Guinevere
/We love mess, and Queen Guinevere of Arthurian legend? There’s a lot of mess there! There’s scandal, there’s infidelity, AND AN EVIL TWIN!! We discuss a woman that a lot of Arthurian scholars and writers simply don’t know what to do with.
Content Warning: This episode contains conversations about or mentions of infidelity, misogyny, abduction, death, immolation, sexual assault, sexual content, and violence.
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Cast & Crew
- Co-Hosts: Julia Schifini and Amanda McLoughlin
- Editor: Bren Frederick
- Music: Brandon Grugle, based on "Danger Storm" by Kevin MacLeod
- Artwork: Allyson Wakeman
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About Us
Spirits is a boozy podcast about mythology, legends, and folklore. Every episode, co-hosts Julia and Amanda mix a drink and discuss a new story or character from a wide range of places, eras, and cultures. Learn brand-new stories and enjoy retellings of your favorite myths, served over ice every week, on Spirits.
Transcript
[theme]
AMANDA: Welcome to Spirits, a boozy dive into mythology, legends, and folklore. Every week, we pour a drink and learn about a new story from around the world. I'm Amanda.
JULIA: And I'm Julia. And, Amanda, I think we all love a little drama in our lives, right? Maybe not in our—
AMANDA: Oh, I'm a messy bitch Julia. You know this about me.
JULIA: Maybe not in our personal lives, but like watching other people's drama, I think, appeals to a lot of people.
AMANDA: It's why reality TV has dominated pop culture for the last, going on, 30 years.
JULIA: Yes. And I think that's also part of the reason why the Arthurian legend is so appealing to people.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: Because, Amanda, we're back. We're back to the Arthurian series. A name—
AMANDA: Ay!
JULIA: —I did not come up with this week, but if you have one off the top of the dome, go for it.
AMANDA: Like Round Table, Web of Deceit: The Arthurian Series?
JULIA: Honestly, pretty accurate for this episode.
AMANDA: Ayy!
JULIA: I'm not gonna lie.
AMANDA: All right. You teed me up and I tried to take a good swing.
JULIA: I appreciate it, I appreciate it. I think this is sort of the drama of everything, is sort of what appeals to people about Arthurian legend. There's the whole courtly love thing, which is great and all, but we crave the drama. We crave the betrayals and the love triangles, which is probably why one of the most popular and long-lasting characters within Arthurian legend is also one of the more complicated ones and sort of unsurprisingly, one of the few women in the story.
AMANDA: That makes a lot of sense to me. We rarely canonize women that are straightforwardly a hero. And to be fair, very few of the people in Arthurian legend are straightforward to begin with, so I'm excited to get some complex women added to this web.
JULIA: It's almost like all people are complex and no one is purely good or purely evil.
AMANDA: Or even purely a woman, I would say.
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: But that just might be me.
JULIA: So, obviously, last time we had the Arthurian legend series, we talked about Lady of the Lake and we'll be talking about Morgan Le Fay/Morgana down the line as well. But perhaps just as important, especially when we're thinking about the capital R, Romance that happens in Arthurian legend. We have to talk about Guinevere.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: Now, Amanda, before we get started, tell me what first comes to your mind when you hear the name Guinevere. I'm not gonna lie to you, it's kinda like sexy lady in Arthur's orbit, maybe a blonde braid, or I might be confusing her with what's her face in The Princess Bride. And I'm getting just like white gauzy dress, virginal or pure in some way. Not a lot there, I'm sorry to say. I'm hoping to remedy that today.
JULIA: Well, I don't think— it's interesting you say that because I don't think you're necessarily wrong in saying, "Not a lot there." And we'll talk about this. But quick and basic version of her story generally. And again, we talked about this in previous episodes. There's a lot of telling and retelling of these stories. So the details can range pretty wildly. But the basic story is she is the woman that marries Arthur. In a lot of cases, she loves him. Not all the stories, but some of the stories, she does love him. She becomes the queen of Camelot and then gradually falls in love with one of Arthur's knights, Lancelot. When their love is discovered, Lancelot flees Camelot and Guinevere is sentenced to burn at the stake. Typically.
AMANDA: Oh, shit.
JULIA: But before that happens, Lancelot returns and rescues her, which leads to a war between Lancelot and Arthur. And then while all that is happening, Mordred rebels against Arthur, tries to overthrow him. And then when Arthur returns to Camelot to put down that rebellion, that is when Arthur receives the wound that will lead to his death or at least his, like, need to heal, right? And then Guinevere takes the veil, becomes a nun in a cloister.
AMANDA: Okay. I was gonna say, my, like, virginal pure situation was totally off base, but she does get there in the end. And I'm feeling a lot of Scarlet Woman slut-shaming, I wore a red t-shirt today. I guess I was feeling it subliminally. I'm excited to hear more about this tale.
JULIA: That is sort of the basic version of the story and we will get into a lot of details in a bit in this and also in future episodes because that Lancelot episode is gonna be juicy.
AMANDA: I have a headcanon of Lancelot as, like, one of mythology's greatest himbos and I am excited to prove or disprove that.
JULIA: We'll see. We'll see what happens. We'll see what happens. So what's interesting, and I'm glad that you brought this up, Amanda, is Guinevere is complicated in a lot of her portrayals. There are times where she is seen as a honest, loving wife who is trapped in circumstances beyond her control. But there are also a lot of depictions where she is a real Lady Macbeth type, right? She is treacherous. She is duplicitous. She is unfaithful. And also she's a very early example of the damsel in distress trope. So she is frequently being abducted and then rescued only to be abducted again in Arthurian tales. A lot of scholars even sort of disagree on what her origins might have been. So some scholars speculate that maybe she might have been like a real historical figure who is then mythologized in her death as a sort of, like, Celtic version of Persephone representing the cycle of life and death.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: There are others who claim that her origin started with, like, this goddess of wisdom, Sophia, who is depicted by the Cathars. And then others think that she is simply this, like, personification of the sovereignty of Britain, which is then, like, solidified by the writing of Geoffrey of Monmouth.
AMANDA: Geoffrey, always getting his pen in there.
JULIA: Fucking Geoffrey. We'll talk more about Geoffrey. But I think what's interesting is the fact that there is so much debate over her and that there's no real consensus that has been reached serves to highlight how difficult it is to define who she is and what she's supposed to represent. Not only to us reading her story, but also to those that interact with her in these legends and these stories.
AMANDA: I mean, we don't want our women to be objects, do we? We want them to be ciphers. We want them to be portals. We want them to be the object upon which the hero's identity is worked out. And it sounds like this is perhaps one of the strongest examples of that in the Spirits canon so far.
JULIA: Oh, Amanda, to say, "Oh, we don't want women to be objects," when Guinevere's— ooh. Oh, you're nailing it.
AMANDA: We don't want them to be real. We want them to be a symbol, to be an object we can bounce off of, et cetera.
JULIA: Well, I think we're going to get that. The one thing that everyone can agree on when it comes to Guinevere, though, super hot.
AMANDA: Oh, sure.
JULIA: Or it's not necessarily a defined hotness. Just a lot of the authors sort of define her as this "singular beauty," right?
AMANDA: Got it.
JULIA: The only thing that we really get in terms of her beauty that is canonical originates in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, where she is said to have "Dancing gray eyes."
AMANDA: Oh. Very Mary Sue of us. We love dancing gray eyes.
JULIA: Well, Amanda, I love that you point out that she's very Mary Sue because for the most part, she really acts as sort of, like, this vessel for the writers of these stories. She's a real Bella Swan, if you will, you know?
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: Where the readers and the writers can sort of fill her as this empty vessel with whatever they need to advance their plot, right?
AMANDA: Yeah. And it's one of the reasons why poetry and literature works, right? Like we can say this unfathomable beauty and you fill that with the version of it that makes the most sense for you or the face of the woman who scorned you or you almost had or that you had and then lost.
JULIA: Yes. And so that is really exemplified by how no one can really decide how to define her, right? So—
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: —sometimes she is this epitome of courtly love. She is the perfect wife. She's a elusive love that people are pining after. But more often because probably misogyny, right? She is everything from indecisive to faithless and cruel.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: And when she is not any of these things, again, she is just this sort of empty vessel. She is instead the literal embodiment of a trophy wife.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: So she is something that needs to be won or held or literally taken away, going back to that damsel in the stress trope, right? And in a lot of ways, she and the Holy Grail, which is something that we're going to talk about a lot in later aspects of this Arthurian series, they have this in common, right? They are essentially just plot devices. They are something for the characters to pine after, to covet, to steal and then steal back and try to "protect."
AMANDA: They're vessels to be filled with male ambition, male love, male frustration, male body parts, right? Like the holy water. Like there are so many ways that women are viewed as just chalices waiting to be filled by something more important. And I love that we get to say, "No, no, no, it's interesting on its own. What's happening here? Who is she?"
JULIA: We definitely do get to say that, and especially we'll talk about sort of the modern use of Guinevere in fiction.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: And how she is portrayed nowadays as opposed to back when Geoffrey of Monmouth and others were writing of her. But this begs the question, where does the story start with Guinevere? Like a lot of the key players in Arthurian legend, she makes her first official appearance in the writings of Geoffrey of Monmouth. As you need to remember, whenever we're talking about Geoffrey of Monmouth, this man hates women.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: She is introduced in pretty much a single line as like Arthur's queen. She is the ward of the Lord Cotter of Cornwall and is said to be this great beauty of Roman descent.
AMANDA: Okay, some nobility.
JULIA: Yes, exactly. So we're kind of tying the, like, British sovereignty. And by that, I mean the Britons. O-N, instead of A-I. And so we're tying her and the Roman descent to that, which is interesting.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: We don't get more out of her until Geoffrey is like, "Oh, yeah. And, you know, that bitch, that wife that he married, she cheats on Arthur."
AMANDA: Okay.
JULIA: So essentially, Arthur leaves Britain to wage war on the continent, because remember, he's going to go conquer Rome because they want him to pay taxes.
AMANDA: Yes, that's right. And his traitorous Roman heritage wife in his bed.
JULIA: Yes. So word comes to him that Guinevere, who he had left in the care of his nephew Mordred, has started an affair with Mordred and now Mordred is trying to usurp the throne.
AMANDA: Got it. So this is a real Serpent plus Eve situation.
JULIA: Hmmm. So Arthur returns back to England to "rescue" his queen as well as his kingdom. But Guinevere, who feels guilty for cheating on her husband, which fair, flees the kingdom and commits herself to a nunnery.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: In the ensuing battle after she has fled, Mordred is killed, Arthur is mortally wounded and then whisked away to either heal or to his final resting place on the Isle of Avalon, which we talked about in our Lady of the Lake episode.
AMANDA: Sure did.
JULIA: As we've established, and I'll keep saying it until I run out of breath, Geoffrey of Monmouth doesn't really care about women. To be fair, plenty of the Arthurian writers don't really care about them that much either. But Guinevere just like doesn't get much in Geoffrey's story, right? But we get more detail from other writers, or at least they start to include Guinevere in more stories as time goes on. One of the first examples that we can find of Guinevere outside of Geoffrey of Monmouth's writing is in these writings that are called the Welsh Triads, which are essentially these groups of hundreds of story references that are made of three lines, hence the triad, and are assumed by, like, scholars who studied this that they were sort of a memory jogger for—
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: —early medieval bards to help them remember, like, the beats or beginnings of stories.
AMANDA: Cool.
JULIA: Sort of like a fun, neat, mnemonic device, like they used to teach us in elementary school. Like I—
AMANDA: Yeah, yeah.
JULIA: The Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492 sort of thing.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: But instead it's hundreds of them and they're all about, like, the history of Britain.
AMANDA: Amazing. Wow.
JULIA: So it is a little bit of a bummer how they reference her in these. So she is in a list of unfaithful wives in the history—
AMANDA: Sure.
JULIA: —of Britain. So here's the quote for it, "One was more faithless than those three. Guinevere, Arthur's wife, since she shamed a better man than any of the others."
AMANDA: I love how she is a damsel in distress without the agency to fix her own problems and a conniving, you know, insert gendered language here, who has the sort of, like, agency to cheat on like not just a husband, not just a man, not just a king, but the one, the ur-text, right? Arthur.
JULIA: Uh-hmm. And I think you'll see— as we talk about this a little more and how she is portrayed, especially by Tennyson, surprisingly.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: It becomes really interesting how, like, Guinevere is so fallible and Arthur is so great. And that's why their relationship fails, which I think is interesting. So they also mentioned Guinevere in one more Welsh Triad, but it's only among a list of different Guineveres from history. And none of them is, like, specified to be our Guinevere—
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: —as in the wife of Arthur. Just sort of by, like, who their fathers were. So there's like a bunch of Guineveres and like, "Guinevere, daughter of blah, blah, blah, of blah, blah, blah." And you're like, "Okay, but which one is the Guinevere that marries Arthur?" And they're like, "It doesn't matter." I'm like, "Okay."
AMANDA: It's giving real like, you know, doctor and missus.
JULIA: The first real substantial story after Geoffrey of Monmouth we get, comes from the Vita Sancti Gildae, or the Life of Gildas, which we have talked about in previous episodes of the series. But as a reminder, this is a 12th century text by a monk about the life of Saint Gildas. In this portion, the saint has just arrived at Glastonbury.
AMANDA: Woo!
JULIA: Glastonbury.
AMANDA: Sorry, I had to.
JULIA: Which according to the text, "Was besieged by the tyrant Arthur with a countless multitude on account of his wife Guinevere, whom the aforesaid wicked king had violated and carried off and brought there for protection, owing to the asylum afforded by the invulnerable position due to the fortifications of thickets of reed, river, and marsh. The rebellious king had searched for the queen throughout the course of one year. And at last heard that she had remained there. Thereupon, he roused the armies of the whole of Cornubia and Dibneria," which I think are like Cornwall and another place I'm not familiar with.
AMANDA: Devon
JULIA: "War was prepared between the enemies. When he saw this, the abbot of Glastonia," which is Glastonbury before it was Glastonbury, "attended by the clergy and Gildas the Wise, stepped in between the contending armies. And in a peaceable manner advised his king to restore the ravished lady."
AMANDA: Oh.
JULIA: "Accordingly, she who was to be restored was restored in peace and goodwill."
AMANDA: Wait, what does that mean? So, Guinevere had been kidnapped by the Wicked King.
JULIA: Yes, which was the king of Glastonbury at this time.
AMANDA: Got it. So Arthur went to get her back, and then the abbot was like, "Give the lady back, avoid war," and they did.
JULIA: Yes, precisely.
AMANDA: Got it.
JULIA: Fascinating, right? This is the earliest example we get of Guinevere being this damsel in distress type.
AMANDA: Yeah. Also, I wonder if she was, like, getting some good ravishing by the Wicked King. Like, I don't know.
JULIA: I mean, it does say— where is it? "She had been violated and carried off." So I don't know. I don't know. Maybe they were saying violated because she was already in the vows of marriage, right? So any sex that was happening outside of marriage would be a "violation."
AMANDA: Yeah, and there's obviously a world where, canonically, historically, all the time, you know, unfortunately, sexual assault is used as a weapon of war. And because Guinevere is a maligned woman, I am looking for, like, glimmers of agency for her.
JULIA: Oh, she'll— she gets there, Amanda.
AMANDA: Okay.
JULIA: She gets there. She gets her own agency later. Sometimes not for the better in her portrayals, but she does get to the agency at some point. But, like, as you can see, Guinevere was out here getting abducted and then rescued pretty early and pretty often. And it becomes a bit of a theme in Arthurian literature. There's a really interesting academic theory, which I think is, like, maybe a little outdated at this point. But it is this trope that was known as the rape or abduction of the flower bride. Keeping in mind that rape does not always mean sexual assault, but rather sometimes just means abduction or the stealing of.
AMANDA: Uh-mm.
JULIA: Now, in this sort of abduction of the flower bride trope, this is where a woman represents the sovereignty of the land, which then had to be protected by a would-be king or a ruler, and either through combat, which is like fighting off the foreign interlopers, right? Or through marriage, which is, like, the political merging of kingdoms, et cetera, right?
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: So it's like a symbolic marriage, which just meant like these two cultures combining after one is conquered by the other, or the fighting off of enemies is like a literal fighting off of, like, foreign bodies from the sovereignty of the land.
AMANDA: Totally. And like a country, right? A woman is supposed to be fertile, the source of new men, new blood, new soldiers, and also open to degradation, to poisoning, to—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: —undue influence. Like, what would happen if these foreign invaders, like, came into our land, introduced new ideas, and changed the shape of what it is we know? Like, I think that's a deep-rooted fear that is also the— you know, "Is this my child or not? Like, is this my bloodline?" Like, there's a lot wrapped up in this metaphor.
JULIA: Yes, and there are, like, a bunch of other examples that are specific to, like, England. Like the Maid Marian in the Robin Hood story is also supposed to be a flower bride. But you can really, like, tie it all the way back to stories like Persephone and Hades, honestly.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: Where you can even see it in the language of flower bride.
AMANDA: Literally a flower bride.
JULIA: It is not a hard leap to make, you know?
AMANDA: Cool.
JULIA: But this abduction myth is very popular among many of the Arthurian scholars because sometimes it is Arthur saving her. Sometimes it's Lancelot saving her. But no matter who it is doing the saving of Guinevere, someone has to help Guinevere because she simply cannot help herself at this point. Now, this would go on to change at least a little bit, as more poets began to tell stories of Guinevere. And I am excited to tell you more about those. But before we do, Amanda, I think I'm going to need a refill.
AMANDA: Let's go.
[theme]
JULIA: Hey, it's Julia, and welcome to the refill. Thank you so much to our newest patron, Nicole the Human. [20:36] You join the ranks of our supporting producer-level patrons like Uhleeseeuh, Hannah, Scott, Anne, Matthew, Lily, and Wil. And, of course, our legend-level patrons, Captain Jonathan MAL-uh-kye Cosmos, Audra, Sarah, Bea Me Up Scotty, Morgan, Bex, Rikoelike, Chibi Yokai, and Michael. And hey, if you're interested, you too can go to patreon.com and sign up for a free trial right now and get cool rewards like ad-free episodes, recipe cards for every single episode and bonus urban legends episodes as well as a bunch of other very cool rewards. Check it out. Go to patreon.com/spiritspodcast today. I also want to tell you about another show here at Multitude that I think you'll like, and that is Pale Blue Pod. Pale Blue Pod is an astronomy podcast for people who are overwhelmed by the universe, but still want to be its friend. Astrophysicist Dr. Moiya McTier and her best friend ConStar demystify space one topic at a time, often with open eyes, open arms, and open mouths from a lot of laughing and a lot of jaw-dropping information. By the end of each episode, the cosmos will feel a little less, "Ugh, too scary," and a lot more, "Ooh, so cool." New episodes every Monday. Check it out wherever you listen to podcasts. And now, let's get back to the show.
[theme]
JULIA: Amanda, we are back. And for this cocktail, I wanted to choose something that is in its way very beautiful and very delicate for a cocktail, but also has a bit of a bite.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: Which we will see some writers give Guinevere in their versions of the story. So my version of the Queen Guinevere cocktail is sort of like a wine spritzer, but it has a pink peppercorn bite to it.
AMANDA: Delicious.
JULIA: What I would suggest for this cocktail is a really nice crisp Rosé and then the most botanical gin that you can find, like the most complex gin possible. Throw that in there. And then you're going to add a little bit of Chambord or honestly like any sort of like fruit liqueur that you can find. I think Chambord is a good choice because I like that sort of raspberry flavor, but I've seen other people do it with, like, a cranberry liqueur, so you could try that as well. And then, of course, a homemade pink peppercorn syrup.
AMANDA: Hmm! Love it.
JULIA: So it's going to be floral. It's going to be delicate to start, but then it is going to have that bite that Guinevere has in moments.
AMANDA: Love it. What a suitable cocktail for her.
JULIA: Thank you. And it's also pretty beautiful. Like it's a nice, like, sort of delicate pink situation going on here. And I really like it. As I mentioned, up until this point, Guinevere has been this damsel in distress who is only being rescued, has very little personality other than being apprised to be stolen and then won back, right? This changed at least a little bit with the writings of Chrétien de Troyes and Marie de France, who are both poets that we've talked about in previous episodes, but these are also both poets who actually took the time to focus and center the character of Guinevere. They were both writing around the same time. They were active in the late 11th century and early 12th century and were largely responsible for the rise of the courtly love genre during this period.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: Now, this genre specifically focuses on, like, strong women with defined characteristics. These are not just the empty vessels for authors to plop whatever useful plot device they need into them. This is, like, actual defined women.
AMANDA: For once.
JULIA: de Troyes and de France were writing around the same time. We're not exactly sure whose version of Guinevere came first, mainly because scholars struggled to accurately date de France's work.
AMANDA: I mean, to be fair, it was many centuries ago.
JULIA: Yes, yes, yes, yes. Some of them, like, were— we know when they got written. Others were like, "I think it was somewhere within this decade, but we're not entirely sure."
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: For the most part, scholars seem to agree that de Troyes wrote first and then de France, mainly because if you're looking at their stories and you're, like, critically reading them as scholars often do, you'll see that de France tends to invert the central trope of courtly love tales, which is like women having to be rescued by men.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: And because she's doing an inversion of this, it stands to reason that de Troyes was writing courtly love tropes first. And so the audience had to be aware of and have already established this trope in order to invert it, right?
AMANDA: The things gotta be there for people to parody or make an inversion or a twist.
JULIA: Exactly. Exactly. You're an English major. You know what I'm talking about, Amanda. You got this.
AMANDA: Well, also, like, Julia, tell me why the example that came to mind was you can stand to reason that like Heated Rivalry came out before the Connor story SNL episode. Like, you know, you have to have the reference there to reference.
JULIA: Exactly, exactly. You're absolutely right. Otherwise people would have been like, "Who is this man?"
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: So in Marie de France's writing, specifically in the story of Lanval, the titular character is one of Arthur's knights. Now, there's some, like, Lanval could be Lancelot, but it doesn't actually quite work with the later versions of Lancelot. Like there's some connection, but there's not a explicit connection between the character of Lanval and the character of Lancelot. Lanval, titular character in Marie de France's writing, he is one of Arthur's knights. After he is humiliated during an argument at court, he decides to leave Camelot and he enters the fairy world.
AMANDA: Oh.
JULIA: You know?
AMANDA: You got burned by your boys so bad that you ran off to the Fae?
JULIA: Yeah, you know, a thing that people do. While he is there, he spends time among the fairies and eventually he falls in love with the fairy princess.
AMANDA: Sure.
JULIA: Like you do. But even though he really loves that fairy princess, he decides that it is still his duty as a knight, as a courtly man, you know, to serve Arthur's court and he chooses to return back to Camelot.
AMANDA: Wow.
JULIA: Now before he does this, though, he is told by the fairy princess that he must keep their love a secret.
AMANDA: Yeah. I mean, the Fae, famously, don't really want to be fucked with.
JULIA: That's fair, that's fair. But if he chooses to keep their love a secret, she tells him that she will be able to rescue him whenever he needs her most.
AMANDA: Hmm. This sounds like a great bet.
JULIA: I know. So like, "Keep our love a secret. You'll get this boon that if you're ever in danger or in trouble, I will come and rescue you."
AMANDA: A boon from a fairy is as useful as a promise to a fairy is dangerous. You feel?
JULIA: Exactly. Well, he made this promise. He said, "I'm not going to tell anyone about our love." And she said, "Great. You'll have a boon from me in due time."
AMANDA: H better not immediately run back and tell his boys that he got some fairy lovin'.
JULIA: You can say fairy pussy on our podcast. It's okay, Amanda.
AMANDA: Thank you.
JULIA: We're almost 500 episodes in. You can say fairy pussy.
AMANDA: I was gonna say fairy cooch and then I was like, "Is the audience ready for it?"
JULIA: He returns back to court at Camelot and then immediately, immediately upon returning, is propositioned by Guinevere.
AMANDA: Sure.
JULIA: Who, de France, really has chosen to characterize at this point as a seductress.
AMANDA: Okay.
JULIA: Like Guinevere, de France makes clear, has a reputation for sleeping her way around the Round Table, just seducing each and every one of Arthur's knights.
AMANDA: Something, something, lazy Susan. I don't know what it is.
JULIA: Oh, no.
AMANDA: But it's a slutty Guinevere. I don't know what it is. Girl, I love this for you. I don't know if it's my particular era, if it's the 2026 of it all, but I'm like, "You want to be a seducer? Seduce, baby. Do it."
AMANDA: She tries to seduce Lanval, he, however, rebuts her advances, which only serves to enrage Guinevere.
AMANDA: So, wait, is Lanval being faithful to the fairy or is he, like, honoring Arthur and his vow?
JULIA: Great question, Amanda, because the next thing that an enraged Guinevere does is demands a reason why he won't sleep with her.
AMANDA: There it is.
JULIA: And he's like, "I can't sleep with you, my queen. I'm already in love with the fairy princess that I met while I was away from court."
AMANDA: Lanval, you could have just said, "I'm sorry, I'm here to protect you, not to worship your loins."
JULIA: Goddamn it. He tells her this. He's, like, very calm about it. He's like, "Yeah, you know, I'm sorry. I'm in love with another woman. She happened to be a fairy princess and I simply can't sleep with you." And it's very calm about his approach.
AMANDA: I wish he would just stop talking about a third of the way through that sentence.
JULIA: So he breaks his vow to the fairy princess—
AMANDA: Damn it!
JULIA: —by doing this. Not only does he break this vow, but it doesn't serve to calm Guinevere down at all. In fact, it only enrages her further.
AMANDA: Yeah, I could have told you that, my man. I mean, this man has no woman friends. So to be fair, I'm being a little bit judgmental.
JULIA: So she runs off to Arthur and claims to the king that Lanval had attempted to seduce her.
AMANDA: Bummer.
JULIA: Kind of classic, kind of classic. So Arthur, and by that I mean, by that— I don't mean that's things that women do. By that I mean it's a classic trope about people and misogyny. And, like, "Oh, this woman— a spurned woman is going to claim that I did something wrong to her rather than the opposite."
AMANDA: Yes.
JULIA: Not something a lot of women do.
AMANDA: No, but if women only exist as sexual objects to be coveted, possessed, and then defended, there are only historically and— like, ontologically and in the story, so many options for them to fight back. And unfortunately, it's the predictable trope of the woman as either a victim or an aggressor.
JULIA: Yes. So Arthur believes his wife and so puts Lanval on trial for, you know, trying to sleep with the queen.
AMANDA: Lanval tried— I feel bad for Lanval and I am not in the business—
JULIA: You should.
AMANDA: —of feeling bad for men very often.
JULIA: So while he is on trial, Lanval attempts to call on his fairy princess to come to his aid.
AMANDA: Babe, you nixed that boon.
JULIA: However, he knows, he's like, "I know this is a fruitless attempt. I know that I broke my vow. I'm really sorry about that. I'm not hoping for anything, but it would be remiss of me not to just call out and be like, 'Fairy princess, please come help me.'"
AMANDA: Me doing my [31:26] as a kid, like, "I know I messed up on that spelling test and, like, I am trying really hard and I am studying, but like, please, if you could just help me a little bit, that would be really nice." Like, girl, you have anxiety.
JULIA: It was a real like, "Oh, I was in a bad situation and I'm sorry about that. But please help me anyway."
AMANDA: And to be fair, he was also comparing his competing vows, right? Like he—
JULIA: Yeah!
AMANDA: —was trying to return to the court, the thing that he had made his first vow to and trying to uphold his values and then got this beautiful fairy ask him to do something. And then the queen is like, "Why?" And he's like, "I need to be honest, but also— aah!"
JULIA: Yeah, you're exactly right. It's like a real, like, "Do I—" it's a real courtly love trope, right? Like, do—
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: —I do the thing that is to my liege lord that it— like I made a vow about? Or do I follow through with the vow of the woman that I love, the vow that I made to this woman?
AMANDA: Julia, the age old courtly love question.
JULIA: Exactly.
AMANDA: Hos over bros? Maybe, please? Because I love them.
JULIA: Well, Amanda, because as we talked about, Marie de France is out here subverting the tropes, the fairy princess does in fact come and end up saving him and they escape together.
AMANDA: Wait, it ends happily?
JULIA: Yeah, it ends happily.
AMANDA: Whoa!
JULIA: And it's an inversion of the trope because the knight is the one that is in need of rescuing rather than the princess.
AMANDA: Man, I wish Marie de France had lived to see all of the, like, delicious fandom inversions of tropes that people are continuing to crank out today.
JULIA: Great inversion of the trope, not a good look for Guinevere specifically in this story.
AMANDA: No. She is kind of the axis upon which all of the bad shit revolves.
JULIA: But she is a woman with motivations, even though those motivations are bad.
AMANDA: We are truly grasping at straws for complex women in English literature history.
JULIA: It's better than one line in Geoffrey of Monmouth saying, "She married him."
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: And then she's like, "And then she cheated on him and now she's a nun."
AMANDA: Someone with a dad.
JULIA: It's slightly better, you know?
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: de Troyes, however, even though his stories come first, does feature a more traditional narrative for Guinevere in which she is the sort of damsel in distress that is in need of rescuing. But de Troyes is kind enough to give Guinevere a little bit more of a personality than we see from our other authors thus far, besides de France. So in his story, she is kidnapped by this guy named Lord Maleagent.
AMANDA: Hmm. Lord bad guy?
JULIA: Yeah, essentially. But this is a retelling of that story that we heard in the Life of Gildas.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: Instead of Arthur, however, marching off to fight this evil lord, he instead dispatches some of his knights to rescue her, including Lancelot.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: There's a bunch of, like, shenanigans that happened before they managed to even get to the castle where she's being held, but safe to say like Lancelot is the one who rescues Guinevere in the end and the story revolves around not only that rescue, but also Guinevere attempting to test the knight to see if he is truly, like, worthy of her love through a series of essentially mind games—
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: —that are designed to make him question like his honor, his noble nature, his loyalty, et cetera.
Amadna: Hmm. Oh, man. I am thinking so much about, like, modern, you know, pick-up artists and dating tropes and all the ways that toxic masculinity, like, doesn't fit or work and is bad. And where we get those ideas from in this dating world that takes so much from this trope of the courtly love.
JULIA: Yes, exactly right, Amanda. And also, you've seen A Knight's Tale, right?
AMANDA: No.
JULIA: You haven't seen— Amanda, we gotta watch A Knight's Tale together.
AMANDA: Okay.
JULIA: It's Heath Ledger as a knight, and then they play a lot of modern music, but, like, to the period. It's insane. It's a wild, wild show.
AMANDA: I need to see this.
JULIA: But, like, in A Knight's Tale, there is a bit that they very clearly steal from this particular story, where essentially, Lancelot is supposed to duel this evil lord in a tournament, right?
AMANDA: Uh-huh.
JULIA: And Guinevere is like, "I know you have this tournament coming up. I want you to prove that you love me by throwing the tournament."
AMANDA: Oh. Again, choosing between the mission and the lady. What is a man to do?
JULIA: Uh-hmm. So he agrees and when he starts to intentionally throw the fight halfway through, Guinevere is like, "Nope, changed my mind. Actually, you must win in order to prove your love to me." And he's like, "Well, actually that's honestly kind of easier for me." And so beats all of these tournament champions.
AMANDA: All right. I mean, listen, it is sexy to have a person that you find sexy listen to you. Like that I get.
JULIA: A little like, "Okay, make up your mind," but also it is like— you're like, "Yeah, okay. Cool. I'm into it."
AMANDA: I feel like I'm trying so hard to be a girl's girl and I'm trying to be in Guinevere's corner and these stories are not giving me a lot to work with.
JULIA: It's— listen, you have to keep in mind that these are written during a period of pretty intense misogyny.
AMANDA: Yep.
JULIA: And she's not gonna come out well in most of these stories. But we also have to remember that, like, she's still a very interesting character even though the decisions she is making are not ones that we necessarily would support in the modern age. These are stories— this is how I feel about watching The Pit, where it's like no one is completely right, no one is completely wrong, it's really complicated, and I love complicated characters because people are complicated.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: And so reading these stories, I'm like, "And I don't support that, but it is fascinating from a plot perspective."
AMANDA: Yes. No one wants to watch people make straightforwardly correct decisions all the time.
JULIA: Exactly.
AMANDA: Boring.
JULIA: Exactly. So this story about her being kidnapped by the evil lord is later incorporated in one of the plots, though it's a minor plot in the vulgate cycle, which is this, like, massive 13th century-old French prose that includes a ton of the Arthurian legends that we know to this day, right? It's got Lancelot, it's got the Grail Quest, it has Arthur's Fall, it has like all of the important bits, right?
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: But importantly to this episode, it tells us that Guinevere and Lancelot actually first met through one of Arthur's other knights whose name was Galehaut, who is this like half-giant prince who was originally an enemy of Arthur's, but then became a friend and an ally.
AMANDA: I want him and Arthur to kiss.
JULIA: Well, actually, what you want, Amanda, is you want Lancelot and Galehaut to kiss because he is notably a very good friend and sometimes even interpreted as a lover of Lancelot.
AMANDA: Love it.
JULIA: So, Guinevere, super glad to have been introduced to the man that would become her lover, even rewards Galehaut by playing matchmaker and setting him up with this beautiful Lady of Malehaut.
AMANDA: There's something in here about polycules that I'm gonna let the poly community tell me about.
JULIA: Fair enough. In this story, however, Guinevere is accused of being not the true Guinevere, but in fact, a false Guinevere. Because, yes, Amanda, there is an evil twin in this story.
AMANDA: What? What in the telenovela is happening here? I love it.
JULIA: I told you. We love the drama and that's why we love Arthurian legend and this, like, has all of the drama tropes.
AMANDA: This messy web.
JULIA: Oh, it's so good. Okay. So the way that this goes is that Guinevere is said to have an identical twin half-sister.
AMANDA: Uh, wait.
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: I mean, to be fair, didn't know about genetics, but—
JULIA: Yes. So they look very similar, but they have different mothers.
AMANDA: Sure.
JULIA: So her father conceived of this other Guinevere the same night that the true Guinevere was conceived because he, like, had sex with Guinevere's mother, but then he also had sex with the wife of his seneschal, like his, like, advisor.
AMANDA: Oh, shit.
JULIA: The same night. And so they both were born on the same day. Look very similar. Both named Guinevere for some reason.
AMANDA: Wild. So he doesn't have a slip up and he's like, "Yeah, my daughter, Guinevere," end of sentence.
JULIA: Honestly, yeah, that makes sense. That's like a man who has a, you know, second family, naming all of the kids the same name.
AMANDA: Insane behavior that I don't understand, but also I'm grasping for the logic here.
JULIA: So she's also named Guinevere and she claimed to be the true daughter of their father. Basically told Arthur that he had married an imposter and that the true Guinevere's throne should be hers by right.
AMANDA: I mean, get your bag, girl.
JULIA: Well, so, she manages to convince Arthur of that fact.
AMANDA: Damn!
JULIA: And then Arthur, in time, falls in love with this false Guinevere and then accepts her as his queen.
AMANDA: That's insane! What they do with original Guinevere?
JULIA: This is also legitimately a plot in the X-Men comics, which is actually insane.
AMANDA: This is kind of close to Jane the Virgin plot, too.
JULIA: At this point, Arthur is like, "I'm in love with this woman. She's the queen now." Guinevere is protected by Lancelot and Galehaut, who whisk her away from Camelot and they hide her until the truth is revealed. So Lancelot even, like, sends her to his own, like, castle, which we'll talk about in a little bit because it does become somewhat plot relevant. In the end, the false Guinevere and her champion whose name is Bertholai admit that they are deceivers, but only after two and a half years. In some stories, the false Guinevere becomes sick and only admits this whole facade on her deathbed.
AMANDA: Holy shit!
JULIA: But then in another version of it, she confesses to her crime, but then demands a trial by combat, which Lancelot wins against three of her champions. And then she's burned at the stake.
AMANDA: Bummer. Perhaps an equal bummer, Julia, is that there is only one fanfic on AO3 with Guinevere, Lancelot, Galehaut as a pairing.
JULIA: That's a damn shame.
AMANDA: I'm sorry.
JULIA: Someone should get on that.
AMANDA: Someone should get on it. There are however 60 for Galehaut and Lancelot.
JULIA: Yeah, that doesn't surprise me. That makes sense, actually. In the end of the story, though, after those two and a half years, the true Guinevere is restored to her place next to Arthur.
AMANDA: Dang. When you're— when people also denigrate comic books, like total aside, as like, "Oh, unrealistic, whatever." It's like, "Babe, study an ounce of mythology. And I promise you that you will see there are few original ideas and just endless remixing of the tropes that human beings have always talked about."
JULIA: So for people who might not know what I'm talking about, check out the Madelyne Pryor-Jean Grey arc and you'll know exactly what I mean.
AMANDA: Hell yeah.
JULIA: This story actually sets up the Guinevere-Lancelot relationship really nicely for us. So he is once again seen assisting her when she is abducted by that evil lord, as we mentioned in the de Troyes telling. Also, you know, we see in the vulgate cycle as well, those trials that she put him through in order to prove his love. So when she is rescued, however, it is revealed to Arthur that the two are lovers. And as Geoffrey of Monmouth laid out, she is then condemned to be burned to death. Lancelot goes, he rescues her from this death, and he takes her to his own castle, which is called Joyeuse Garde, which is a extremely formidable fortress.
AMANDA: Great name.
JULIA: It's like guard, but the French spelling so G-A-R-D-E.
AMANDA: Nice.
JULIA: However, Amanda, hearing that the king and the queen are on the outs in the vulgate cycle, do you want to guess who intervenes?
AMANDA: I mean, I literally don't know who you would ask if the king and the queen are fighting. A judge?
JULIA: Keep in mind, this is pre the establishment of the Anglican Church.
AMANDA: Oh, did they call Daddy Pope?
JULIA: They did.
AMANDA: Did they say, "Daddy Pope, we're fighting? Come help us, please"?
JULIA: No, no, no. Not even that. The pope heard about it and he said, "Hold on, I got to step in here." It was genuinely so funny that the pope got involved in the story. So funny to me.
AMANDA: It's like when your parents have to come downstairs to adjudicate a fight during a play date and you're like, "Oh, this is—"
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: "—so embarrassing for all of us."
JULIA: So the Pope demands that the two reconcile, but by this point, Lancelot has fled to France and Arthur goes after him to fight for the honor of Guinevere and also because of Lancelot's betrayal, right?
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: However, while he is away, you're going to recognize these beats again, Mordred attempts to seize Arthur's throne and to marry Guinevere, but Guinevere wants nothing to do with Mordred. This is not the like— and then Guinevere is seduced by Mordred or vice versa version of the tale. Guinevere is like, "I like Lancelot, I want nothing to do with you, Mordred." And Mordred is like, "No, but you have to be the queen."
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: So instead she leaves Joyeuse Garde and she flees to the Tower of London.
AMANDA: Oh.
JULIA: And then when Arthur returns to England and kills Mordred, she instead flees to the convent where she takes the veil and eventually dies.
AMANDA: Damn.
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: I guess I appreciate that the nunnery is available to her as a place where, like, she is safe and not pursued or bothered by any men.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: I hate that she had to go from, like, her lover's castle to a literal prison and then finally to a nunnery.
JULIA: Yeah, it is a real tragedy kind of.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: Whoever side you're on in this story, it is a tragedy.
AMANDA: It is a capital T, Tragedy.
JULIA: Now, as we get to Malory and Le Morte d'Arthur, we get another important aspect of Guinevere that ties her to an extremely important part of Arthurian lore, which is, Amanda, what you named this episode after.
AMANDA: Oh, yeah?
JULIA: The Round Table.
AMANDA: Ayy!
JULIA: This is fascinating to me. According to Malory, the fellowship of the Round Table first met on the day of Arthur's wedding to Guinevere.
AMANDA: Okay.
JULIA: And the reason behind that is, essentially— so a little backing up slightly, after Arthur had to fight all of those battles and wars against the rebelling kings in order to solidify his ascent to the throne, he decided, "Well, I'm going to be king. I'm going to need a queen." Right? I mean, that's what you do when you need to ensure a line of succession. Makes sense.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: And, like, the whole point of Arthur's not being able to take the mantle was because they weren't sure that there was a actual line of succession, 'cause—
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: —his father hid him away and then he died and there was a whole complicated issue.
AMANDA: No. Perhaps the primary objective of a ruler is to keep things stable. And that has to do very much with what's going to happen after you pass.
JULIA: Exactly. However, around this time where Arthur is like, "I need a wife," Merlin is like, "Hey, listen, the problem is the woman that you're going to pick, who you're going to make the queen is going to one day betray you, so you got to be careful."
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: Arthur sort of ignores the advice of his mentor, who, you know, is the one that can sometimes see into the future.
AMANDA: Not the best choice, but understandable as a young man, flush with power, maybe love.
JULIA: Sure. So he selects Guinevere to be his bride, and with Guinevere came a dowry, which is the standard at the time, right? And one of the big parts of her dowry was an item that was actually made by Merlin in years past at the request of Uther Pendragon, who was Arthur's father, right?
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: And that is a great round table.
AMANDA: Wow. How did it get into Guinevere's possession?
JULIA: That's a great question. It's one of those things when where Uther died, sort of everyone picked apart his estate. And so her father ended up with it. Now, this is really interesting because it was a table "round like the likeness of the earth."
AMANDA: Okay.
JULIA: Then goes on to say, "It was large enough to comfortably seat 150 knights."
AMANDA: Oh, my God.
JULIA: And because it was round, none could be seen as being higher in favor than the rest.
AMANDA: Holy shit! How did they move this table?
JULIA: I don't know, a lot of work.
AMANDA: Whoa.
JULIA: It's really interesting because then, on the day of his wedding to Guinevere, the table was moved to Camelot and Arthur requested that Merlin find sufficient knights "Which be of most prowess and worship." And he's like, "Ideally, I would love to have 50 knights just to start to fill out the table."
AMANDA: Yeah, start with a third.
JULIA: Exactly. And so when the wedding ceremony is complete, the knights went to the hall where the round table was and found that on the back of each of the chairs was a name written in golden letters.
AMANDA: Damn.
JULIA: Now, these names were all already chosen, including those who had not yet even pledged themselves to Arthur because the names were written into the chairs by Merlin, who, as you know, had some prophetic sight and was able to see who the knights would one day be.
AMANDA: That's crazy. What a cool symbol.
JULIA: Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm. However, there were two seats that would remain blank without names. And when Arthur questions Merlin about this, he said that they would "Be filled in due course."
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: And we'll get to that at some point.
AMANDA: Can't rush a prophecy.
JULIA: So admittedly, not a lot of Guinevere action in this story, but the fact that the table ties her explicitly to Arthur's father, since the table was originally made for him and then also to Arthur's court as the round table is the centerpiece of how his court is run. It's a very, like, important symbolic tie for Guinevere.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: Even though she does little to be related to it.
AMANDA: For sure.
JULIA: Besides, I guess, sleeping around it, according to Marie de France.
AMANDA: It's a connection of legacy, right?
JULIA: Exactly. So unfortunately at this point, we have to fast forward a little bit because after Malory's and Le Morte d'Arthur, there is a bit of a lull in terms of Arthurian legend, specifically relating to Guinevere. Mostly scholars think that it has something to do with the shifting of morality after the Reformation.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: Essentially, it's like, "We can't be telling romantic stories about how the queen cheats on the king with one of his knights. That's not moral. We can't do that."
AMANDA: I mean, for sure.
JULIA: So it wasn't until the Victorians, those horny bastards.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: Came around, that Guinevere saw that it was, like, her time in the sun again.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: So specifically, it shouldn't surprise you that it was Tennyson that helped to revive her image.
AMANDA: Among our horniest Victorians.
JULIA: Uh-hmm. One of our horniest ones. What's interesting is that when Tennyson introduces Guinevere in his Idylls of the King, which we've mentioned in previous episodes, it is a version of Guinevere that has already fled to the nunnery, and he has her sort of living in anonymity in the aftermath of her affair with Lancelot and the war that resulted.
AMANDA: Fascinating.
JULIA: Yes. So it is interesting that you were like, "It's good that she has this nunnery that she can escape to," because that is like the version of Guinevere that Tennyson focuses on first.
AMANDA: And to be fair to him, Tennyson loved like a flawed, tragic figure. And so this is the era of Guinevere that I understand would be most exciting to him.
JULIA: Exactly. So Tennyson is really one of these first authors, even more so than de France and de Troyes, to really build out her character into— like she has a personality in de France and de Troyes, but with Tennyson, it's an actual, like, well-rounded character, right? You see her for her flaws, but you also see, like, where she's coming from.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: So she— he, like, even gives her own idyll, which is, like, huge. So we get to see some, like, interiority from her that we haven't seen with any other author. We see that she has these internal conflicts about her own actions, but also the actions of the men that surround her in these stories. And so we see that she's like particularly torn between her duties to a man that she does not love but is married to, which is Arthur, and a man that she loves but she cannot be with, which is Lancelot.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: And through her portrayal by Tennyson, like through her eyes, we see Arthur as this sort of, like, perfect god-like figure who can do no wrong. And by extension, Guinevere is someone who can never live up to how godly he is, right? Guinevere in comparison is too human. She's too weak.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: So I think it's really interesting because I think you could definitely read Tennyson's portrayal of Guinevere as a commentary on the roles of Victorian women during this time period.
AMANDA: Yeah. And, like, Tennyson was also the son of a beloved clergyman, so that is something that I think is really interesting, too. Like he may have understood if we do a little bit of biographical criticism, what it's like to try to live up to a entirely beloved figure.
JULIA: So I think that's really interesting. She is, like, forced to kind of, like, uphold these expectations that are entirely unreasonable to her while also dealing with these contradictions of, like, societal expectations. That was something that Victorian women were dealing with as well. Like women couldn't be adulterous because scandal, but it was also an open secret in Victorian society that men were off having affairs and keeping mistresses.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: I think it's super interesting. I probably could go off on Tennyson and the role of Victorian women and his portrayal of Guinevere. If that's something that you're interested in, person listening to this, and also Amanda, there is some work that is done by Nicole Evelina, who wrote a book called The Once and Future Queen, which is all about how the character of Guinevere reflects attitudes towards women during the time in which her story was being written and how it changed to suit the expectations of our audience.
AMANDA: Hell yes. Go, Nicole Evelina.
JULIA: Great read, especially if you find Guinevere's character as interesting as I do. Finally, Amanda, we finally got to this point where we could talk about this. I want to talk about more modern and feminist interpretations of Guinevere, which is not something I often do on this show. I like to give you the mythology as it existed and then let you extrapolate out further about, like, how we can read that in a modern lens. But there are so many authors and particularly authors from the '80s and '90s who were doing a lot of, like, second wave feminism work around Guinevere.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: A lot of these authors did a good job of, like, choosing to take Guinevere's story and then add even more interiority to her, much like Tennyson did. But a lot of these writers end up creating a more fully formed queen, like in this sort of modern feminism movement. It's more of a like, you know, fight the patriarchy, women can do anything sort of model.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.
JULIA: So she is often portrayed as being equal to her husband, and these authors really pivot away hard from the Guinevere who's out there trying to seduce the entirety of the Round Table or who is that damsel in distress who is in need of rescuing, right? And this is very funny because a lot of these authors are coming from this period, like I said, in the '80s and '90s, which is that real like, "Women can have it all," era. The, like—
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: "—Oh, you know, women can be in the workplace and be wonderful mothers and do everything." And you're like, "Okay, but can the men also like, you know, be better fathers?" And they're like, "No, the women can do everything." And you're like, "Oh! We're so close to nailing it. We're so close to understanding."
AMANDA: Yeah, nothing should change structurally, but just through will, you should make it all happen.
JULIA: Exactly, exactly. So a couple of examples that I think are worth mentioning because they really, again, start to emerge during this period. Parke Godwin's novels Fire Lord and Beloved Exile, where Guinevere is a woman of, like, agency and intelligence. She is ruling alongside her husband. And then specifically in the sequel, Beloved Exile, it explores Guinevere after Arthur's death, where she is not cloistered in a nunnery, but is instead attempting to keep the kingdom that she and Arthur built together stable and whole.
AMANDA: Hmm, fascinating.
JULIA: That is pretty cool. And then there is also the Guinevere trilogy that is from Sharan Newman, which explores Guinevere's youth a bit more and allows the audience to see her mature from a young girl into a woman with her own agency.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: And then there is Persia Woolley, who also wrote a trilogy in which Guinevere is, again— once again, this equal to Arthur, who is sort of, like, seen weighing the pros and cons of marrying the king and how it might impact her own people rath— like thinking about her own kingdom rather than just the land as a whole, which I think is really interesting.
AMANDA: Cool. Returning to Lady Macbeth, my dearest partner in greatness, you know?
JULIA: There you go. I mean— but less evil coded, I suppose.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: And then when she finally does accept his hand in marriage, it is as co-ruler rather than, like, wife of the king.
AMANDA: Very feminist literary criticism of them. I love it.
JULIA: So a lot of these adaptations, much like Tennyson's, were directly reflecting the changing realities for women at the time. Like, women more than ever were entering the workplace. There was this desire to be treated equally, both in the workplace and at home. The sort of fading image of the "man of the house" and the rise of, like, equal married relationships.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: And then women during this time period, more broadly, were starting to, like, hold public office for the first time, right? Like the '80s and '90s were seeing people highly publicized winning elections in not only, like, city races, but also, like, state and federal elections.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: While this is like what we would consider now, like, pretty basic feminism, at the time this wasn't mainstream in a way that it is now, right? But the empowered woman was being channeled through this lens of Guinevere, which I think created a different beast entirely from what Geoffrey of Monmouth attempted to give us less than a thousand years ago.
AMANDA: Amazing. And I think it's a great reminder, Julia, that, like, the labor of envisioning futures for ourselves is almost impossible to do without examples to draw from. And so that's one of the reasons why feminist literary critique is so valuable, because you get to look into the past. Imagine and invent based on the shadow of someone who might have been there, that there may have been somebody with the same, you know, desires and pros and cons and pitfalls as you. That's something that I really appreciate about our specific look at, you know, queer feminist views of mythology and folklore in the past. That whether or not there's textual evidence to support Guinevere's sexual liberation or not, us and many, many thinkers and scholars before us have tried to look for, I don't know, evidence, inspiration, hope that maybe the future can be a little bit more liberated, a little more complex than the past has been.
JULIA: And even though these portrayals of Guinevere before this sort of, like, Tennyson age and then the feminism movement around Guinevere, we have to keep in mind that even though that's how her character was being written, there were plenty of women who had agency and interiority and stuff like that during the time where they're like, "Well, she's either a vessel or she's a terrible seductress and there's no in between." You're like, "No, women were full people back then." And it's totally good and fair of us to read into these stories now and realize, "Oh, these were full people."
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: Even if they are fictional in the way that they are in the Arthurian legend.
AMANDA: I mean, like all of us, we are our own little universe and the impact, the trail, the shadows, the impressions that we leave behind are only ever going to point at a fraction of our multitudes. And so I think that we owe it, honestly, to the people who came before us and to ourselves to imagine speculatively, fannishly, right? Returning to the Mary Sue of it all. It matters. And it's something that helps us feel connected to the past, but also, like we're both saying, more open-minded and maybe inventive about the future.
JULIA: Exactly. I love that, Amanda. I'm really excited because I think the next time we visit our Arthurian legend series, we're going to be going around the table that Guinevere was very kind enough to gift back to Arthur. And we're going to see a few of these knights that maybe don't have as many stories as, let's say, Lancelot does, but are still important to Arthurian lore.
AMANDA: Let's go, boys.
JULIA: Let's go boys.
AMANDA: Julia, speaking of these knights, the next time you find your name inscribed in gold on the back of a chair delivered to your king's new bride, remember—
JULIA: Stay creepy.
AMANDA: Stay cool.
JULIA: Later, Satyrs.
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