The Wicked Day Literary Elements

Fantasy Fiction / Historical Fiction

Set in medieval times during the reign of King Arthur

The novel is told in first-person from the perspective of Mordred.

The tone and mood are neutral.

The protagonists are Mordred and King Arthur and the antagonist is their destined fate.

Mordred has been raised in secrecy with the truth about his parentage kept from him until his adulthood. Now in adulthood, he has to contend with the newfound truth and Merlin’s prophesy regarding his father’s fate.

The climax happens when Mordred discovers that he is the child of Arthur and Morgause and that he will be the reason for the king’s downfall.

Mordred's destiny and Merlin’s influence in his life is foreshadowed in his childhood while living a life of poverty

N/A

The installment alludes to the Arthurian legend specifically the passing of Merlin’s prophecy that King Arthur will die by Mordred's hand.

“The cottage walls were built of stones gathered from the storm beach. These were flat slabs of sandstone, broken from the cliffs by wind and sea, and weathered naturally, making a simple kind of dry-stone walling, easy to do, and reasonably close against the weather. No mortar was used, but the cracks were caulked with mud. Each storm that came washed some of the mud away, and then more had to be added, so that from a distance the cottage looked like nothing more than a crude box of smoothed mud, with a thatch of rough heather-stems capping it. The thatch was held down by old, patched fishing nets, the ends of which were weighted with stones.”

The paradox is in Merlin’s prophecy where their fate will come to pass whether King Arthur and Mordred act to avert it or not.

The narrative parallels King Arthur and his illegitimate son Mordred as the prophecy entails both of them as well as the fate of the throne.

N/A

“The place seemed to edge back, quivering, towards a kind of peace.”