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Finally, there is the theme of war.
White, a pacifist, fills his hero, Arthur, with a
war-weariness and a determination to do what is right:
"Might for Right." From the very beginning, Arthur has to
fight to keep what he has earned. He fends off challenges
from Lot and from outsiders; he tries to keep his Round
Table intact in the face of a serious challenge from Mordred
and the sons of Orkney; he tries to keep his kingdom intact
by fighting for his very life against Mordred and his
growing number of allies. He fights, fights, fights. His
tone at the end of the fourth book, in the chat with young
Tom, is one of acceptance of his fate. However, even weighed
down by the knowledge of certain death, he finds the
strength to encourage young Tom to survive the battle and
tell the story.
Now, since The Once and Future
King ends on the eve of the Battle of Camlann, the book
has no mention of what eventually happened to Arthur. T.H.
White wrote The Book of Merlyn to tell that story.
Left out of the set by the publishers, this book was
published in its own right several years later. In it,
Merlyn returns to Arthur and returns Arthur to happier days,
when he visited the ants and geese and came face to face
with the war-crazed ants and the happy-go-lucky geese.
Buoyed by this return to the innocence of his youth, Arthur
intends to ask Mordred for a truce. But fate intervenes:
Echoing Malory, White has a snake cause the fateful, final
battle. We see the end of Arthur and of Lancelot and
Guinevere. We see the end of an era. But we see the future,
too, and it is filled with hope.
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