Lancelot
/We can’t talk about Arthurian Legend without talking about the Most Knight of All Time: Lancelot. We love this complex character, at times a Gary Stu, at times complicated and yearning. But you’ll hopefully come away with a new appreciation of the most well-known knight.
Content Warning: This episode contains conversations about or mentions of adultery, kidnapping, sex, death, violence, mental illness, violence against women, and gun 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
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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 the Spirits Podcast, 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 bet that if I asked most people to name one of the knights of the Round Table, nine times out of ten, they would probably name this specific knight.
AMANDA: Lancelot?
JULIA: Yeah, boy.
AMANDA: That lover boy.
JULIA: Oh, God, we must stop calling men lover boys.
AMANDA: I said it to trigger you because that's what best friends do. And we are watching Love Island. We are doing our Arthurian series. And, Julia, do you want to hear some late-breaking suggestions from Jim?
JULIA: I would love to.
AMANDA: Okay, so we have a few options here from Jim. The one that I like the best, I think, is for this specific episode, King Arthur Series: King Arthur and the Knights of Every Rider self-insert OC.
JULIA: Damn. Yeah, yeah, that's actually fair. That's fair and accurate. I'm trying to remember, I think it's John Steinbeck specifically calls out Malory in Le Morte d'Arthur and calls Lancelot Malory's self-insert character.
AMANDA: Whoa, I didn't expect John Steinbeck to get a hand on the ball in the Arthurian series.
JULIA: You wouldn't think so, but he sure did do that.
AMANDA: Julia, I picture Lancelot as like the platonic ideal of, like, flowing blonde hair, muscly, has a sword, saves some ladies. So I'm excited to learn why he should not be calling himself a lover boy like every other man.
JULIA: Well, Amanda, I really like the way that you described Lancelot. And I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that according to the Arthurian legends, he was like the knight for a very long time, right? He was Arthur's champion. He was his right-hand man, the best knight in the world. Literally, he breaks a curse because the curse is like, "Well, when the best knight in the world shows up, that's when the curse is broken." Lancelot's like, "Sup?"
AMANDA: Oh, it's giving purple, gray eyes. I'm so excited.
JULIA: So he is representative of everything that the Round Table was supposed to stand for, nobility, chivalry, morality, strength, et cetera, et cetera, right? But it's also all of these things that make him, I think, an incredibly tragic figure as well. Because he has one flaw, and that flaw is what ends up defining him and being not only his downfall, but the downfall of pretty much the entirety of Arthur's court.
AMANDA: Oh, shit.
JULIA: So let's get into Lancelot, baby. We are going to spend a lot of time talking about Lancelot because, especially compared to a lot of the other knights who kind of come across as a little bit, like, basic, a little one note, unless you're really digging into their stories. Lancelot is a incredibly complicated figure. Like I said, he is incredibly loyal to Arthur, but also he falls in love with Arthur's wife and betrays him. His love for Guinevere is pure. It is the embodiment of courtly love. But it is also plain and simple adultery. And it is the thing that eventually makes Lancelot unworthy of being the knight to find the Holy Grail.
AMANDA: Damn.
JULIA: As we have been discovering through this entire Arthurian series, various authors have various different takes on him. And as a result, we get this really extremely compelling figure who is full of contradictions and messiness and yearning. Even like in the earliest of his stories.
AMANDA: Even before he meets Guinevere?
JULIA: Yes, yes. Even before he meets Guinevere, and even before writers are starting to write him being in love with Guinevere.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: He is already a sort of interesting and complicated figure.
AMANDA: Okay.
JULIA: So let's, as we always do, start at the beginning with where he came from in terms of, like, the historic texts, right? So, much like when we were discussing the Round Table in the previous episode we did in the series, Lancelot did not appear in Geoffrey of Monmouth's work, which is, again, kind of surprising given how important he becomes to later Arthurian canon. But, no, Lancelot was actually first written about a few decades after Geoffrey of Monmouth's writing, and was first introduced by a familiar name at this point in the series, Chrétien de Troyes, in 1170.
AMANDA: Mm-hmm.
JULIA: So as you can probably tell from Chrétien de Troyes name, he's a French writer, and the French writers loved Lancelot. Because I think the French writers in particular are the ones that sort of embraced the big R, Romance of the Arthurian legends and the Arthurian series, which is why his establishment of being like the lover of Guinevere is so important, right?
AMANDA: Mm-hmm.
JULIA: What's interesting, though, is he really only gets a sort of brief mention in the first of de Troyes' writing. So he is just simply listed among some of the knights that are a part of Arthur's court.
AMANDA: Really?
JULIA: A really passing mention, but in this passing mention, something is already, like, very quickly established about him. In this list of knights, Lancelot is listed third. So it is showing how high in the ranks he is, and so it suggests that he is already quite close to Arthur. He is a confidant for Arthur. He is someone that Arthur can put his trust into, which the irony is not lost on any of us, I think.
AMANDA: Julia, I'm gonna have to be honest with you. I cannot escape thoughts of Summer House and Kyle and Amanda and Ciara and West as we're talking about Lancelot betraying his BFF here.
JULIA: Oh, no! Okay, all right, all right, fine, fine. Oh, God, I don't want to think—
AMANDA: Listen, out there, algorithm, do me a solid. If you are watching Summer House and Love Island and also were a crystal kid and like Greek myths or are gay, this is your podcast.
JULIA: That means Kyle's King Arthur, no.
AMANDA: No, no, no, no, no, no. It doesn't have to be perfect.
JULIA: Okay.
AMANDA: I think Sierra's King Arthur in this situation.
JULIA: Fair. Fair, girl, fair. All right, so Lancelot later in 1176, de Troyes mentions him, again, only briefly again, and mentions that he is one of the knights that is defeated in a jousting match against the hero of the story, who is a knight named Kluge.
AMANDA: Never heard of him.
JULIA: Well, he's not really important. He's like a de Troyes, like, OC that, like, he kind of slips in there, and then that's really all we get from him there.
AMANDA: I do like to imagine de Troyes just, like, roasting like shitheads in his life where he's like, "Oh, yeah, that guy who definitely a— you know, was adulterous with someone else's wife, that's gonna be a Lancelot in this situation. That guy who lost spectacularly, Lancelot."
JULIA: But he does like Lancelot. So, again, this is another brief description, but it's clear that de Troyes likes writing about Lancelot because a few years later, he makes him the main character of this own poetic work, which is called Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart.
AMANDA: The Carte, like C-A-R-T-E?
JULIA: C-A-R-T.
AMANDA: What does it mean?
JULIA: If you'll remember going back to our Guinevere episode, we mentioned this story a little bit briefly there, but it's— essentially, Guinevere gets kidnapped by the evil Malagant, and then Lancelot sets out to rescue her. And it is referring to the fact that as one of the trials that Lancelot has to go through in order to free Guinevere, he has to ride on a cart, which is seen as, like, unseemly or, like, not very manly of him, like rather than riding his own horse in, right?
AMANDA: Oh.
JULIA: Even though this is the first substantial appearance of Lancelot in the fiction that we have. So we've had two passing mentions of Lancelot at this point, right? This is the first appearance of the affair between Guinevere and Lancelot and it immediately establishes it. Like we get no real, like, buildup to it or anything. It's like already happening essentially.
AMANDA: So Lancelot was like, in the first mention, a guy who existed, but guy number three.
JULIA: Mm-hmm.
AMANDA: In the second mention, a guy who was like in an important jousting tournament and lost.
JULIA: Mm-hmm.
AMANDA: And then in the third mention, the guy with, you know, the queen as the side piece.
JULIA: Yes, a knight and a lover of the queen.
AMANDA: Wow. Also, if I were to translate the Knight of the Cart into English now, I might call him the sidecar knight, which has some very, I think, prudent metaphor for being the queen's sidecar.
JULIA: He's just chillin' on a cart that's drawn by a donkey, probably. And you can see why that's like somewhat of a challenge for him as a very, like, masculine romantic figure.
AMANDA: Fair.
JULIA: Now the only issue, I suppose, from our, like, worldbuilding perspective is that this story exists in isolation. So we as the audience don't get to see sort of what ripple effects the affair that is happening has on Arthur's reign or the greater consequences of the affair. We just know that it's happening.
AMANDA: Mm-hmm.
JULIA: de Troyes is just like, "And they're in love." And you're like, "That seems like it would be a problem." He's like, "Don't worry about it. That's okay." So de Troyes doesn't give us much more about Lancelot in his writings, but he does give us enough that other authors sort of take these little nuggets and run with them.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: There's a little bit of a timeline kerfuffle, I'll say. Around the time that de Troyes started writing about Lancelot, there was another author that started writing about Lancelot. And this was a guy named Ulrich von Zatzikhoven.
AMANDA: Hmm. Doesn't sound French to me.
JULIA: Certainly wasn't, not French this time. Now, this is another writer that talks about Lancelot. We'll talk a little bit more about him when we're discussing the, like, mythological origins of Lancelot. He is writing stories about Lancelot as an adult, where Lancelot's character does not fall in love with Guinevere.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: You're gonna remember Ulrich's version of the story probably from our Guinevere episode, because this is the one where he's like, "He was raised in the fairy realm, in the land, under the sea, or like under the water or the lake or what have you. And he falls in love with a fairy princess, and then he goes back into the real world and then Guinevere tries to seduce him." And he has to be like, "No, no, no, I can't because I'm in love with someone else," even though the fairy princess made him promise that he wouldn't say that he was in love with someone else.
AMANDA: Such a lover boy, Julia, that he broke his promise and got himself really fairy cursed.
JULIA: So what is interesting is that it is believed by scholars that Ulrich wrote this poem, which is called Lanzelet, not Lancelot, but the translation's pretty much the same, before de Troyes wrote his Lancelot, Knight of the Cart poem.
AMANDA: Ooh.
JULIA: Ulrich is giving us this background on Lancelot, but not the affair. And then de Troyes kind of swoops in and goes, "Bam, he's been having an affair with Guinevere this whole time."
AMANDA: de Troyes is like, "You know what's sexier for a self-insert than being, you know, raised and loved by a fairy? Loving the queen."
JULIA: Loving the queen. What's also really funny is Ulrich's version of Lancelot was not very well received at the time it was written.
AMANDA: Oh, really?
JULIA: It was called, "Insignificant, mediocre, shallow, and morally degenerate."
AMANDA: Whoa.
JULIA: Harsh.
AMANDA: I mean, I guess it involves as it's— it was the romantasy of the day, so people are gonna judge it.
JULIA: Nowadays, scholars think that Ulrich's version of Lancelot is fairly important. It preserves a different type of Lancelot than the de Troyes version of Lancelot. It's one that is more focused on, like, stability that reflects a desire for political stability at the time of telling.
AMANDA: Mm-hmm.
JULIA: And so he is like very much more so, even than de Troyes' Lancelot, this embodiment of what we expect the Knight of the Round Table to be. He is realistic, despite all the fairy stuff, but also the epitome of courtly manner.
AMANDA: Mm-hmm.
JULIA: So going back to who else is writing about Lancelot at this time, we then have the Vulgate cycle, which gives us more information about Lancelot and specifically how he is tied to the fate of Arthur, and specifically Arthur's death, and also Lancelot's death. So the Vulgate cycle sort of goes down that, like— and we'll talk a lot more about this at the end because there's like a larger story arc to this, but essentially the Vulgate cycle is like after Arthur's death, Mordred's two sons are causing trouble for all of the Britons who remained— Britons with a— an O, that remained loyal to Arthur. And here Lancelot is shown battling against the sons of Mordred and putting down these rebellions that they're leading. And the implication here is like, yes, Lancelot is, like, treacherous in the story. But after Arthur's death, he is trying to make up for the fact by supporting the legacy that Arthur left behind.
AMANDA: Mm-hmm.
JULIA: After the rebellions are squashed, Lancelot eventually leaves knighthood behind and either becomes a hermit or becomes a monk.
AMANDA: Two professions that frankly, I choose back then if I could.
JULIA: And then after some time, dies of illness. And then after the Vulgate cycle, more or less, this becomes like the canonical ending to Lancelot's story, though as—
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: —you can hear from me describing it, there's a couple of different variations.
AMANDA: Indeed.
JULIA: So those are the literary origins. And I know that this sort of leads to the discussion of his mythological fate, but we're gonna circle back now and talk about the mythological origins, which is starting with his birth. According to a couple of different sources, this is mainly from the Vulgate cycle. Lancelot is said to be the son of a man named King Ban and his wife Elaine. Now, there's a couple of Elaines, and I'm not gonna touch on them too much in this.
AMANDA: I'm astonished, Julia, that Elaine was a name that was present before a thousand CE.
JULIA: Yeah. Yep.
AMANDA: It feels so '90s-coded because of Seinfeld, but like obviously, there were Elaines, you know, many, many generations before that.
JULIA: Yeah. Just remember, Tiffany, also kind of a ancient name.
AMANDA: True.
JULIA: So there's a couple of Elaines. We're actually gonna— next episode is gonna be the Elaines episode, so get ready for that.
AMANDA: Good.
JULIA: Elaine and King Ban. King Ban eventually dies, which is of grief, because a rival king burns down his castle. It's a whole thing. It's a whole situation.
AMANDA: Okay, sure.
JULIA: Queen Elaine leaves baby Lancelot near a lake, because she's like, "I don't know what I'm doing with my life now." And there he is found by the Lady of the Lake, who then goes on to take the baby in and raise him as her own. So very much a, like, surrogate foster mother situation here.
AMANDA: Mm-hmm.
JULIA: Now, according to de Troyes and Ulrich, this Lady of the Lake is also a fairy queen, and so she is the one that takes him down to the enchanted realm under the sea, where he is raised until he is 15. After which he basically asks to be allowed to return to the mortal world in order to earn honor for himself.
AMANDA: Okay.
JULIA: A thing that men back then loved to do.
AMANDA: Do we think the fairies were teaching him the ways of human honor or is part of this that, like, he is so pure of heart that, like, the innate humanity or like God's, you know, guidance was, like, in him all along?
JULIA: Probably a mix of both.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: Honestly. Yeah. These are not, like, fae fairies—
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: —in the sense that we think of like, those trickster-y kind of fae. Just he's surrounded by a lot of hot, magical women.
AMANDA: You know, Julia, the dream for all of us, frankly. Certainly my dream at 15.
JULIA: So when he eventually returns back home/to the mortal world, he becomes Arthur's trusted companion and a knight of the Round Table. There is a situation which he goes on a quest to prove himself to become a knight of the Round Table, but we'll talk about that when we get to his more expanded stories.
AMANDA: Mm-hmm.
JULIA: From there, he takes over the role of the queen's champion from Gawain, and that is how the two sort of fall in love and begin their affair.
AMANDA: The original of The Bodyguard.
JULIA: Mm-hmm, the original of The Bodyguard.
AMANDA: Wow.
JULIA: The Knight-errant. What a classic one. Moving on to sort of, like, the Vulgate cycle, again, talking about his origins within these stories. Lancelot here is known as Lancelot du Lac, which is of the lake, which is a reference to him being raised by the Lady of the Lake. Now, confusingly, it is also provided by the Vulgate cycle that his baptismal name is Galahad.
AMANDA: Oh, that's a different guy.
JULIA: It is a different guy. You'll find out more about that different guy in a second. He's named Galahad because he's named after the first Christian king of Wales.
AMANDA: Oh. Sure.
JULIA: And then he is called Lancelot after his grandfather, who's also named Lancelot.
AMANDA: Okay.
JULIA: Now, in this story, it is claimed that Lancelot loved Guinevere from the moment that he saw her, and that his good friend and possible lover, who we've talked about in previous episodes, Galehault, was the one that arranged the first meeting between them.
AMANDA: Such a gay behavior. Derogatory.
JULIA: Yep, fair. The Vulgate cycle also rehashes that story of Lancelot of the Cart, Lancelot saving Guinevere from being kidnapped. And then there's also the story where, like, we get the Knight of the Cart name from. So in order to save Guinevere from Malagant, he has to ride in a cart. Again, that's like a shameful act compared to riding his horse in. And he has to cross a sword bridge, and he has to defeat Malagant. And there's a whole thing, too, where he's got to defeat like the son of the guy whose name you really liked, which is Bagdemagus.
AMANDA: Hmm. So good.
JULIA: And he has to do that several times because Bagdemagus keeps being like, "Please don't kill my son." And Lancelot's like, "Okay." And then like a week later, they're like, "You have to fight my son again." And then he does, and then he's about to kill him. He's like, "Please don't kill my son."
AMANDA: Oh.
JULIA: So eventually, though, he breaks into the castle of Malagant and he gets past these iron bars that are in her window so that he can spend the night with her. But in the process, he cuts himself and he drips blood on her sheets. Now, when the blood is discovered in her bed the next morning, Malagant accuses Guinevere of having slept with another knight, and so Lancelot kind of has to step in and defend her honor.
AMANDA: Hmm, very honorable.
JULIA: Later, in a separate story, he is tricked into thinking that he is sleeping with Guinevere. But instead sleeps with the daughter of King Pelles of Corbenic. Can you guess what his daughter's name is, Amanda?
AMANDA: Elaine?
JULIA: It is also Elaine.
AMANDA: Yeah!
JULIA: Again, we're gonna talk about all the Elaines—
AMANDA: Yes!
JULIA: —in a future episode. There's a third Elaine, Amanda.
AMANDA: Yes.
JULIA: I'm not gonna talk about her in this episode, but there is a third Elaine.
AMANDA: Julia, I just had the experience of like when you're watching a movie for children and you put the clues together. It gave me all the clues and yet the satisfaction was still there.
JULIA: Aw. That's really nice.
AMANDA: I love you.
JULIA: Okay. So he sleeps with this woman, Elaine. From this union, he fathers a son named Galahad.
AMANDA: Yeah. Don't you love how people get pregnant immediately in folklore?
JULIA: Immediately. First try every time. This is the famous Galahad that you said, "That's another guy's name." That's his son.
AMANDA: Yo.
JULIA: And Galahad becomes important because Galahad later on, after Lancelot fails the Holy Grail quest, he's the one that manages to do the Holy Grail quest.
AMANDA: Whoa. I mean, ain't that parenting? You fail and your kid succeeds, hopefully.
JULIA: So he has this son with this woman Elaine, who is not Guinevere. Guinevere discovers this and becomes furious. Galahad and Lancelot is such a lover boy that he is so upset that Guinevere is mad at him that he goes mad and just starts wandering around the forests of England for, like, several months.
AMANDA: I do kind of wish that men did that instead of buying guns. I would just like to put that forward as an option. Just wander the woods, touch some grass.
JULIA: Just go mad, wander the woods, and eventually you'll come across someone who has the Holy Grail, who then cures you of your madness. I think that one can do.
AMANDA: There it is.
JULIA: The love of Guinevere is one of those things that is always going to be, no matter what story we're telling, the fall of Lancelot. So there is this whole issue as well, in which Lancelot is pretty much responsible for the war that leads to Arthur's death, both in the Vulgate cycle and Malory touch on these things. Mainly— and we'll get more into the details later, but mainly, this has to do with the fact that Lancelot, in the course of trying to save Guinevere, slays a knight named Sir Gareth, who is the favorite brother of his fellow knight Gawain. They're all G's, I think. All of Gawain's brothers are G's.
AMANDA: I was just thinking that, yeah.
JULIA: Now Gawain, who loved Lancelot like a brother, was, like, very, like, devoted to him, cannot forgive Lancelot for this killing, and then forces, or at least, pressures Arthur to lay siege on Lancelot's castle, which we will talk a little bit more about later in the episode. But this is essentially what gives Mordred the opportunity to attempt a usurption while Arthur is away, which is what leads to Arthur's final battle and eventual death, and/or healing/resurrection on the island of Babylon.
AMANDA: Epilogue, TBD.
JULIA: Now, Lancelot is in a whole mess of stories when it comes to Arthurian legend, so central to the plots of so many tales that I feel like we have barely scratched the surface of all the stories that we're gonna tell about him. And we'll get to even more of those when we get back from our refill.
AMANDA: Let's go.
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JULIA: And now, let's get back to the show.
[theme]
JULIA: Amanda, we are back, and there are a couple of cocktails out there that have been named after Lancelot, which is not surprising given the fact that he is such an influential figure, not only in Arthurian myth, but in like he's an important literary figure as well, right? He's even like a pop culture figure.
AMANDA: Indeed. He stands in for so much. He's a symbol.
JULIA: Yes, exactly. So the cocktail that I bring to you today was originally crafted by Murph Reeves for the bar Sylvain in New Orleans and then it was printed in Imbibe Magazine all the way back in 2011.
AMANDA: Ooh.
JULIA: And it is called Lancelot's Deception. Awesome name.
AMANDA: Right?
JULIA: Great cocktail.
AMANDA: I can't get over Murf Reeves. That's like a non-binary hottie of my dreams.
JULIA: You know how you can tell it's even more of a non-binary name, Amanda?
AMANDA: How?
JULIA: Murf is spelled M-U-R-F.
AMANDA: Whoa! Didn't see that coming.
JULIA: So this cocktail is part Geneva, which is like a juniper liqueur from the Netherlands and Belgium. It is like sort of a cross between gin and whiskey, is how I would describe it. It's also part nice botanical gin, yellow chartreuse, lime juice, rhubarb bitters. And then before you sort of pour the cocktail into the glass, you give the glass a rinse with an Italian amara.
AMANDA: This is perhaps top five most Julia cocktails I have ever identified.
JULIA: Pretty good, pretty good. So bitter, complex, botanical, it's a real banger of a drink, for sure.
AMANDA: Yum. Someone page Professor Matthew Gabriele. He would love this, our sibling over at American Medieval.
JULIA: To start with Lancelot's sort of foundational and most well-known stories, we're gonna rewind a bit back to when he was not yet a knight of the Round Table, but he was desiring to prove himself and to make a name for himself, to bring honor to his name, you know?
AMANDA: During his fairy rumspringa.
JULIA: Exactly. So this is from the Vulgate cycle. So it is after he left the kingdom under the sea to return to the mortal world. He hears about Arthur putting together his kingdom and desires to give himself a task that can prove his knighthood to the king.
AMANDA: Mm-hmm.
JULIA: So he hears a tale of a castle that is known as Joyous Guard.
AMANDA: Mm-hmm.
JULIA: Now, this belonged to a Saxon allied king named King Brandin of the Isles.
AMANDA: Incredible. Brandon is as a name what iPhone face is to movies. Like I just— I— again, I know it is ancient, and yet I cannot not picture a 30-year-old Brandon here in 2026.
JULIA: To be fair, it is spelled B-R-A-N-D-I-N.
AMANDA: Oh. Okay.
JULIA: Brandin.
AMANDA: Okay.
JULIA: This is a stronghold for another king, and not only that, it is also magically enchanted to even better protect itself. It is enchanted so that any knight who wished to enter had to fight two sets of 10 knights, one set at each of these two gates.
AMANDA: Oh, shit.
JULIA: He had to defeat them one by one until all of them were defeated, then he could enter. But once he entered, he would have to either kill the ruler or stay in the castle for 40 days before the enchantment on the castle could be lifted and the people freed from the king's rule. Before Lancelot even shows up, it is already rumored that many knights had attempted this before Lancelot, and that their names were written on gravestones within the inner wall of the castle. And it was said that their heads rested next to each gravestone.
AMANDA: Do you think this is why we have, like, hot dog and wing eating challenges, Julia?
JULIA: Say more.
AMANDA: Is this what we're doing now? The just, like, impossible task and then, like, engraving your name on the plaque of the person who got to conquer it. Is that just what we're doing now that we're not doing hand-to-hand warfare in, at least, our part of the world?
JULIA: No, I think this is the equivalent of the people who do, like, the ultra-marathons.
AMANDA: Oh, yeah.
JULIA: We'll get there eventually, I'm sure. I'm sure. He has to, again, defeat these one-on-one until he can finally enter. And like I said, it was rumored that all these knights tried it before them. There's a bunch of gravestones that are within the inner wall of the castle. And then it was said that the heads of the knights who attempted it were next to the gravestones. In actuality, that wasn't true. It was that Brandin of the Isles was actually imprisoning the knights who attempted the challenge rather than killing them outright.
AMANDA: Oh, shit.
JULIA: And like later, when obviously Lancelot achieves this goal, he's able to free a bunch of these knights.
AMANDA: Damn.
JULIA: So Lancelot shows up and is able to defeat the 20 knights that are thrown in his path, partially with the help of the magical shields that were granted to him by his foster mother, the Lady of the Lake.
AMANDA: Mm-hmm.
JULIA: But seeing that his knights are being defeated, Brandin of the Isles flees the stronghold before Lancelot can like find him and kill him. Now, Lancelot, not realizing that he had to stay in the castle for 40 days in order to lift the curse, kept leaving to go search out the missing ruler, which led to sort of the frustration and I'd say, restlessness of the residents of the castle, because each time he left, it would break the 40-day cycle and it would start all over again when he would return.
AMANDA: Bummer.
JULIA: So instead, Lancelot's like, "I don't want to just, like, stay here for 40 days. I do want to kill this guy, but I can't find him." So instead, he eventually, like, goes into the depths of the castle, which is where he finds all of these knights imprisoned, but he also manages to find a key that breaks the enchantment and frees the residents.
AMANDA: Well, that's handy.
JULIA: Extremely useful. Very fairy tale-coded.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: So Lancelot then becomes Lord of this castle. He renames it Joyous Guard.
AMANDA: Nice.
JULIA: And as he is kind of, like, familiarizing himself with his new castle, he comes across a tomb in, like, the bowels of the castle. And the tomb already has his name inscribed on it. So this is in— you're saying that like, "Oh, no, terrible." But basically what this is telling Lancelot is like, "Oh, this is meant to be my castle and this is gonna be my final resting place. Got it."
AMANDA: I see. I see the, like— I see the, you know, fatality of it in a, like, literary fate way, but also, oh, baby, would that creep me out?
JULIA: Yeah, that's fair, that's fair. He's just like, "Ah, God has told me that this is meant to be my place."
AMANDA: Oh, good. Found the house.
JULIA: So here is another story. This is kind of, like, a little courting story about Lancelot and Guinevere, and also, like, is a story that sort of drives home how cool and good Lancelot is, which is most of his stories, honestly.
AMANDA: That would be the AO3 tag, Julia. Lancelot is cool and good.
JULIA: Lancelot, cool and good. So many of them are just like, "And here's Lancelot, the best of all knights."
AMANDA: Mm-hmm.
JULIA: That's it. That's it. "Except for the adultery thing, but—"
AMANDA: Shh.
JULIA: "—don't worry about that until later."
AMANDA: Shh, shh, shh.
JULIA: It is said that Lancelot in his journeys, because remember, the knights are always going on journeys because Arthur, every time he had a feast, was like,
Tell me about your brave deeds and the wonders of the world."
AMANDA: Mm-hmm.
JULIA: In some versions of the story, both of these tales are related to his Holy Grail quest that he goes on. Sometimes they're separated out, depending on the author. Lancelot, in his journeys, came to a forest that was known as the Forest of No Return.
AMANDA: Well, Lancelot, if I— not the victim blame, but did you go into the forest knowing that that was the name?
JULIA: Yeah, yeah, he did. So this is a forest, had many wonders, was super magical, and it was particularly super magical and had this name because it had been made famous by Morgan le Fay because she was disappointed by a knight that she was in love with. Basically, she's like, "I love you." And he's like, "I don't think I feel the same way." And she's like, "You know what, guy?"
AMANDA: Mm-hmm.
JULIA: "Fuck you." And so created this forest or enchanted this forest so that any knight that was unfaithful in love would never be able to leave it.
AMANDA: Fucking sick.
JULIA: It was also said that a lot of people got trapped there. And while they were trapped there, they were placed under a spell, men and women alike, to dance in a never-ending carol. Now, a carol, in case you're unfamiliar with it, is basically like a chain or circular dance that was very popular during the medieval period. And so it's like one of those because you're dancing in a circle, there's no beginning and no end.
AMANDA: Yikers, man.
JULIA: So these people could not stop dancing until they were released from the curse by—
AMANDA: Lancelot.
JULIA: They didn't explicitly say it had to be Lancelot. It was like, "This curse will be broken when the best knight in the world joins the dancing."
AMANDA: Ah.
JULIA: While they are kind of stuck in this dance, they are also trapped outside the flow of time. So they are dancing and dancing and dancing, but they never get any older or require any food or drink.
AMANDA: That's really fae-coded to me.
JULIA: Yes. Well, Morgan le Fay.
AMANDA: Mm-hmm.
JULIA: It's in the name.
AMANDA: Mm-hmm.
JULIA: It's in the name, baby. Lancelot arrives in this forest, he sees this group dancing, and having loved Guinevere and never committing an offense against love against her, is able to resist the curse.
AMANDA: Mm-hmm.
JULIA: Being, unsurprisingly, the best knight in the world, he is able to join the dance of his own free will and break the spell on the dancers and on the forest itself.
AMANDA: It really is so interesting how his, like, total fidelity to like all of the standards of courtly love and chivalry and knighthood is, like, inextricably linked like a double helix to this tragic love that he can either never act on or that will betray all of his other principles.
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: Good character. Good character.
JULIA: Good character. We made some good characters early on. Let's say that.
AMANDA: Mm-hmm.
JULIA: Also in this forest— well, actually, before I get to that, also what's going on here is Morgan le Fay is pissed that this whole like situation that she built has now been broken by Lancelot. And because her magic didn't work on him to, like, trap him in this forest, she gives him a ring that essentially, like, keeps him captive in her household for, like, a year.
AMANDA: And he doesn't take it off?
JULIA: Well, he doesn't— I don't think he can. The curse gets broken later.
AMANDA: Ah.
JULIA: This is important later. Remember this time that he spends with Morgan le Fay.
AMANDA: Okay.
JULIA: Also in this forest, though, before this goes down with Morgan le Fay, there is a man who's known as Gwenbaus, who is actually Lancelot's uncle, who had met a woman in the forest who was like the princess of this forest before it was enchanted, and chose to stay with her, which is kind of like a fun, little twist on the curse that Morgan le Fay placed on the land, right?
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: He was, like, so dedicated that he chose to stay in this cursed forest with his love.
AMANDA: Totally.
JULIA: So he was referred to in the stories as a "wise clerk," but also he had some sort of like magical ability. The magical ability was good. It wasn't, like, Merlin levels or Morgan le Fay levels of magic, but he, like, enchanted a couple of interesting objects. One of these is a chess board, which he made for his love. Now, it was made with gold and silver pieces. And basically, the way that it worked was when anyone began to move the pieces on one side, the opposing pieces would move automatically and soon checkmate the other player.
AMANDA: It's a computer. Cool.
JULIA: It was just an early, like, game of chess on a computer, essentially. So cool.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: However, unsurprisingly, Lancelot, being so good at everything, manages to best the magical board and it cannot put him in checkmate.
AMANDA: Oh, Gary Stu.
JULIA: As a result, he is gifted the board and eventually, he gives it to Guinevere as a gift himself because Guinevere was known to love and be quite skilled at chess.
AMANDA: Oh, love a smarty hottie. Go Gwen.
JULIA: Yeah, exactly. Those are a couple of fun ones, but now we're gonna get into the two most important stories related to Lancelot. The first is the attempt to find the Holy Grail. The second is the discovery of his affair with Guinevere. So, as I mentioned before, Lancelot is one of the knights who is deemed worthy enough to try and hunt down the Holy Grail. A lot of stuff that happens on this quest, he gets tricked into sleeping with that woman, like I mentioned before.
AMANDA: Mm-hmm.
JULIA: He fights a dragon at one point. He is imprisoned by Morgan le Fay for a bit, as we talked about. He even finds like the head of his grandfather, also named Lancelot, keep in mind, boiling in a fountain and then returns it to the still bleeding body in order to put him at peace.
AMANDA: Yikes.
JULIA: So there's some wild stuff in there going on.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: Eventually, according to Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, he makes it all of the way to the chamber that the Holy Grail is located in. But as he is about to cross over the threshold into the chamber, he loses control of his bodily senses and he falls into a sleep almost like death.
AMANDA: Oh, shit.
JULIA: Here's how Malory tells it, "Right so entered he into the chamber and came toward the table of silver. And when he came nigh, he felt a breath, that he him thought it was intermeddled with fire, which smote him so sore in the visage that him thought it burnt his visage. And therewith he fell to the earth and had no power to arise, as he was so araged that had lost the power of his body, and his hearing and his seeing. Then felt he many hands about him, which took him up and bare him out the chamber door without any amending of his swoon and left him there, seemingly dead to all people."
AMANDA: Shit. That is, like, decisive.
JULIA: Intense, right? So he's laying there and he is in this death-like sleep for 24 days. And then he awakens on the 25th day to find that there are a bunch of people that he doesn't recognize, standing around him.
AMANDA: Oh, shit.
JULIA: They ask what he has seen while he has been sleeping and he responds again, according to Malory, "I have seen, said he, so great marvels that no tongue may tell, and more than any heart can think, and had not my sin been here afore me, I had seen much more."
AMANDA: Whoa, that's beautiful prose.
JULIA: Yeah. So he's like, "I saw a lot of shit, and I think if I hadn't sinned so much, I would have seen even more."
AMANDA: No kidding.
JULIA: So he asks them how long he's been asleep, and they tell him it's been 24 days, to which, quote—
AMANDA: Oh, nuts, man. That's a long time.
JULIA: He says, "Lancelot thought it was punishment for the four and 20 that he had been a sinner, "Wherefore our Lord put him in penance four and twenty days and nights." So he's like, "Oh, I was asleep for 24 days, because that was a day for each year that I was a sinner."
AMANDA: Whoa.
JULIA: So Lancelot knows that at this point he isn't meant to be the one to retrieve the grail. And so he returns back to Arthur's court. And while he knows like, "God wanted me to repent." You know, that's why he told me I couldn't go get the grail. It's why he put me asleep for all these days, et cetera, et cetera. He returns to the court and he knows he has to repent. But then he sees Guinevere, and his love for her takes over any godly desire to repent, "Then, as the book saith, Sir Lancelot began to resort unto Queen Guinevere again. And forgat the promise and the perfection that he made in the quest. For, as the book saith, had not Sir Launcelot been in his privy thoughts and his mind so set inwardly to the queen, as he was in seeming outward to God, there had no knight passed him in the quest for the grail, but ever his thoughts were privily on the queen, and so they loved together more hotter than they did to forehand, and had such privy droughts together, so that many in court spake of it, and especially Sir Agravain, Sir Gawain's brother, for he was ever open-mouthed."
AMANDA: Oh, God.
JULIA: Damn, dude.
AMANDA: Beautiful. It's like this is the definition of tragedy, right? The thing that makes you strong is the thing that is your downfall.
JULIA: Like it's so romantic, but it's also like they're being critical of Lancelot here. They're saying, like, if he could have just, like, given up his love for this woman who he shouldn't be loving in the first place, he would have achieved what no other knight was able to achieve.
AMANDA: Yeah, man.
JULIA: And then I also like that it was like, "And then they kept doing what they were doing," and a lot of the knights were gossiping about it.
AMANDA: Including that one guy whose mouth was just agape.
JULIA: Including Gawain's brother, who ends up dying because he talks shit about Lancelot. Just saying. So this actually leads really nicely to the discovery of the affair, right? So depending on the source, there are various ways in which it comes out that the two are having an affair. But as I suggested, basically a variety of knights tried to inform Arthur that it's happening. But he just like— he doesn't want to believe it. He will not believe it. And it continues on for, like,
a fairly substantial time according to the writings. He doesn't believe it until he sees the paintings.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: Now, remember how it was like, oh, Lancelot imprisoned by Morgan le Fay for a bit.
AMANDA: Oh, no.
JULIA: While he was imprisoned in Morgan le Fay's castle, he did a series of paintings of his love for Guinevere.
AMANDA: Yikes!
JULIA: Yikes. Now Morgan le Fay, again, tends to be a trickster figure in these stories, is kind of like mixing things up. Also, in some tales, she is like said to be in love with Lancelot. And when he denies her, that's when she goes to Arthur about the affair, right?
AMANDA: Mm-hmm.
JULIA: And so she shows him the paintings. Arthur is pissed. Lancelot flees at the discovery. And Arthur, for her treachery, says that Guinevere is to be burned at the stake.
AMANDA: Boofed.
JULIA: Boofed, indeed. At this point, Lancelot has gone through so much for his love. He's not gonna let her get burned at the stake. That's not gonna happen.
AMANDA: No. He's like, "I've lost the Holy Grail and the respect of my king."
JULIA: Exactly.
AMANDA: "What— you know, we gotta make this worth it."
JULIA: So Lancelot returns back to Arthur's court to rescue her, and in the process, kills several knights, including three of Gawain's brothers.
AMANDA: Yo. Oh, no.
JULIA: Including the one that was his favorite.
AMANDA: Yep.
JULIA: So at that point, he grabs Guinevere, they return together to Joyous Guard, and they hide out in the stronghold. Arthur and Gawain then pursue them and they lay siege on the castle, but they are unable to penetrate the walls. Meanwhile, as I mentioned earlier, this gives Mordred the opportunity to try and overthrow Arthur's rule. In some cases, he's like— legit is like, "Arthur died, actually. Arthur died while he's trying to lay siege on Lancelot, and so now I'm king."
AMANDA: "Happily. I'm right here."
JULIA: And people are like, "I guess. Sure." Or in general, he's just like, "Well, Arthur's not here, so I'm the king now." And people are like, "Uh, okay." When Arthur finds out about this, he ends the siege on Lancelot's castle in order to return to his court and deal with Mordred's betrayal. So he's just being like betrayed all over the place from his perspective. What happens is Gawain does, eventually, send Lancelot a letter, sort of offering him forgiveness for killing his brothers. Mostly, he sends him this letter because he and Lancelot do fight during the siege, and while Lancelot injures Gawain but doesn't, like, kill him outright. That injury weeks later, when Gawain has traveled back to Arthur's court with him, does end up killing him. So he kind of, like, writes him this deathbed apology— or not apology, but a letter of forgiveness to Lancelot. And Lancelot is like, "Shit, Gawain, you know, forgave me. I should go be there to support Arthur in this battle against Mordred." And so Lancelot receives the letter, rushes to help Arthur with his own army, but arrives too late after Arthur's final battle and presumably his death.
AMANDA: Damn.
JULIA: From here, he has two fates that are sort of depending on the story that's being told. This is the, like, hermit versus monk tale, right?
AMANDA: Mm-hmm.
JULIA: So in one, after fighting off the sons of Mordred and their followers as part of his atonement to Arthur, he abandons society with Guinevere having cloistered herself in a nunnery. He's like, "Well, I'm not with my beloved anymore. I should atone for my sins. I'm just going to, like, cloister myself away as well." Eventually, he dies of illness several years later, and his body is brought back to Joyous Guard, where, as we know, he already has his resting place. What you don't know at this point, Amanda, though, is his buddy, his companion, Galehault, had died a few years before, and he had made a promise that he and Galehault would be buried together.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: And so he is buried alongside Galehault in his tomb.
AMANDA: Just guys being pals. Don't worry about it.
JULIA: Just boys being boys, right?
AMANDA: Mm-hmm.
JULIA: Now, however, in Le Morte d'Arthur, Lancelot seeks Guinevere out one last time and tries to essentially steal her away from the nunnery so that they could be together. And Guinevere says, "Absolutely not. I am trying to atone for my sins. Going with you after Arthur's death would be just completely wrong. And I never want to see your face again," essentially. She straight up says, "I never want to see your face again while I'm still living."
AMANDA: Damn.
JULIA: He even, like, tries to go in for one last kiss. She's like, "Nah, nah, nah. That's not gonna happen."
AMANDA: Slags him off.
JULIA: So seeing that she is taking a life of penitence, Lancelot himself becomes a monk. And then later he, like, has this dream that Guinevere is gonna die. And so he, like, races out of his monastery to try to get there in time to see her before she dies. And Guinevere was like, "No, I made a promise that I wasn't gonna see you while I was still alive." And so straight up just, like, dies before Lancelot could get there.
AMANDA: Damn.
JULIA: But then Lancelot ends up being the one that, like, gives her last rights over her body, and then Lancelot, grieving his love, grows ill, and then dies six weeks after Guinevere, and he is taken back to France once again to be buried at Joyous Guard.
AMANDA: I think it's really interesting that, you know, recommitting themselves to love for God as the highest love above mortal love is something that both of them turn to in different iterations of the story.
JULIA: Yes, and a lot of it has to do with that sort of like, yes, it's a kind of beautiful love story, but the end it's also like adultery is bad in Christianity, and so they have to atone for their sins in some capacity.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: So, Amanda, that's what I have on Lancelot. And Lancelot is a complicated figure, as we've been seeing a lot of the Arthurian characters are. He is this, like, sometimes hero, sometimes villain. He is motivated to be the greatest knight in all of the land. But he runs up against a love that means he can never truly be the greatest. And I think that's kind of incredible and kind of beautiful. And we really nailed it when we wrote Lancelot as character.
AMANDA: What a compelling character. What a wonderful installment of our Arthurian series. Julia, next time, I'm gonna make sure I'm wearing my black blazer and I practice my Elaine dance for our Elaine roundup.
JULIA: Incredible. Well, listeners, the next time you go to seek your fortunes after being raised in a land of just hot, magical ladies, remember, stay creepy.
AMANDA: Stay cool.
JULIA: Later, Satyrs.
[theme]
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