Arthur Pendragon

For Irvin's 25th birthday, the theme was royalty.  After much pondering, Irvin seized the chance to cosplay from one of his favorite TV shows: BBC's Merlin.  And for a royal birthday, King Arthur himself seemed the obvious choice.

The costume was deceptively difficult to put together if accuracy was desired.  The first dilemma was the crown: Arthur wears a thick golden crown topped with fleur-de-lis, and such crowns were not available to buy.  So Irvin tackled the problem with cardboard, gold paint, and a hot glue gun to bring the crown up to snuff.

A similar issue was had with the cape.  Specifically, it's fastened by a brown leather strap between two metallic circles.  Red drawstrings just would not do.  So Irvin had to craft that fastening, in addition to sewing a Pendragon crest from etsy onto the cape.

The chain mail in the costume ended up being real chain mail, courtesy of eBay - it was made of aluminum, and weighed a ton.  It even made it hard to breathe!  One can hardly imagine how medieval knights wore this all the time.

The final challenge was actually maneuvering the costume.  The party was at a small Polish restaurant, and between the crown, sword, and chain mail, all movement had to be done gingerly.  Eventually, Irvin got the hang of it.  At the party, there was a Guinevere to take romantic photos with, a Lady of the Lake to give Arthur his sword, and Queen Elizabeth II, the successor to Arthur's legacy whom Arthur crowned himself in a photo.  All pictures are here: https://goo.gl/photos/ZkGfsT1pbXVZbAfs6

The other patrons of the restaurant were utterly befuddled (to say nothing of the Brooklyn bus riders who looked at Irvin with unabashed shock and confusion).  One older couple asked if all the royal shenanigans were "a Polish thing."  Irvin assured them, "It's a Me thing."

When Irvin found out that his friend Jay (who cosplays Merlin) would be attending CONjuration 2017, he decided he had to bring Arthur and get some Merthur photos together.  This was easier said than done: he had to put seven pounds of chain mail into his luggage, and travel from NYC to Atlanta with the crowd on his head to keep the fleur-de-lis intact (and while New Yorkers don't bat an eye, the Georgians were all agog with curiosity about why someone was wearing a crown in their airport).

Irvin did manage to get some wonderful Arthur/Merlin photos, including the one seen below.  The sight of Arthur and Merlin standing next to each other filled the Merlin fans at the con with utter delight.  When Arthur wasn't being adorable with Merlin, he was dancing to wizard rock - and that presented several unique challenges in chain mail.  For starters, he kept clinking to the beat throughout the music.  But also, he danced so vigorously that the chain mail shed links - the Tonks & the Aurors set depleted almost an entire armpit of the chain mail.  Totally worth it, though.

Note: Not to be confused with King Arthur from Broadway's Spamalot!