Malory and games of musical horses

So, it's Arthur's first big battle. On the home team, we have kings Arthur, Ban and Bors, and all their knights. On the away team, eleven kings (technically some of them are dukes, but who's counting), foremost among them Arthur's half-brothers-in-law Lot of Orkney, Nentres of Garlot and Uriens of Gore (married to Morgause, Elaine and Morgan respectively). And it is all very grand and heroic and written on a large scale - 60000 men fighting, 15000 left alive by the end of the day, according to Merlin (and he would know, for in addition to being factotum, military strategist, conduit for God's word and general ideas man, he is really good at counting things). In all this vast field of carnage, the knights seem primarily concerned with swapping their horses around, and the kings seem to prioritise personal combat with all the other kings and famous knights over, say, leading their own forces or seeing to the right flank. Really. The kings can all see each other all the time and reach each other's sides in short order, and we have two full pages of horse-swapping:

Whan sir Kay saw sir Gryfflet on foote, he rode unto kynge Nentres and smote hym downe, and ledde his horse unto sire Gryfflette and horsed hym agayne. Also sir Kay with the same spere smote downe kynge Lotte and hurte hym passyinge sore. That saw the Kynge with the Hondred Knyghtes and ran unto sir Kay and smote hym downe, and toke hys horse and gaff hym kynge Lotte, whereof he seyde gramercy. Whan sir Gryfflet saw sir Kay and sir Lucas de Butler on foote, he with a sherpe spere grete and square rode to Pynnel, a good man of armys, and smote horse and man downe, and than he toke hys horse and gaff hym unto sir Kay. Than kyng Lotte saw kynge Nentres on foote... (Malory[1], 19.1-11)

Is it just me, or have the real generals shooed all the big names with fancy outfits off into their very own exclusive field to engage in their all-important little games of chivalric exchange out of the way of the real business, where they won't accidentally get stuck on some unnamed soldier's pike or get any ideas about giving orders to the men who are actually fighting this war?

Well, but of course, this is a tournament-style battle, not intended for realism, but for entertainment. If tournaments were intended to mimic war in game, here we have a war mimicking a tournament, following the conventions of chivalric combat in the ring and in literature. And it also has layers of 'game' - certainly for the audience, for whom it is constructed, devised, laid out, as carefully as ever Theseus could arrange; maybe even for the participants as well, panoplied and tricked out, busy with the detailed rules of musical horses and intricate social obligation. Kings Ban and Bors come to join Arthur in his war ostensibly for political advantage, but also for their own glory, recalling the actions of young knights such as Piers Gaveston and his little gang when they abandoned Edward I's drawn-out, fruitless campaign in Scotland to skip across the channel to France and enter in a few more interesting tournaments over there.

So, since it is essential in any game to keep a proper score, without more ado, have the Musical Horses Scoretable!

Royal purple denotes those properly of the Pendragon party, while those treacherous, ungrateful, sinister ingrates are, naturally, in green.

Conquering hero	Suddenly horseless failure	Suddenly rehorsed knight
Sir Brastias	Duke Estance of Canbenet	Sir Ulphuns
Sir Kay	King Nentres	Sir Gryfflet
Sir Kay	King Lot	-
The King with the Hundred Knights	Sir Kay	King Lot
Sir Gryfflet	Sir Pinnel	Sir Kay
King Lot	Sir Meliot de la Roche	King Nentres
The King with the Hundred Knights	Sir Gwyniarte de Bloy	King Idres
King Lot	Sir Clarinaus de la Foreyste Saveage	Duke Estance of Canbenet
King Arthur	King Cradilment of North Wales	Sir Ulphuns
The King with the Hundred Knights	Sir Ector	King Cradilment
King Arthur	King Cradilment of North Wales	None, because Arthur killed the horse too, which probably didn’t please his foster-father overmuch, even if it was done with the best of intentions.
Sir Kay	King Morganor	Sir Ector
Sir Ector	Sir Lardance	Sir Brastias
Sir Gryfflet	Unnamed knight.	Sir Lucas
Sir Lucas	King Anguischance	-
Sir Lucas	Two unnamed squires.	Sir Bloyas de la Flaundres and Sir Gwynas

Interestingly, the three unnamed victims in this list are also the only three to explicitly be killed in the process. Clearly, they shouldn't have just rashly wandered into that special field with all the big guns.