The Prince Valiant saga continues in Volume 26, covering the years 1987 and 1988 of the strip. The story picks up with wedding preparations. Valiant and Aleta’s son Arn is going to marry Maeve, the daughter of Mordred. The wedding takes place on the fiftieth anniversary of the script. Then Arn and Maeve leave on their honeymoon and leave the strip for about a year.
Meanwhile, Yuan Chen (tutor to Valiant’s son Galan and first introduced in Volume 23) arrives in Camelot to discuss China’s trade with the west. Yuan Chen describes how the Great Wall of China was built to keep the Huns out of China, so the Huns went west into Europe, and now they are hindering the silk and spice routes for Europe. The Chinese merchants want the Knights of the Round Table to help them protect the route and then Camelot will get part of the profits. King Arthur is happy to agree to this because he has to pay for all the destruction Mordred’s recent rebellion caused. Consequently, the strip divides into two stories—Valiant goes off to find a land route to China along with Galan, Gawain, and others, while Aleta returns to the Misty Isles with her twin daughters to catch up on her governing duties there.
Aleta’s adventures concern her trying to restore the lands of two young men whose uncle has stolen them. It turns out the villain is Mephisto who was once interested in Aleta. He is also a spy for the Emperor Justinian. She manages to trick him and trick the emperor in the process.
As for Valiant, his adventures are more of the action kind. Surprisingly, Gawain barely figures in the adventures, but Galan plays a key role. They fight off wolves. Then they are held hostage and forced to build longships by villains who want longships like what Valiant has. Valiant has no choice but to build the longship to get his freedom, but he gets the upper hand in the end. There’s also an adventure where they are told they cannot leave a city they have come to. Valiant gets them out of that mess by creating a reverse Trojan Horse situation where he and his friends sneak inside the horse. Then the townspeople cast it out of the city wall when they begin to think it is causing them bad luck. Perhaps Valiant’s most fascinating adventure, however, is when he discovers a forgotten people who have been hiding in a cave since the time of Noah’s flood. They took refuge there and sealed themselves inside along with several animals that did not manage to make it to the ark, including fleeches (a type of winged monkey) and Yetis. Valiant is told he can’t leave their either, but he manages to escape and Galan takes the fleeches with him, while the Yetis escape and will apparently go live in the Himalayas.
Of greatest interest to me was that Valiant not only hears the tale of Prester John, but is mistaken for him by the Chinese Emperor, Wu Ti, when he arrives in China. (My novel Ogier’s Prayer: The Children of Arthur, Book Three also features Prester John. Consequently, I was fascinated to learn the legendary Christian King had already made his way into Arthurian legend before my own book. Also interesting is that there is a historical Chinese Emperor named Wu Ti or Wudi, but he lived a century before Christ, so he’s about 600 years out of his time here.) In the Prince Valiant strip’s version of Prester John’s story, the famous figure befriended a Chinese warrior noble and eventually inherited his land, then declared himself a king. The emperor claims Prester John stole land from him. Prester John has since disappeared. Eventually, Valiant and Yuan Chen manage to convince the emperor that Valiant is not Prester John. However, the emperor, believing Valiant is wise, decides he is the one to find Prester John and decides to hold Galan hostage while he goes on the quest. We are told that Valiant encountered a dragon at the beginning of the quest, but then the narrator tells us the chronicle goes silent because it took so long for news to get back to Camelot. I imagine the rest of the adventure will be told in a future volume.
Meanwhile, the story returns to Arn and Maeve, now back from their honeymoon. Arn has been made Parker of the lands of Orr in King Arthur’s domains. Meanwhile, Maeve is having difficulty fitting in with the other ladies in the area. When Arn declares a tournament will be held, Maeve enters it to the chagrin of Sir Guy, the local sheriff. Worse, Guy’s wife Mathilde also enters it and beats him in a race. Guy has been so intent preparing for the tournament with the intent to beat Maeve that he has neglected the guarding of the land, resulting in bandits attacking the area during the tournament. Of course, Arn and his men defeat the bandits. Rather than punish Sir Guy, it is decided he will teach both boys and girls horsemanship and self-defense going forward—a very women’s equality decision for the time.
Then Arn receives a letter from Aleta begging for his help since Valiant cannot be reached. Karen, one of the twins, has apparently run away from home. The story shifts to Karen, who stowed away on a ship and has arrived in Venice. There she is befriended by a young man named Giovanni. Giovanni is on a quest to find his father, who went on a trip to make his fortune and never returned. Volume 26 ends here.
In addition, the volume opens with an essay by Peter Menningen who wrote a series of Prince Valiant books in Germany as tie-ins for the Prince Valiant television series when it ran on TV there. Images of a large number of book covers and pages from the German strips he wrote are included, which highlight his fabulous artwork, less cartoonish than the Prince Valiant strip itself, and a bit more modernized. In Germany, Prince Valiant is known as Prince Eisenherz, which translates as Prince Ironheart.
Volume 27 will be released in December 2023. The preview for it tells us that among other highlights, Mordred will return to make more trouble. I look forward to it.
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Tyler Tichelaar, PhD, is the author of The Children of Arthur series, which includes the novels Arthur’s Legacy, Melusine’s Gift, Ogier’s Prayer, Lilith’s Love, and Arthur’s Bosom. He has also written the nonfiction scholarly works King Arthur’s Children: A Study in Fiction and Tradition, plus works on Gothic literature and historical fiction, history, and biography. You can learn more about Tyler at www.ChildrenofArthur.com, www.GothicWanderer.com, and www.MarquetteFiction.com.
CHILDREN OF ARTHUR 