Enemies and Legitimacy in "Gawain"

When the Green Knight first arrives at Arthur’s court, his challenge to the assembled knights seems a bit... well, insane. In fact, King Arthur’s response in Armitage’s translation includes this seeming accusation: “Your request… is quite insane,/ and folly finds the man who flirts with the fool” (ll. 323-324). Both the king and his court are somewhat confused by the stranger, but this seems to me mostly an effect of the Green Knight’s unusual appearance, not to mention the fact that he keeps talking after his head has been chopped off. The motive behind his journey appears actually quite rational – “because your acclaim is so loudly chorused… I’m intrigued, and attracted to your door at this time” (258, 264; see also 309-315) – and the mode of his challenge, though somewhat ostentatious, is immediately recognized as legitimate by Arthur and then Gawain, in that they quickly engage him on his own terms. All in all, the Green Knight communicates, despite his superficial otherness and unusual emerald accoutrements, entirely in the language and according to the expectations of a chivalric court.

That the Green Knight is not entirely “other” is further indicated by the information he reveals to Gawain after the latter has been the requirements of their mutually acknowledged “game.” It turns out that Morgan le Fay, “Arthur’s half sister”  (2464), was the driving force behind his own challenge: “She guided me in this guise to your great hall/ to put pride on trial, and to test with this trick/ what distinction and trust the Round Table deserves” (2456-2458). Inter-familial power politics have thus played an intimate role in what might have seemed, up to now, an arbitrary confrontation. Morgan le Fay’s primary objective, it seems, was to make “grieving Guinevere go to her grave” (2460), thereby splintering the royal family, decreasing Arthur’s own prestige, and perhaps even clearing the way for her own rise as the most powerful woman in court, though my inference of this final prospect remains speculative.

Gawain’s subsequent refusal to meet with Morgan, his own aunt (2471), is not, as I read it, an indication that either he or the author considers the motives behind both the sorceress and the Green Knight’s actions to be illegitimate or irrational. Rather, this refusal sheds light on a complex political situation, in which it would have been traitorous of Gawain to convene with an enemy of Arthur, despite – or perhaps even because of – the fact that Morgan is related to both the protagonist and his king. The overwhelming sense I get from Gawain and other members of the court is that their enemies are, though perhaps misguided in their expectations of the royal court, nevertheless acting appropriately – e.g. the establishment of a fair challenge “by right” (273-274) – on legitimate (or recognizable) concerns – e.g. that Arthur’s knights might not be as valiant as they have been supposed to be (258-264, 2458).

Do others agree or disagree with me on this characterization of the Green Knight  and Morgan? If so, are there ways in which this acknowledgement of a legitimate enemy with rational motives is different from the portrayal of enemy characters in other narratives we have read?