The Story of Morgana Le Fay (The Most Powerful Witch) - Harry Potter Explained

Hey everyone,

Welcome to another installment of Harry Potter Theory. In this video, we’re going to be discussing one of the most powerful if not the MOST powerful witch in history. It’s not one of the Hogwarts founders, it’s not McGonagall, and it’s not Bellatrix - it’s none other than Morgana Le Fay.

Just recently, I made a video on Merlin - the most powerful wizard in history, so it felt wrong not to make one on the most powerful witch. Morgana, like Merlin, is a pseudo-historical figure, and in many of the different versions of folklore that she exists in, she is actually Merlin’s nemesis. And once again, like Merlin, Morgana existed in both Harry Potter folklore and our own folklore, which makes her a really interesting character to research. I love deep diving in to these unknown, albeit powerful figures that exist in folklore. There is so much mystique surrounding them, and it’s really fun for me to peel them back layer by layer.

I’m going to start by taking a look at the Morgana from our own folklore. First of all, Morgana isn’t just known as Morgana, in fact, she is known under many many alias’s, most of which are close variations of the name ‘Morgana’. However, the alias that most of us are probably most accustomed to is ‘Morgana Le Fay’ which means ‘Morgana the Fairy’.

She was a talented enchantress, and like Merlin, was prevalent in both Arthurian legend and Welsh poetry. The concept of ‘Morgana’ that we’re most familiar with first appears in writer Geoffrey of Monmouth’s work entitled ‘Vita Merlini’ or ‘The Life of Merlin’ which was written in 1150. Vita Merlini was a Latin poem written in 1,529 hexameter lines, and it tells the story of ‘Merlin’s madness, his life as a wild man of the woods, and his prophecies and conversations with his sister’. Though popular, Vita Merlini never matched the popularity of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae, published in 1136, which was a pseudo-historical account of British history that portrayed Merlin in a bit of a different light.

And while Morgana is first introduced in Vita Merlini, the story that I know her character best from once again circles back to the story of King Arthur, Merlin, and the nights of the round table. The story, which has been subject to copious adaptations over the years, tells the tale of King Arthur, his court, his kingdom, and his most trustworthy men. The Knights of the Round Table were a sub-order of the Knights of Camelot created by Arthur Pendragon, and they helped him fight dragons, evil-doers, and all sorts of other enemies.

In some adaptations of the story, Merlin and the Knights of Camelot even help Arthur to combat his own sister, Morgana Pendragon. In the works of Robert de Boron- Morgana is established as the youngest daughter of Arthur’s mother, Igraine, and her first husband, Gorlois. Arthur, who is the son of Igraine and Uther, is therefore Morgan’s half-brother.

And just like that- her character had been completely reintroduced. Where she was previously painted as a morally righteous healer with connections to the sea, and no familial relation to Arthur, Morgana suddenly became the ‘evil’ sister of Arthur intent on conquering camelot. This version of Morgana, who came to prominence through the works of Thomas Malory, was Arthur’s greatest enemy- constantly plotting to usurp his throne.

This version of Morgana is not just evil- but PURE evil, as her reasons for hating Arthur and his kingdom are never fully explained. She just seems to possess an extreme antipathy towards the perfect goodness which he symbolises. So, this evil antagonist, MORGANA - how powerful is she? How much of a threat did she pose? Well, given the fact that this representation of Morgana is said to rival MERLIN, the most powerful wizard of all time, I think that it’s a safe bet to say that Morgana was the most powerful WITCH of all time.


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