only one whose life mirrors the trajectory of Arthur's kingdom.

Dragonslaying for Fame and Profit

When you get right down to it, there's one surefire way to become a hero. It's better than saving a king. It's more impressive than marrying a princess (although that often comes with the territory). It's basically guaranteed to cement you in our imagination forever.

Because only a true hero can slay a dragon.

Shadow over Mystara, Capcom

We could all recite this story in our sleep. Dragon terrorizes kingdom, king promises his daughter to whoever kills dragon, only the hero succeeds. It's a winning scenario for everyone: the king's subjects get to live without fear of being devoured, the king has his kingdom back plus a worthy successor, the princess gets to marry a hero, and said hero gets his courage and skill handsomely rewarded. But the weird thing is, that's only part of the story.

Heroes, like all the rest of us, have to work up to glory. Very few charge off the homestead and slay a dragon on their first try. Despite its position as the best way to become a hero, dragonslaying more often actually comes later in a hero's career, cementing his heroism rather than being the first proof of it.

Perseus and Andromeda, Drakenza Kimpel

Take Perseus, my personal favorite of all the Greek heroes for his combination of asskicking and being a decent human. By the time he meets his dragon, he's already accomplished the heroic feat for which he's famous: he's killed Medusa, and has her head in a bag at his side when he meets cute with Andromeda. Undaunted by the battle he literally just won (and probably psyched at the thought of rescuing a gorgeous naked princess), Perseus promptly dispatches the sea serpent sent to eat Andromeda. Some versions have him slice the monster up with his sword; others have him cleverly use the killer trophy from his last fight in a very dramatic display of his already-established heroism. And while Andromeda chained to the rock is the iconic image of a damsel in distress, Perseus' killing of the sea serpent is very much secondary, even in the story, to his killing of Medusa. It's the head of Medusa, not of the serpent, that he brandishes when he returns home.

There's also Rama, an unquestioned hero long before he runs into his dragon. Like Perseus, he doesn't even need one. He's endured baseless exile and a life of hardship with incredible grace and goodwill. He's also clearly a great person, because both his wife and his younger brother accompany him into exile of their own will, despite Rama's pleading with them to protect themselves and stay in their cushy palace. Not enough yet? Well, there's also the matter of his entire kingdom mourning his loss because they know he'd be a fantastic king, or his other younger brother Bharata (whose jealous mother orchestrated the whole wrongful-exile thing) refusing to claim the rights due to a crown prince. Bharata actually tracks Rama down in exile just to apologize in person for his mother, and to assure Rama that he himself is just keeping Rama's place open for when he returns. The Ramayana is chock-full of awesome people being awesome. And even in this land of paragons, they all respect Rama most. Dude is a hero. No question.

So although the capture and rescue of his wife Sita forms one of the great set-pieces of the whole epic, it's never necessary for proving Rama's heroism. It's certainly moving that he follows Sita's trail all the way to a demon kingdom, and it's very impressive that he fights a demon king (whose ten heads push the same dragon-alert buttons as, say, the Hydra, or the Yamata no Orochi) to reclaim the woman who's been faithful to him all this time. But it's not by any means the first hint we get that Rama is a hero. At this point - near the end of the Ramayana, just before Rama gets called back home to become king - it's icing on the cake. It's actually made even better by the fact that we know very well that Rama rocks. We're not wondering in the slightest who will win this fight; we're munching popcorn and cheering Rama on.

Susano-o Fighting the Yamata no Orochi, superspacemonkey

Whether in legend or in Spenser, Saint George's dragon-slaying follows a slew of other heroic acts (and isn't even the final capper in The Faerie Queene, which has him still questing after he defeats the dragon and marries Una). Susano-o beats the Yamata no Orochi, a monstrous eight-headed dragon, by a combination of trickery and swordplay, but Susano-o is a storm god who previously made his sister's necklace give birth to five men; he has no desperate need to prove his power. And for Siegfried, killing a dragon is just one of many stepping-stones (although not the first) to his most famous deed: the wooing of Brunnhild, a formidable warrior regardless of whether she's a Valkyrie or just an incredibly strong mortal. We remember them because they killed dragons, but that's hardly all they did.

The Fall of Beowulf, Devin Maupin

And then there's Beowulf. His fight with a dragon, far from making his name, is the fight that kills him. When he meets his dragon, he's old but still powerful. He killed Grendel and his mother long ago. He's ruled his people for years, largely because of the fame and prestige he won in those two battles. But he takes on the dragon anyway, partly because he's the king and knows how these things work, but also partly because he knows very well that he's a hero. And heroes fight dragons. It's inevitable that he will die in this fight - you didn't really think an asskicker like Beowulf would go in his sleep, did you? - but it's also his final act of heroism to face the dragon himself, taking very literally the king's task to defend his people. When he and the dragon kill each other (with Beowulf getting a much-needed assist from his one loyal warrior, Wiglaf), it's a truly fitting death: the monster and the monster-slayer destroying each other. The fight with the dragon provides the final affirmation of Beowulf's heroism in risking (and losing) his life to protect his subjects.

Saint George and the Dragon, Trina Schart Hyman

So nowhere, really, is the slaying of a dragon the ultimate proof of heroism. But in each case, it is a watershed moment in each hero's career. Perseus wins a wife; Rama claims his crown; Beowulf goes out in a blaze of glory. Maybe the reason it's become so obvious a path to heroism is because slaying a dragon marks a change in a hero's life. Nothing is the same after a fight with a dragon. There's always an upgrade of some kind.

Killing a dragon isn't usually the first time the hero proves his heroism. But it is usually the first moment he gets the trappings and rewards of a hero. And that speaks very eloquently to a culture searching for a deed that defines heroism.

The King's Evolution

What happened to King Arthur? One minute he's a young warrior king who can pull swords out of rocks and anvils, the next he's stuck shuffling papers in some keep while his wife dallies with his best friend. That is one serious midlife crisis.

And it happens very abruptly, too. The first quarter, at least, of any Arthurian cycle revolves around the once and future king himself: his conception, his fostering, his coming-of-age via sword trick, his defeat of the rival kings, his marriage to Guinevere, and his creation of the Round Table knights.

The Sword in the Stone, Rodney Matthews

Then all of a sudden it's about the knights, each one getting a day in the limelight. Gawain, Percival, Balin and Balan, Kay, Gareth, and of course Lancelot, each with his own quests, successes and failures, which they dutifully report on back at Camelot. Where Arthur's

King Arthur, Winchester
Round Table

sitting, presiding over feasts and refusing to eat until he sees marvels and all that jazz. Kind of a comedown for a vigorous young king whose early career puts everyone else's to shame.

There's a lot going on in the transition from fighter to lawgiver, from active participant to benevolent presence in the wings. The first factor in play was probably the difficulty legends have with making a legislator a warrior. The archetypal "wise leader" is rarely found making corpses on a battlefield. We remember Hammurabi as the first lawgiver in history, conveniently ignoring the fact that he was a Mesopotamian emperor, which by definition means he kicked ass like nobody's business. Nestor, spouting smart advice Agamemnon rarely heeds, is old and ill suited to hack up Trojans. Ptah, the Egyptian god of creation, also presides over handicrafts, products of peaceful times; Maat, who represents balance and justice, is a woman. Nobody wants their legal system in the hands of a berserker. So for Arthur to take the place he himself has prepared - that of lawgiver to the masses, bringer of peace to a troubled land - he has to become inactive. He can't represent good government while also taking the lead in all quests that come to Camelot. And once it becomes clear that Guinevere will never give him a son, it's all the more important that the king protect his life and not go gallivanting after every Questing Beast and white hart that turns up.

The White Hart, Arthur Rackham

There's also the nature of the mythos itself. Arthurian legend as we know it is a hodgepodge of individual stories collected under one great umbrella. That umbrella is Arthur and his law-forged peace, which wasn't even in some of the stories in their original forms. Latecomers to the mythos - Merlin, Lancelot, Galahad, Tristan and Isolde - are the active and heroic centers of their own stories. There's simply no way to inject Arthur into a tragic tale of star-crossed lovers, especially given its similarity to his own marriage, except to say, "Well, it was happening in Arthur's reign." Merlin's exploits become a prequel and a foreshadowing of Arthur's greater glory; Lancelot can fight for the honor of Queen Guinevere as easily as for any other woman. But their stories are their own. Arthur's peace can bring them all together and give us a tapestry of courtly life, possible only in peace. Without Arthur, they'd be disconnected and blurring together; but his inclusion, although important for the unification of the mythos, is in name only.

And then there's the whole question of courtly love. Let's face it: the husband never comes off well in those stories. It's actually a miracle that Arthur survives his bout with courtly love with an even greater reputation as a friend, lover and king. It would be so easy to turn him into a

Lancelot Brings Guenevere to Arthur, Henry Justice Ford

Mark of Cornwall, obsessed with proving his wife's guilt and stabbing his friend in the back. Instead, facing a scenario tailor-made to break a great man, Arthur proves his greatness of spirit by acknowledging Lancelot and Guinevere's pain at their betrayal of him. He may be the only cuckold in legend with depth. But he's never going to be the hero of this story. That part is always going to go to Lancelot, to the flashy young wooer in love with a woman above his station. The whole notion of courtly love was invented so that character could seem heroic rather than lecherous. Lancelot is a creation of courtly love; the structure of the story requires that he be the hero. It's a testament to the appeal of Arthur as benevolent ruler that the worst he suffers is passivity, rather than character assassination.

So in terms of the mythos' requirements, Arthur has to be deactivated. You could argue that his

time with Merlin is his apprenticeship in learning how to rule from a throne rather than a battlefield, and that Merlin only leaves when Arthur finally learns. But that doesn't mean we have to forget that teenage Arthur led an army against several northern kings and defeated them all to prove his right to the throne, or that his earliest appearances in Welsh legend are all as a great war-leader, or that in the twilight of his reign he still personally led troops to Brittany.

The Two Crowns, Frank Dicksee

We tend to simplify Arthur. He makes it easy for us; he takes so easily to the mantle of lawgiver that we give him no other plaudits. But he's a much more complicated figure than that. He's a gifted warrior who deliberately retreats from the field of glory to concentrate on day-to-day administration. He's a devoted husband and friend who sacrifices his peace of mind to protect the hearts and consciences of the people he loves. He steps back to give other people time to shine, becoming forgotten even in his own story cycle until the end. He's a leader, in every sense of the word. And he shouldn't be put in a neat little box. He's too interesting for that.

A Tale of Two Robins

Robin Hood, M.L. Peters

Like all good folk legends, Robin Hood exists in a world semi-parallel to ours, where things are recognizable but not quite real. His King Richard is English (rather than French) and dedicated to the welfare of England (rather than carelessly stripping it of wealth while never bothering to speak the language). His Prince John is a straightforward villain, not the complicated and intriguing character of history. His Merrie England bears little resemblance to twelfth-century serfdom. It's a truly legendary world: broad enough to serve as backdrop for a hero of Robin's caliber, but spiced with familiar details that make it easy to believe in. It even comes equipped with two different villains, depending on which Robin you want to believe in. For all the simplicity of Robin's right-versus-wrong fight, his story alters drastically in scope and ambition, depending on who his primary antagonist is.

Robin himself never changes: he's always the lone good man in a sea of deception, standing up for the downtrodden no matter the personal cost. The power of a Robin Hood is his rarity. Despite the fact that he quickly gathers supporters just as willing as he to risk life and limb for the sake of the right, he's the true hero for one simple reason: he did it first. When everyone else hemmed and hawed and considered their options, Robin saw a wrong and moved to right it. The Merry Men are admirable in their courage and camaraderie, but they wouldn't have come together and proven their worth without Robin to show the way. He's an elemental force for good; he represents the need for goodness that we want to believe is innate in humanity. No wonder he's one of the world's most popular folk heroes.

But once you have a hero as universal as Robin, you have a choice about how you tell his story. You can give him a canvas as big as the ideals he stands for and pit him against the highest power in his world. Or you can bring him down to earth like the rest of us and show us what reality does to ideals.

If the main villain of a Robin Hood story is Prince John, it's an Option One story.

Robin Hood, Disney

This Robin will strive not only for the sake of his fellow men, but to ensure that everyone in his world is protected and treated justly. Option One Robin's crusade goes all the way to the top. He wants to change the world, not just save a few farms. He will be deeply idealistic without ever seeming childish or dreamy. He will face off against Prince John in person, utterly trouncing him whether they're fighting with words or with weapons. And he will be personally thanked and rewarded by King Richard for singlehandedly saving England, which under the circumstances will be a completely fair assessment.

Michael Praed as Robin of Loxley, ITV

But if the Sheriff of Nottingham is your central villain, it's a whole new story. There will be no glorious trappings here. Very little will change for the better by the end; Robin in the real world can stave off disaster, but not effect the sweeping reforms of Option One. It's a far more local story, with Robin's efforts contained to one area rather than spread over all England. It will be darker, pettier, and more despairing; when your enemy is a parochial bureaucracy rather than a crowned head, even your victories are smaller. And Option Two Robin, while retaining the essential idealistic notion that things can be better, will doubt himself. He'll wonder if it's all for nothing, if he really is making a difference or just deluding himself and leading his friends into danger. Sometimes the story will introduce Richard or John, offering the missing glory only to subvert it and remind us how small one man's fight can be.

For obvious reasons, most Robin Hood stories are Option One. Who needs fear and self-doubt when you can have Errol Flynn's iconic hands-on-hips laughter? The stories that - like Robin -

Errol Flynn as Robin Hood, Warner Bros.

dream big are the reason why Robin is a legend. His lasting power comes directly from the stories that let him confront and defeat the men who can't be defeated. As with the Merry Men who gather around him, seeing him win convinces us that we too can win.

But Option Two Robin provides some much-needed perspective. It can get boring after a while, knowing that somehow Robin will prevail against impossible odds. Seeing him lose, or seeing him escape without accomplishing his task, or even (at worst) seeing him die, reminds us of where his heroism originates. He's a single man against the world, armed with wits, a bow, and his ideals. If he's truly at risk, his victories mean more. He's far more human when he fails; Option Two Robins are generally more rounded characters than Option One Robins, who never have to grapple with doubt. And Option Two even makes Option One fresh and fun again. After confronting an all-too-human hero like Option Two Robin, the whimsy and chivalry of Option One can feel like water in the desert.

Either way, Robin's still us. At his best and worst, at his most heroic or his most despairing, Robin Hood lives the essential human struggle to make real what you believe in. That's why he's stuck around in so many incarnations; that's why his story can resonate on a small level or a huge stage; that's why he's quite possibly the most beloved hero of the English language. No matter who he is, we get him. We get why he fights. And whichever option he presents, whatever he thinks of himself, we know the truth: that he's a hero, and a human, and that the two can go together.