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.