In the Arthurian legends, King Arthur is portrayed as having a large group of loyal knights. Perhaps the most famous of all these knights today is Lancelot. He is generally portrayed in the legends as the greatest of Arthur’s knights, on almost equal standing with Arthur himself. However, despite being an important ally for Arthur for most of his career, Lancelot contributed to the downfall of Arthur’s kingdom due to his affair with Guinevere. But how did Lancelot’s story develop?
Lancelot in the Arthurian Legends
Like essentially all characters in the Arthurian legends, Lancelot’s background and family connections are slightly different depending on the specific text considered. However, generally speaking, Lancelot was presented as the son of a king named Ban. His kingdom was Benoic, or Benwick, or Genewis, or Gomeret. In many versions, Lancelot is actually raised by the mysterious Lady of the Lake as her adopted son.
Like many of Arthur’s knights, Lancelot is portrayed as engaging in many adventures and quests. He battles opponents, saves damsels in distress, and shows himself as a brave and courteous knight. The castle of Joyous Gard became his home after he conquered it from an evil king. A character named Elaine of Corbenic tricked him into sleeping with her, resulting in their child, Galahad. Just as Lancelot was a brave and valiant knight, his son Galahad is presented as essentially the perfect knight. This is especially so in a virtuous and moral sense, not simply in terms of being a brave warrior.
However, far from being a flawless character, Lancelot has a very dark side to him. While presenting himself as a loyal ally of Arthur, and genuinely being such in most senses, he had an affair with Guinevere, Arthur’s wife. What facilitated this was the fact that Lancelot was made the personal bodyguard of Guinevere. Hence, it was easy for the two of them to continue their affair.
The consequences of this affair were monumental and tragic. Unsurprisingly, Arthur is enraged at this treachery. He orders the death of Guinevere, but Lancelot saves her at the last minute. Arthur pursues Lancelot and battles against him, the affair leading to a bitter civil war in which some of Arthur’s best men die. This civil war is exploited by Mordred, Arthur’s treacherous nephew. He uses this as an opportunity to try to take the throne for himself. This ultimately climaxes in the bloody Battle of Camlann, which leads to Arthur being mortally wounded and his reign ending.
Lancelot’s First Appearance
From the summary above, it is obvious that Lancelot has a very important role to play in the Arthurian legends. Yet, this was not always the case. In fact, Lancelot does not appear, or at least not with that name, in the earliest full account of Arthur’s career. This account was written by Geoffrey of Monmouth in c. 1137 in a work generally known as the Historia Regum Britanniae. Here, he includes the narrative of Arthur’s nephew Mordred usurping the throne while Arthur is occupied with a war outside Britain. However, Lancelot is not involved in this war. Rather, it was a war against the Romans under the leadership of a general named Lucius Tiberius.
With this major aspect of Lancelot’s story absent from the earliest full account of Arthur’s career, when does Lancelot first appear? And what does this appearance look like? The answer is that he first appears in an account written a few decades after Geoffrey’s work.
The text in question is Erec and Enide, written by the French writer Chretien de Troyes in c. 1170. Here, Lancelot gets just a very brief mention. He is simply mentioned as one of the knights at Arthur’s court. Although this reference is very fleeting, it is interesting because Lancelot appears third in this list, suggesting that he was already held to be one of Arthur’s most prominent companions.
Later, in c. 1176, Chretien presented Lancelot as one of the knights whom Cliges defeated in a jousting match. Again, his appearance is only brief. However, a few years later, Chretien wrote a poem focusing entirely on Lancelot. This is known as Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart. This tells the story of Lancelot rescuing Guinevere after she was kidnapped by Meleagant. Interestingly, Lancelot’s affair with Guinevere is already present in this early account about Lancelot. The text does not provide an overview of Arthur’s reign, however, so we do not know what greater consequences Chretien imagined this affair as having.
Lancelot’s Fate
Chretien does not describe Lancelot’s fate in his account. We have to look further forward to find an account that reveals what happened to Lancelot later in his life. About 50 years after his first appearance, the Vulgate Mort Artu provides us with some important information. It tells us that after Arthur’s death, Mordred’s two sons continued causing trouble for the Britons who were loyal to Arthur. Here, Lancelot is presented as battling against them and putting down their rebellions. Hence, despite his treachery against Arthur by committing an affair, he is ultimately shown to still want to support him even after his death.
After this, Lancelot is eventually portrayed as retiring from being a knight and abandoning society to become a monk. He then subsequently dies of illness. This is the fate given to Lancelot in the Vulgate Mort Artu. However, it also became Lancelot’s conventional fate, and it continues to be used in many subsequent versions of the Arthurian legends.
Lancelot in Welsh Tradition
The Arthurian legends ultimately came from Welsh tradition. Hence, many of the characters in the non-Welsh romance tales, such as Chretien’s works, can ultimately be traced back to Welsh origins. However, occasionally, the reverse took place. Sometimes, famous characters or events from non-Welsh sources were adopted by the Welsh and drawn into their own traditions. For example, the Welsh Triads is a large collection of medieval traditions about all manner of things, although mostly focusing on the Arthurian period. These are mostly free from influence from the non-Welsh tales, but Triad 86 mentions Lancelot. It mentions him in a triad entitled: Three Knights of Arthur’s Court who won the Grail, and it brought them to heaven. Here, Lancelot simply appears as the father of Galahad. His name is written as “Lawnslot y Lac.”
This triad displays clear evidence of being derived directly from non-Welsh Arthurian tales. There are very, very few references to Lancelot aside from this, showing that he did not have any significant impact on the medieval Welsh.
Was Lancelot Based on a Real Person?
Lancelot’s very name suggests that he was a French creation. Furthermore, it is conspicuous that Geoffrey’s earlier account does not mention Lancelot’s affair with Guinevere in his narrative of Mordred’s rebellion. Nevertheless, many scholars have attempted to connect Lancelot with earlier figures from Welsh tradition.
Perhaps the most convincing proposition is that he ultimately comes from Maelgwn Gwynedd. He was an exceptionally powerful king in the 6th century, and Welsh tradition presents him as an ally of King Arthur. Modern scholarship supports the conclusion that the name of Lancelot’s kingdom comes from Gwynedd, Maelgwn’s kingdom, or perhaps Vannes, which had the virtually identical Breton name “Guenet.” Furthermore, just as Lancelot continued putting down rebellions after Arthur’s death, Geoffrey of Monmouth presents Maelgwn as a “scourge of tyrants” after Arthur’s death. There is also the notable fact that Maelgwn was remembered for dying in a church from the Yellow Plague. This is similar to Lancelot dying of illness in a church. Furthermore, Welsh tradition remembered Maelgwn’s son as an exceptionally virtuous knight, similar to Lancelot’s son Galahad.
The Character of Lancelot in the Arthurian Legends
In conclusion, we can see that Lancelot became one of the most important figures in the Arthurian legends. He was Arthur’s greatest knight, a powerful ally who engaged in numerous quests and adventures. However, his most important contribution to the Arthurian legends was his affair with Guinevere, Arthur’s wife. This was eventually discovered, leading to a civil war between the two mighty warriors. This war ultimately led to the downfall of Arthur’s kingdom and the deaths of many of his men.
Despite his extreme importance to the Arthurian legends, he does not appear in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s landmark Historia Regum Britanniae, the earliest full account of Arthur’s reign. He appears to have been first introduced, at least with that name, by Chretien de Troyes in the latter half of the 12th century. Nevertheless, there is the possibility that he appeared earlier, albeit with a different name and with reduced importance. Maelgwn Gwynedd could potentially have been the historical core behind the figure of Lancelot, although there is no universal acceptance of this.
