Modern Versions
T. H. White re-envisions the Questing Beast's role in his novel The Once and Future King. As King Pellinore describes it, the hunt of the beast has always been the burden of the Pellinores, and all Pellinores are in fact trained for the hunt from birth (a training which does not seem to extend much beyond finding the beast's fewmets; Pellinore, as described by White, is more of a comic character than a great hunter or knight). Having searched fruitlessly all his life for the beast, Pellinore is convinced by his friend Sir Grummore Grummursum to drop his quest. However, when it turns out later that the beast had been pining away for lack of attention, King Pellinore nurses it back to health and resumes his Sisyphean hunt. Later, it falls in love with Sir Palomides, who has disguised himself and Grummore as a beast in order to raise Pellinore's spirits when he is pining for "Piggy", a girl whom he left behind when he, Palomides, and Grummore stepped into a magic barge which bore them to the Orkney Islands. White explains that this is why it is Palomides who is seen pursuing the beast later in Malory's work.
The Questing Beast appears in "Le Morte d'Arthur", the season finale of Season 1 of the BBC's series Merlin. Its appearance in the series adheres to the "consensus" surrounding its appearance.
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