Why Arthurian Legend Sucks

So, yesterday, I picked up my old collection of tales about King Arthur. And I made a shocking discovery.

What might have been promising stories have been abused by shoddy storytelling like a redheaded stepchild. And not the massive Christian influence or the fact that the nights in question are more or less superheroes.

You expect that stuff when you open the book. Arthurian tales are basically Conan the Barbarian set in England, circa 1200, with editing provided by the Archbishop. No, I'm going to complain about the actual structure of the stories themselves.

Excalibur- the original lightsaber

In a nutshell, life is balls for a knight. They can't trust their own judgement. Often in these tales, someone gets wronged at court or what have you, and some knight rides out to avenge some wrong to someone else's (or his own) honor or something.

It seems like a lot of effort for an abstract feeling, but maybe I'm a robot and don't get that whole "lovey-dovey" emotion crap.

FUCK YOU CARE BEARS

However, at this point, all the knights should flip a coin, because half the time they shouldn't have done jack shit and were "carried away by evil passions". However, the other half of the time, the nights in question have done exactly the most badass thing ever.

Its like some arbitrary moral guardian decides if the knights are acting for good or ill. The actions themselves are never judged, and the reasons are usually the same anyway. Now if this was reality, this wouldn't matter.

Lawyers and psychics make a living on kicking people when they're down, after all. It's that if a knight makes a bad choice, he gets power-screwed. His whole life gets cursed, he ends up killing a close relation of sorts and in a misguided attempt at penance, he probably burns a town down. Generally, he gets slain in the end by a best friend or other close relation.

Its almost like someone is just rolling a dice and if they get a one, they just crackle evilly and proceed to drive a character through metaphysical hell an--

WAIT. Holy shit. Arthurian tales aren't stories! They're the first evidence we have of pen and paper gaming!

King Arthur. The original D&D