My name’s Mordred. You’ve probably heard of me. The evil traitor Knight of the Round Table who killed King Arthur.

I’m not evil. It's all a huge misunderstanding.

My aunt Morgana, she was ambitious, but she wasn’t thatambitious. She wasn’t about to steal the throne from my uncle, mostly because he was doing a good job anyway and on top of that, she was Queen in all but name, allowance, castles and all.

Truth be told, with the sheer amount of political weight she had she might have been Prime Minister. In any case Uncle Arthur listened to her a lot. Well, she was smart, and older than him.

Alright, so back in my Round Table days I was an arse, but let’s face it, I was young and frankly youth generally equalled stupidity, which often was mistaken for being as you moderns call it a jerk. Even I knew then that I was a spoiled brat, but I didn’t care enough to do something about it.

The main thing that bites me is this: People keep accusing me of stealing Uncle Arthur’s throne while he was busy fighting that Sir Lancelot, and actively plotting to bring him down. What’s worse is that I’m accused of killing him.

Let me set the record straight: I wasn’t thinking when I ratted out Guinevere to Uncle Arthur. I just knew that I heard the Queen talking to Sir Lancelot in the gardens and kiss him and that something was definitely wrong.

I’ll admit that it wasn’t one of my smartest moves. Hey, I panicked, and I thought Uncle Arthur would rather learn that his wife had only just cheated on him than find out his wife had been having an affair for several months or something.

In any case, I definitely wasn’t hoping to get Guinevere burned at the stake. Any idea just how painful that is? Hoping for that is just plain sick.

Of course you all know how Lancelot swooped in to save her like a big fat hero and carried her off to France. Who doesn’t? It’s every little girl’s fantasy from the moment they hear the story.

He accidentally killed all my brothers bar Gawain, though, and Gawain was not happy.

Now, Gawain’s the crazy let’s-charge-into-battle-and-hope-for-the-best type. I’ll stay at home, hold the fort and come up with a revenge plan that doesn’t involve me possibly being killed by one of the best fighters known to Christendom, thank you very much.

So that’s what I ended up doing. I was chosen to stay back at Camelot, keeping an eye on things and plotting various ways of killing Lancelot. Sorry, but if you kill three of my brothers right in front of me there’s no way I’m letting you off.

The whole throne-stealing bit? In a brilliant stroke of stupidity worthy of the most brain-dead village idiot, I accidentally left one of my plans for seizing Lancelot’s castle and lands out. You see, I’d used ‘TK’ to refer to Lancelot. ‘The Killer’.

Some idiot thought it meant ‘The King’.

This just snowballed into me trying to hold Camelot against its own occupants who were convinced that I was trying to steal the throne.

You have no idea how relieved I was to hear that my uncle was coming back. I rode out to meet him.

Apparently rumours travelled faster than horses, because by the time I got there my own uncle was convinced that I wanted his throne.

And he was perfectly happy giving it up, but not so soon. He wanted to let me have a few lands first to see how I did before abdicating.

I was confused, but I decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth and agreed. Hey, more land and a shot at becoming the next King. Who would say no?

I was about to get up and leave when I spotted a snake near Uncle Arthur. The old man hadn’t even realized!

You know what happens from there. I killed the snake and all Hell breaks loose because his men were convinced that I was trying to kill my uncle.

What most don’t know is that I didn’t kill my uncle. I was actually fighting back to back with him. Someone threw a short sword – really more of a very long dagger than anything else, and just my luck, it was one of those stupid Fae-made ones. Those things go through steel like hot knives through butter.

We were both skewered, but I took a bit longer to die. The shock killed my uncle instantly, lucky for him.

I tried to pull the thing out and succeeded partially before I died.

Someone must have seen us and thought that we killed each other. Made sense, to be fair, but still…

That’s my story. Fantasy Boudicca agreed to help me write… er, type this. Nice girl, if a bit mouthy. A.N. Oi!

See?