The Mysterious Bisclavret and His King
Prologue
There once was a beautiful man who lived a happy life. None know his name, so we shall call him Bisclavret, the French name for “werewolf.” He was a knight and lord, well loved by the kingdom and his wife. This kingdom had problems, like most kingdoms, but one such problem was werewolves – garwolves, as they’re called in some parts. They were vile, viscous beasts that ate the hearts of men, women, and children alike. The people feared them, wishing for their king to hunt all werewolves and keep the people safe. Surely this was possible with strong knights such as Bisclavret around.
One night, however, Bisclavret went missing. Had he deserted his kingdom on a whim? Was he eaten by the beastly werewolves? Distraught, his wife sent out a search for him, but none could find him. Everyone’s lives went on. His wife found a new lover, the people worked, and the king went about his business being kingly and hunting in the woods. It was on such a normal day, years later, that something intriguing happened…
[cuts to comic pages]
1st page (present day):
- Bischlarvet meets the king
- The king sees him/ falls in love
- 1st panel – wide view of king and his entourage
- 2nd panel – long thing panel of eyes in the bush
- 3rd – Action lines surrounding the king, who looks surprised
- 4th – arrows getting ready
2nd page:
- 1st panel – wolf eyes looking right
- 2nd panel – kings eyes looking left
- “I know these eyes”
- 3rd panel – King yells “halt”
- 4th panel – Lowering of arrows
- 5th panel – “Can’t you see he’s harmless?” as Bisclavret tentatively licks his boot, wide shot on the last panel of this
3rd page:
- King stares lovingly at Bisclavret from his horse (1st panel)
- Looks at his entourage and says he’s taking the werewolf back to the castle (2nd panel)
- Bischlarvet looking hopeful and pleased (3rd panel)
4th page:
- Montage of happy life sequence: (each 1 panel/ part of page)
- Bischlarvet eating with the king
- Bisclavret pleasing people
- Bisclavret getting a wash
Old page ideas (from when I was going to make this shorter):
??? page:
- Old lover shows up with her husband
- 4 long panels “We shall have a ball”
- Old wife shows up with knight
- Bischlarvet sees them
- Remembers how terrible she was
??? page:
- Rips off her nose and people restrain him
- King starts confrontation
- “Bischlarvet would never attack someone” who are you
?? page:
- Old wife confesses
- Brings clothes to the king, gets banished
??page:
- Tries to present clothes
- Doesn’t transform and person whispers to him
?? page:
- King sees him after he turns back into human
I swear I have a reason for this:
I’ve always been a firm believer that seeing stories in a different medium can make it easier for people to understand them. I also believe it can tell us more about the story itself. Perhaps some people have trouble visualizing what the author wanted the characters to look like or what the author “truly” meant. I don’t know what the author truly meant or what vibe, exactly, that they were trying to achieve. I do know that some people will read the stories differently than others, focus on different parts, and what have you. I focused heavily on the gay lover aspect of the story while somewhat overlooking the casual cruelty mentioned briefly. (I’m referring to page 71 when it’s casually stated that the king torture’s Bisclavret’s old wife.) This story heavily reminded me about a lot of “boy love” manga that I’ve read before, and I wanted to experiment to see what this story would look like in this format. Originally I was going to draw a 6-page story in a manga-eque format, but realized that would take too much time. I opted to storyboard several pages and make a few character designs instead. I come across this problem frequently where I say “I’ve done similar things before, so I could do this easily,” and then proceed to realize I’ve bitten off more than I can chew. It makes me wonder how long this poem took Marie de France to write. Was it something she wrote on a self-indulgent whim or did it have a purpose? What took the forefront in that? I don’t know – and probably never will, but I do know that I did this on a whim with purpose in the background. I realize there is importance to this piece and how I’ve portrayed it, but I honestly just wanted to start drawing a gay werewolf love story. Similarly, Marie de France probably just wanted a werewolf love story with *~passion~* or as much as she was allowed in the time period she was alive.
About the character designs:
Note: You’ll notice I have 2 Bisclavret drawings. My sister saw them and asked if she could fix the proportions and such on it, so I inked those sketches and colored them as well.
Bisclavret isn’t described much in the poem or story version of the book. The most we get is on page 68 where it reads “In Brittany there lived a baron whom I have heard greatly praised. He was a good and handsome knight who conducted himself nobly. He was one of his lord’s closest advisers and was well loved by all his neighbours” (Marie et al). I have no reason for him to be darker skinned but I also have no reason for him to be lighter skinned. I purposely made his eyes dark and “pretty” looking because the king mentions he knows his eyes. I basically tried to give Bisclavret a “pretty boy” look that we see time and time again in gay love manga. For his clothing, I based it off what someone might have worn to bed. Usually people were naked when they slept, but they did sometimes wear clothes. Worldhistory.com says that they wear what they would have worn as under clothes, which they described as linen. I figure since he is a knight and a baron, he would have underclothes that he might go to sleep in. I realized now that he might have worn drawers to bed instead of stockings, but we’re going to ignore that. Typically these were long, skin tight around the sleeves tunics of varying colors. Many people wore tights or long socks held up by garters (for men this was typically attached to their briefs). Over this for daily wear they would wear a longer tunic (similar to what I have the king in) and potentially a cloak of sorts. Color wasn’t the indicator of status necessarily, as many people wore the same colors, but the type of fabric and the amount of ornaments, embroidery, or other embellishments did. For his outer tunic I imagine Bisclavret would have had some kind of embroidery or embellishment to signify he was a knight. For his werewolf form, I drew him a bit more “chibi-like” than I would have preferred, but basically he would be a slightly docile looking werewolf the same color as his hair and almost human-ish looking eyes. I wasn’t sure if he would wear anything in this form but I figure when he’s in the king’s court he might wear some kind of jewelry (perhaps a gold bracelet?) and potentially some kind of briefs or towel like thing to cover his private parts. He is a werewolf but he still seems cordial and as though he can be embarrassed over being naked.
As for the king, I took a similar approach with the outer clothing. The biggest difference is that I put gold embroidery on the bottom of the tunic and sleeves. His cloak is held together by some kind of gold embellishments and I made his tights a white color to make them pop more than Bisclavret since he is a king. I didn’t find much on crowns but since this potentially takes place in France, as indicated by Marie de France using the French version of werewolf in her story, I based it loosely off a French Coronation crown I found on Wikipedia. It has a gold color rather than blue/ steel/ glass, however it has a similar shape. I made sure both Bisclavret and the King’s sleeves were tight at the end because I found one source that went into detail about French garments in that time period and it mentioned that tighter sleeves were in fashion at that time. It also mentioned the use of buttons to get tighter sleeves, so I added those as well. I tried to base the king’s hair off King Arthur (loosely) and other portraits of English and French kings I saw. I made his hair a bit more “whimsical” looking and vaguely reminiscent of Howl from Howl’s Moving Castle (a studio Ghibli film). I did this because I wanted him to look endearing and likeable but still potentially older. I know he looks young in my drawing but I pictured him to be 10, maybe even 15 years older than Bisclavret, so much so that he has some crows feet and other “tired” lines on his face.
About the layouts/ storyline adjustments:
As you may notice in the pages I have storyboarded, I added some scenes. If this was being adapted into a manga, there would be additions to their lives to get the audience more attached to the characters. Marie de France’s story is very short, so it can be hard to achieve this. She mentions that they are happy together and that everyone at the court loves him in werewolf form as seen on page 70 of the penguin classics version “It was loved by everyone and so noble and gentle a beast was it that it never attempted to cause any harm” (Marie et al).
I wanted to go deeper into that and figured I could have a montage of different scenes with them being happy. Most of the time manga has comedy, hence why I changed the scene where the king says he’s taking Bisclavret home. I wanted the horse to turn it’s head to the king, somewhat worried that he wants to bring home a werewolf. It adds to the vague absurdity that the story has, but makes a joke about it that could attract the reader and make them want to keep reading. I would also like to point out that on page 1 & 2 I have arrows instead of dogs. I changed it to arrows because it’s easier to portray and there won’t be any confusion between Bisclavret and a normal dog in the story this way. If I was going to keep adapting with this story, I would probably draw out the King’s and Bisclavret’s life together, even if it’s only a few pages. I would potentially add some more comedic scenes about Bisclavret needing to be washed (he’s been living in the wild for years) and how clothing would potentially work. It would basically be going deeper into the love of it so it seems less abrupt than the original story. I would potentially make the story around 20ish pages. I imagine it would feel more like a doujinshi (short comic, mostly fan comics) rather than a full blown manga.
Citations and References:
Cartwright, Mark. “Clothes in Medieval England.” World History Encyclopedia, World History
Encyclopedia, 2 Oct. 2021,
https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1248/clothes-in-medieval-england/.
Marie, et al. “Bisclavret.” The Lais of Marie De France, Penguin Books Ltd, London, 1999, pp.
68–72.
“Medieval 1100-1450.” History of Costume, 7 Jan. 2012,
https://historyofeuropeanfashion.wordpress.com/category/medieval-1100-1450/.
Sprockets and Springes 