While Arthur's growth in the novel is exemplary, however, he is still not free from other forms of malice. Although he has revolutionized warfare, refuted the accepted wisdom that "Might is Right," and conceived of the Knights of the Round Table, he is still a man and therefore still prey to human weaknesses. As soon as his guard is relaxed and he sits in his Great Hall, contemplating the peace he is sure will come to England, he is seduced by Queen Morgause, the novel's title character. Their unholy union will engender Mordred, who, in turn, will topple Camelot from all its glory and reinstitute the "Might is Right" way of thinking. So as the epigraph concerns the sins of the fathers, White tells the reader (in the novel's last paragraph) that Mordred's birth is what makes the Arthur legend a tragedy of "sin coming home to roost." Although dubbed "The War To End All Wars," World War I was followed by an even more bloody and terrible conflict twenty-one years later; similarly, after creating a "new kind of warfare" to prevent future conflict, Arthur still brings about his own, inevitable destruction. As White concludes, "He did not know he was doing so, and perhaps it may have been due to her, but it seems, in tragedy, that innocence is not enough." The novel is therefore named after Queen Morgause because it is she who, in her own secret way, eventually plants the seeds that will destroy Arthur's reign, just as World War I, in its own way, paved the way for an even more horrifying sequel.
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