Morgan le Fay

Morgan le Fay is the great enchantress of the Arthurian legend, a figure who shifts across the centuries from benevolent healer to formidable adversary. In her earliest appearances she is an otherworldly woman of Avalon, chief of nine sisters skilled in healing and shape-changing, who receives the wounded Arthur after his last battle and tends him on the magical isle. In later medieval romance she hardens into Arthur's half-sister and rival, a sorceress who schemes against Camelot, steals the scabbard of Excalibur and tests the virtue of his knights.

Her very name links her to older Celtic goddesses and to the fairy Otherworld — 'le Fay' means 'the fairy' — and she keeps throughout an ambiguity that sets her apart from simple villainy. Whatever her mood, it is she who returns at the end to bear Arthur away across the water to Avalon, the healer once more. Geoffrey of Monmouth named her in his 'Life of Merlin' (c.1150) and Sir Thomas Malory gave her the darker cast best known today; through both she remains one of the most complex and enduring women of British legend.