This study concludes by considering the end of the Pendragon dynasty. Given the public failure of Arthur and Guenevere's marriage – that is, their inability to produce an heir and to ensure orderly succession – we might consider this simple question: why does Mordred have to usurp the throne; why can't he simply inherit it? The answer involves unmentionable private relations: not only was Mordred born out of wedlock, he was incestuously conceived. These matters, however obvious, deserve attention, for Malory has carefully woven into the opening of his text Mordred's birth and into its conclusion Mordred's looming threat to an already tenuous dynastic order. In earlier chapters I have discussed marriage not only as a private affective relationship but as the nexus of the gentry's concerns about wealth and status and the noble family's political expectations. I have argued that proper marriage in the “Tale of Sir Gareth” results from a respectful joining of good blood; that the Round Table is both dowry and offspring of the infertile queen whose adultery ultimately undoes that noble order; that the pain of marriageable daughters indirectly results from adultery at court and affects the larger society. In the previous chapter, I pursued a myth of benevolent paternity in the relations of fathers and sons, both legitimate and bastard. Our attention now shifts to the cyclic nature of sexual transgression in Malory's infamous father and son pairs: Uther and Arthur, and Arthur and Mordred.