What is crucial to remember, however, is that the destruction of Camelot and the rebirth of Force Majeure comes about as a direct result of Arthur's, Guenever's, and Lancelot's own actions. "Sin coming home to roost" is a phrase repeated throughout the volumes of The Once and Future King, and the fact that Arthur's own son destroys him symbolically suggests the capacity for self-destruction that lies within each of us — even the most noble and forthright humanitarians are cursed with the free will that can engender their own destruction. In his tent, Arthur thinks that perhaps Mordred and he are "nothing but figureheads to complex forces which seem to be under a kind of impulse." This impulse is the human movement toward civilization — but as Arthur notes in The Ill-Made Knight, "I suppose that all endeavors which are directed toward a purely worldly end, as my famous civilization was, contain within themselves the germs of their own corruption." Man contains within him the capacity for unparalleled goodness (witness the Quest for the Holy Grail) but an equal capacity for evil (as seen in Mordred's attempt to willingly commit the same acts as that of the mythical Oedipus).
And so Camelot, and Arthur's entire way of thinking, is likened by White to a candle in the wind, literally extinguished by the mechanized terrors of the very modern Mordred. However, Arthur's meeting with Tom Malory, who will eventually compose Le Morte D'Arthur, ensures that the candle will be relit and will burn, as an example for future knights who struggle for right in the face of blind force. One of Arthur's final ruminations concerns a day "where he would come back to Gramarye with a new Round Table." The history of the world has shown the rebirth of the Round Table several times (the Allied Forces in World War II being just one example) and proven that, while Arthur's flesh may have been taken to Avalon, his ideas have not. The series ends with the statement
EXPLICIT LIBER REGIS QUONDAM REGISQUE FUTURI
THE BEGINNING
to suggest that the death of Arthur may be the end of a book, but the beginning of a force of good in the world still at work today. Mordreds may come, but young Tom Malory's reporting of the Round Table will continue to inspire present-day knights to fight the Thrashers in whatever form they may arrive. Thus Arthur is both the "once" and "future" King.
