At the end of Camelot, Arthur has lost the war, his queen, and his knights. At the end of The Once and Future King, it is even worse: Arthur knows he will lose his life. And yet in every iteration of the Arthurian legend, he wins. His voice is the one that lasts: “Don’t let it be forgot / that once there was a spot / for one brief shining moment that was known as Camelot.” Camelot is a happy story not because the hero triumphs, but because his story endures. It is a story about the power of the stories we tell ourselves over and over until they crystallize into legend.
To many of us, Camelot brings to mind not dragons but President John F. Kennedy, whose story was linked to that of the young king by his widow, Jacqueline, in the wake of his assassination—a link that extends down the generations. Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, the late wife of the late John F. Kennedy Jr., was a real person, but any truth about her was eclipsed by the mythmaking that continues to obscure the family into which she married.
