Igraine, Priestess From Beyond The Seas

In 'Last Night The Snow Fell', I believed Igraine would always be a priestess at her very being.

As Igraine lay on her deathbed in the convent at Tintagel, she refused to see the priests. Her pious Christian manner was a sham to keep the peace in her household because her beloved Uther believed. Her heart still longed for Avalon but she could not return there after Uther's death, remembering that it was her sister, the Lady of the Lake, who had sent her to the edge of world at Tintagel to be married to Gorlois, a man more than twice her tender age. So she spent remaining years in view of Tintagel Castle, which was to her a prison during the long, lonely years of her first marriage.

Why did she torture herself so? Arthur gifted Tintagel to her so it was the only place that was rightfully hers, to do as she pleased. I would hope I would be strong enough to choose Avalon instead however I have known my own Tintagel, and I have always been weak.

But Igraine knew, that no-matter how cruelly her daughter Morgaine was used in the name of Avalon, she would have fared worse as a Christian, where being a woman was regarded as evil in itself. And so Igraine, drowning in her own grief at losing Uther, could not raise herself up to help her daughter, even though she could sense Morgaine was in great distress at Arthur's wedding and now she blames this on why Morgaine, who would know Igraine was dying, had not come to her.

But no-one has seen or heard from Morgaine for years . . .