Pendragon Showdown: Who Would've Won?

pendragon showdown: who would've won?

tl;dr:

real pendragon showdown result: love wins (very briefly)

hypothetical pendragon showdown result: eeeh. probably guinevere

so. my reasoning! here's things we know (/i remember) about every pendragon:

arthur

gun: one revolver. it's the x.caliber, but that alone probably doesn't have much over other guns. he takes it from nimue & later murders sheriff stone with it. i'm assuming taking camelot was the intended Special Purpose & the reason arthur is so attached to it. (he's "more gentle with [it] than he ever is with [lancelot]". i love that line. fucking comedian.) this is also implied by merlin in the stories, thank you merlin.

in short, let us assume the gun is not special in any mechanical way. the rest of what it does in the story is Not shoot guinevere or lancelot, and then presumably melt under The Concentrated Power Of The Sun. unless morderd put it in the capsule with arthur. in which case, it probably froze under The Concentrated Power Of The Vacuum Of Space.

speed: safely in the middle. he's the last one to shoot in the gunfight at the dolorous guard ("finally, there's arthur"), but we can probably assume it's because of song reasons, and maybe all the staring he and stone were doing at each other. it's given that he's slower than gwen, and it's also said he "could beat [lancelot] on speed", so. middle.

guinevere

gun: a very fast one, presumably. lol. probably also a revolver? (personal hc is she uses two revolvers, but that's beside the point.) so let's assume sixshooter! functionally her setup is the same as arthur's.

speed: basically her main character trait. she's faster than both arthur and lancelot.

lancelot

gun: he shoots rifled slugs, so safe to say he's using a rifle.

speed: reasonably the slowest shot re: the other two. depending on what kind of rifle he's using, he might need to reload, but since he lays out like 4 stones in a couple lines of the gunfight and doesn't get shot by the rest in the time it takes, i'm guessing he's got something that shoots multiple without reload.

to be entirely fair, it's possible - and probably more practical - that he has a sidepiece and that's what he's using when he's in close-range. this is also probably the only instance in which he'd pose any threat to guinevere & arthur. but since we only get mention of slugs and arthur draws faster than him in close-range too (re: above), let's just assume rifle, and he's mad fast with the aim or whatever.

hypotheticals!

almost immediately we can conclude that arthur is fucked, on account of guinevere is going to go for him first. shooting lancelot, who's slower, would not be a smart choice. that's really it. if she shot lancelot first, she'd just be making it easier on arthur on both the 'shooting her' and the 'any conflict he may have about killing his spouses' fronts.

if they all decide to draw simultaneously - which is what i'm presuming here, because which one of them might commit to killing the others first is a different question - then guinevere is inevitably starting the ordeal, and doubtless the survivor is going to have an easier justification of why he shot her. again, seems like shooting arthur is the better move here.

now the events past that mostly really depend on what you think, so i'm just putting forth my thoughts. we can ask here if gwen can shoot two people before lancelot shoots one. if we decide yes, then it's gwen's victory from the beginning and the squabble was a bit pointless. but there's something to be said for it in dolorous guard, where when she first draws, she kills two people in rapid succession ("guinevere draws quickest/her shots are clean and sure/and ezra and ezekiel lie bloodied on the floor") still, for the sake of going further, let's say she can only reliably shoot one.

by the time that's done, lancelot's probably over any inhibitions and is fixing to shoot gwen. this again depends on a couple of things - how quick we think he can be, where's he grabbing his gun from, what gun he's grabbing:

if this is a sidepiece - revolver or whatever - then, yeah, he can probably nail gwen while she's shooting arthur and win that way. lancelot's victory.

if this is a rifle, as we assumed before, i really don't think he'll get it up before gwen lays him out. i can't imagine his accuracy would do him much good in this one - sure, a slug will be nasty close-range and they'd have to close someone's casket, but it won't help speed. lancelot is the slowest out the three of them, and judging by his gun (and the sharpest aim, to a point), he's a marksman. he brought a rifle to a cowboy standoff in dolorous guard. gwen can probably kill him before he can be a threat.

that being said, it's really hard to be definitive. they're all playing mind games with each other, and they know each other way too well to surprise anyone, and that could lead to surprises on its own.

i'd give victory to gwen simply because of how much her speed and ferociousness is stressed in the album - she's the one urging them on, plowing ahead, always first, never hesitating. she shoots a woman in the head four times presumably as an example. when arthur reminisces about his dreams of a better world she literally tells him to stop whining. which is incredibly funny, but it's also very vivid. she does what she has to do, and sometimes she does more, because her hand is fate, her word is law, and you will fear her. if she didn't love as passionately as she fought, i think she might've ended up the captain. a very lonely captain, but you know.

anyway, those are my thoughts. share yours! i'm sure there are different solid interpretations :'>