All through his life- even when he was a great man with the world at his feet- he was to feel this gap: something at the bottom of his heart of which he was aware, and ashamed, but which he did not understand…
He was the eldest son, so he was bound to be knighted, but he would not call himself Sir Lancelot. He would call himself the Chevalier Mal Fet- the Ill-Made Knight…
So far as he could see- and he felt that there must be some reason for it somewhere- the boy’s face was as ugly as a monster’s in the King’s menagerie. He looked like an African ape…
His Word was valuable to him not only because he was good but also because he was bad. It is the bad people who need to have principles to restrain them. For one thing, he liked to hurt people. It was for the strange reason that he was cruel, that the poor fellow never killed a man who asked for mercy, or committed a cruel action which he could have prevented.
-“The Ill-Made Knight” by T.H. White
IMK stands for The Ill-Made Knight, Lancelot’s self-appointed epithet and book three of “The Once and Future King“, T.H. White’s version of the Arthurian legend. For years, I’ve known I wanted to someday have a jewelry line and call it IMK.
He was the eldest son, so he was bound to be knighted, but he would not call himself Sir Lancelot. He would call himself the Chevalier Mal Fet- the Ill-Made Knight…