For today’s post, I will be taking a look at Morgan le Fay and how she can be connected to The Vampire Diaries. In particular, she is connected to the character of Katherine Pierce. This is something that may seem a bit tenuous until you dig a little deeper, or watch further on in the series.
Katherine Pierce is introduced as this manipulative and trickster figure that was always five steps ahead while she plotted to save herself by giving up others to be sacrificed. To me, this rings very similar to Morgana le Fay as she plotted to bring about the downfall of Camelot! Morgan and Katherine also famously have a male figure for whom they have huge antagonism. For Morgan it is Arthur due to her jealousy and anger over his rulership of Camelot, not to mention how she was treated by his father in many tellings. For Katherine, that figure is Klaus, whom she spent five centuries running from!
Now to deepen this somewhat tenuous connection is what happens during season five of The Vampire Diaries. Katherine was revealed to have been descended from a group of witches known as the Travelers. This means that she can use her magic to become a passenger within another person’s body, now that she is cured of being a vampire. In her case, she used this to take over Elena’s life. For Morgan, we can see that there are several tellings of the legends that she used similar to magic. She was able to transform Sir Bertilak into the Green Knight, she was able to transform herself into a crow, and she was able to create a magical cup that would spill if an unfaithful woman tried to drink from it! While she may not possess others’ bodies, Morgan le Fay certainly had a tremendous amount of shapeshifting ability that would allow her to impersonate whomever she liked. This fact brings up the final link I would like to cover.
Katherine routinely pretended to be Elena when it served her whims. Morgana likewise would use her Faery Glamour and transformational magicks to do the same thing! While Katherine and Elena as doppelgängers actually mirror the Vulgate Cycle Guinevere, who had an identical twin sister (called the dark Guinevere), the actions of Katherine as a magical baddie firmly root her in this Morgana connection. Both are a badass woman who was often vilified for wanting to save themselves or bring about changes that would make their own lives better. While Morgana gets her redemption arc by always being there to collect Arthur after Camlann to take him to Avalon, Katherine never gets her redemption, always being a villain. But I do not think Katherine would want it any other way to be honest!
I hope you have enjoyed my brief analysis. Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!
Further Reading/Watching
- Arthurian Romances by Chretien de Troyes
- Vulgate Cycle by Anonymous French writers
- Le Morte D’Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory
- The Vampire Diaries (2009)
White Rose of Avalon 