King Pellinore /ˈpɛlɪnɔːr/ (alternatively Pel[l]inor, Pelinoir, Pelleore, Pollinor, and other variants) is a British king in the Arthurian legend. In the tradition from the Old French prose, he is an early ally of King Arthur, being associated with the Questing Beast and featuring as the slayer of King Lot, later killed in turn by Lot's sons. Depending on the version, his many children may include Aglovale, Lamorak, and Perceval and his sister, and he himself may be one of the Grail Kings.
As the king of Listenois, Wales (-de Gales/Galys), and/or "the Isles" (perhaps the medieval kingdom of the same name), Pellinore is an invention of the Vulgate Cycle's continuation of Merlin. He is a particularly major figure in the 13th-century Tristan and Post-Vulgate prose cycles and the sections of Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur based on them.
There, as son of King Pellehan, brother of King Pelles (the Fisher King) and King Alain, and father of Perceval, he is most famous for his endless hunt of the Questing Beast, which he is tracking when the young King Arthur first meets him. (Though Pellinore claims his bloodline is destined perpetually to chase this bizarre monster, it is Palamedes who takes up the quest and eventually slays the beast.) Upon their chance encounter, Pellinore defeats the incognito Arthur (seeking to avenge the defeat of Griflet) in a joust at a mountain and breaks the sword his had withdrawn from the stone (in Malory's version, this is Excalibur, though Arthur gets another sword of that name from the Lady of the Lake soon afterwards), at which moment Merlin casts a spell of sleep on Pellinore to save Arthur's life. Arthur praises Pellinore's skill, and they become friends, with Arthur inviting him to join the Round Table. In Malory, Merlin's prophecy also says Pellinore will marry Arthur's sister (possibly to be understood as his sister-in-law, that is a sister of Guinevere). Besides Perceval, his sons Tor (by rape in Malory), Aglovale, Lamorat (who is instead his brother in Palamedes, where their sister is the Lady of the Island of Fairies) and Dornar all eventually join the Round Table in the Post-Vulgate. Pellinore helps Arthur in his early wars against the rebel kings, but when he kills King Lot of Orkney at the battle of Dimilioc (Malory's Tarabel), he sparks a blood feud between his and Lot's family that results in his own death by Gawain and his brothers, as well as the deaths of many others.
Pellinore is usually said to have been of the royal line of Joseph of Arimathea, whose dynasty guards the Holy Grail. In the Vulgate Cycle, he is one (another is his brother Alain) of those called the "Maimed King" after being wounded by a holy spear, having doubted the powers of the Grail. Uniquely in the Livre d'Artus (MS 337) variant of the Vulgate Merlin Continuation, there are two cousins by the same name, both being the Maimed Kings destined to be healed by Galahad on the same day: one of Wales now living in the Castle of Marvels and the other of Listenois (Wasteland) and Corbenic. Malory removes Pellinore's association with the Grail Kings family entirely but in one instance confuses Pellinore with Pellam, Malory's Pelles (elsewhere, Malory also seems to confuse Pellinore with his son Percival). His namesake, Pélinor, appears in Perceforest.
Pellinore has many legitimate and illegitimate children (12 sons in the Vulgate Merlin, 12 and 17 sons of the two Pellinores in the Livre). It is his estranged son Perceval, who was one of the first Grail seekers, and his grand nephew, Galahad, who finally succeed in the Grail Quest. One of Pellinore's daughters in the prose cycles, the unnamed Perceval's sister, becomes a servant of the Grail and helps them achieve the mystical objective as the character known today as the "Grail heroine". In Malory's telling (based on an unnamed Post-Vulgate character in a similar story), another of his daughters, Alyne, dies early when he, not knowing it is her, ignores her pleas for help while hurrying to rescue Nimue from her abductor at the behest of Arthur.
It is likely that Pellinore, Pellehan and Pelles were originally the one and same character, and Eugène Vinaver propagated the theory of Pellinor's name being formed on the basis of that of Pelles. For Norris J. Lacy, such relation between their names and characters is especially plausible in the case of Pellehan and Pelles and perhaps also Pellinor. According to Roger Sherman Loomis, the romance character of Pellinore ultimately derives from the figure of Beli Mawr. Pellinore also shares a number of traits with Gahmuret, Perceval's father in Parzival.
