King Arthur: Of Lancelot & Guinevere

The main problem I faced in Embittered, which actually started in Enchanted, was figuring out how to introduce Lancelot to Britt and my readers. Lancelot has appeared in every book—he’s the knight Britt runs into in Enthroned when she first retrieves the sword and is running back to the tournament (You can go back and read it and see that he is dressed in his colors and his dapple grey horse is with him.) and he and his cousins are the knights Britt encounters in the woods in Enchanted when she is on her way to visit the Lady of the Lake. However, officially introducing him with his name was tricky.

There is very little information in the early Arthur stories about Lancelot’s arrival at court. Usually it’s never mentioned when he arrives, although his name pops up typically whenever Guinevere makes her entrance. In fact, in many stories Lancelot arrives with Guinevere. His name is first revealed as one of the knights sent to fetch Guinevere when she is brought to Camelot to marry Arthur. This gave me a free rein for my creativity in bringing Lancelot into Britt’s life, but the timing had to be right.

On the other hand, there is far more information on Guinevere’s arrival at Camelot. In some of the stories she first meets Arthur when he’s on his way to fight the Sable Knight, aka King Pellinore, so I tucked that story in Enchanted. However, in most legends the audience doesn’t get to see Arthur meet Guinevere. Instead Arthur is pressed to find a wife and he talks about how he admires Guinevere and would like to marry her.

Before he marries her, Arthur always saves her father, King Leodegrance, from various enemies, usually King Ryence. I decided to use Maleagent in order to introduce him to the readers, because in future books he will be returning.

The Story of King Arthur and His Knights by Howard Pyle is one of the few “modern” (I use that term loosely as the book was written a century ago) books that expands on the enemies Arthur saves King Leodegrance from.

The one thing that almost all the stories agree on is that King Leodegrance owned the Round Table, and he gave it to Arthur as a marriage gift, because then he didn’t have to send a dowry with Guinevere. (Usually her dowry is lands, but sometimes its money.) I was shocked when I read of King Leodegrance’s greed in multiple stories. The sad thing is that no one else seems to see how horrible that is. Some stories even say Leodegrance was thrilled to marry Guinevere off to Arthur because he didn’t have to lose money over the marriage, not because Arthur was a great King and a good man.

When I discovered that it made me rethink my planned character for Guinevere, and it gave emotional tension to Embittered. Britt needed to learn that everyone, her allies included, isn’t as honorable as her court and her friends.

I’m happy with the way Embittered played out. It allowed readers to see why Guinevere is the way she is, and it added realism to a type of story where usually everyone is either excessively good or vile and evil.

But what about Lancelot’s character? Why do I make him publically act like a handsome dandy, and then in the last scene reveal that he’s actually quite cunning?

I pondered Lancelot’s character for a long time. All stories agree that he is Arthur’s best knight, and most stories paint him as Arthur’s best friend. Typically he’s more on the chattery/poetic side, so I wanted to include that in my story. But by looking objectively at his role in Arthurian lore I had to face the facts. It takes a certain kind of ruthlessness to sleep with your best friend’s wife. To be able to do that and still face Arthur and act like his best friend means Lancelot had to be capable of being incredibly cruel. Guinevere never hides her admiration for Lancelot, but Lancelot is acknowledged as being a ladies man and a flirt. He covered his romantic attachment to Guinevere, pulling off the worst backstab in the history of fiction.

Make no mistake, Lancelot might pretend to be dashing and gallant, but he is not an idiot. He’s even more calculating than Merlin, and twice as willing to hurt people to get what he wants.

King Arthur: The Creation of Queen Morgause

Enchanted was inspired by a paragraph I read in King Arthur and His Knights by Sir James Knowles. The paragraph described the visitation of King Lot’s wife to Camelot after Arthur beat back Lot and his allies. King Lot’s wife was sent to spy on Arthur, but after she meets him she confesses that her husband sent her as a spy and purposely leaves Gawain, her eldest son, with Arthur so Arthur can use him as a hostage against Lot. And yes, all of this happens in a single paragraph.

Several other legends, most famously Le Morte d’Arthur, have similar themes, although sometimes Lot’s wife leaves all their children with Arthur instead of just Gawain. However, in the more modern versions of King Arthur legends, Morgause is typically an enchantress or witch of some sort who tries to seduce Arthur in order to help her husband. While both of these characters are married to Lot, the mother of Gawain, and always meet Arthur at some point in the king’s life, these women are practically different characters. The wife who is sorry for her part in Lot’s schemes was, in some of the oldest stories, named Anna. In Le Morte d’Arthur the character’s name is Morgause, even though she does the same actions as Anna, and it is Morgause’s name that most modern authors use when writing about King Lot’s horrible wife.

(As a side note, no matter what King Arthur legend you look at, Anna/Morgause is always the sister of Morgan le Fay. They aren’t the same characters, but the similar names can mess with you. King Artie and his cohorts are very good at that. Don’t even get me started on the Bors’.)

I wanted to reconcile Morgause with her original character, Anna, so I morphed the modern with the ancient, and my version of Morgause was born. My Morgause is a mix of the two characters. She has the magic and cunning of the modern Morgause, but the sincerity and courage of the ancient Anna. With that kind of character it would be extremely tricky getting her to let go of her loyalty to her family and support Britt, which is why I made her something of a feminist.

I actually got the idea because of some research I was doing on Gawain at the time. Because of some quests he both failed and passed, Gawain was blessed and cursed to be the ladies knight—meaning he had to help any maiden he came across who needed assistance. Compared to the rest of the knights—Lancelot included—Gawain is considered to be the most sensitive to the plight of females in Arthur’s kingdom. I decided that in order to mold that type of character into him, especially given that his father was something of a power-hungry/cut-throat king, he would need a mother who was not only equally as strong as King Lot, but extremely verbal about the fact that females are not lesser beings.

Morgause was a lot of fun. I enjoyed her bold personality, and I hope to have just as much fun with her sister, the infamous Morgan le Fay. On a final thought, all of Britt’s pets—Llamrei, Roen, and Cavall—are all animals that are attributed to Arthur in THE oldest records of the legendary king.

King Arthur: Series Research

Before researching my brains out for Enthroned, I thought that King Arthur ascended his throne the way the Disney movie, Sword in the Stone, shows it. I thought he pulled the sword from the stone, people wigged out, and BAM, he was king.

I thought wrong.

Britt’s story follows the original timeline of Arthur’s crowning. He did pull the sword on New Year’s Eve, but many people refused to recognize him as king so there were a number of other contests in which knights, princes, barons, and so on could try pulling the sword out too. Britt’s crowning on the day of Pentecost follows with typical Arthurian tradition, as does her war against King Lot, King Pellinore, King Urien, King Ryence, and the other unnamed kings and barons.

Additionally, before I started collecting King Arthur books and became an Arthur fanatic, I always assumed that King Arthur lived in the time of knights and castles and princesses.

Once again, I thought wrong.

There was a real Arthur. However, that Arthur was a great warrior and probably a general of some sort—not a king. Knights, castles, and even plate armor didn’t exist in his time yet as he was around when the Romans were still in Britain. When I started writing Enthroned I had a choice. My stories could follow history and the 500 words we know about the real Arthur, or they could be based off the legend that came about as a result of medieval writers who plunked Arthur down in a time that was relevant to their audience. I decided to go with the latter, mostly because it would give me more material to draw from.

There’s so much material, in fact, that many of the different legends counter what other Arthur stories and legends have to say. (As a preface, the Lancelot-Grail Cycle and the Post-Vulgate Cycle are essentially prose cycles of King Arthur stories. The writers of each cycle focused on different themes and different characters.)

Let’s take, for example, the Lady of the Lake. She was originally a villain of sorts. In the Lancelot-Grail Cycle the Lady of the Lake is called Viviane. She learns her magic from Merlin, who falls in love with her, and when she learns everything she can she gets sick of him and locks him in a tree, or beneath a stone depending on the story you’re reading.

It isn’t until the Post-Vulgate Cycle of King Arthur stories that writers started adding that she bestowed the legendary Excalibur on Arthur. In Le Morete d’Arthur the author, Thomas Malory, split the Lady of the Lake into two characters. Both are called the Lady of the Lake but the one who helps Arthur gets a name and is seen as a benefactor where as the one who traps Merlin remains more of a villain. Many writers followed in his footsteps by making the Lady of the Lake good.

In spite of her original character, I’ve never read a modern King Arthur story in which the Lady of the Lake was anything but good and beautiful. When I first started writing this series a few readers were upset with me because my Lady of the Lake is a bit of a bag, but she’s like that because I wanted to pay homage to the original Lady of the Lake—the nag who traps Merlin in a tree. (Don’t worry, I won’t be doing that to Merlin in my series.)

What’s the bottom line? There are more versions and legends of King Arthur lore than I could ever write about, but I do try to go the extra mile and include some of the earliest Arthurian lore in my stories. Hopefully you enjoy reading it.