The first Grail hero failed because he was too polite to ask a question
Long before Galahad claimed it, the Grail quest belonged to Perceval, a boy raised in a forest who knew nothing of knighthood. At the castle of a wounded Fisher King he watched a mysterious procession and stayed silent. One question would have healed the king; his failure to ask it launched centuries of storytelling.
Chrétien de Troyes introduced him in the late 12th century, first as a name in a list of Arthur's men, Percevaus the Welshman, then as a vassal beaten in a tournament in Cligés, and finally as the star of his last romance, Perceval, the Story of the Grail. Chrétien never finished it. Various authors wrote their own endings, and by the early 13th century a new knight, Galahad, had taken over as the true Grail winner. Perceval did not vanish: in later prose cycles and Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur he is one of just two knights, with Bors, who reach the Grail castle alongside Galahad.
In most tellings his widowed mother hides him in the woods, ignorant of the ways of men, until at around fifteen he glimpses passing knights and resolves to join Arthur's court. Early versions give him a sweetheart, Blanchefleur, and make him king of Carbonek after he heals the Fisher King; later ones make him a virgin who dies once the quest is done. Wolfram von Eschenbach's German Parzival gives him a son, Lohengrin, the Knight of the Swan.
Wales has its own version, Peredur son of Efrawg, which swaps the grail for a salver bearing a severed head and adds a unicorn hunt and witches, elements scholars read as Celtic. Whether Peredur came first is disputed. Arthur Groos and Norris Lacy think the Welsh writer adapted Chrétien's name, while Rachel Bromwich saw Perceval as a loose French rendering of Peredur, a name that may mean hard spear.
Even the name has attracted inventive glosses: pierce the valley, one who lost the vales, right through the middle. Richard Wagner chose Parsifal for his 1882 opera by following Joseph Görres's since-discredited claim that it came from Arabic for pure fool. Modern Percevals range from Boorman's Excalibur to the lovable dimwit of the French comedy Kaamelott.
Source: Perceval
