Revisiting Lancelot

Sir Lancelot, Melissa A. Benson

Is it just me, or is Lancelot kind of boring?

Because really, you can only hear "best knight in the world" so many times before you get sick of both the phrase and the person it describes. From his intro to his elegantly repenting death, Lancelot is so perfect it's disgusting. He usurps the stories the second he appears; his arrival at Camelot signals the transition from "exploits of Arthur the warrior king" to "loosely connected vignettes mostly centering on this new French guy." There's no enemy who can face him, and no woman who can avoid falling head over heels the second she sees his exquisite yet manly face. He does exactly one thing wrong in his entire life, and even that had a certain inevitability to it: of course the world's most beautiful woman is going to fall for the best knight.

It's even written into the legends that Lancelot nauseates his fellow knights, who understandably don't get the joke the seventeenth time Monsieur Perfect knocks them out of their saddles. (While in disguise. And then rides away like tournaments are beneath him, when he obviously cares enough to joust in them.) Let's not forget how easy it was for Mordred to gather a band of disaffected knights to surprise him in Guinevere's chamber. Dude did not have a huge fan club.

So here's the thing. If we accept that it's very easy to get bored with Lancelot, the question that never gets asked is: why?

Sort of redundant, yes? Didn't I just answer it?

The Sword of Lancelot, Howard David Johnson

Well, yes and no. Take a step back from the stories. Look at them as plot alone. Lancelot is incredible. Remember what I said a few paragraphs above about how no enemy can face him? No enemy can face him. He goes up against knights who make careers of killing for fun, and he routinely destroys them. He does unspeakable things to ideas like "hopeless situation" and "no way out." When the woman he loves is in danger, he morphs into this amazing cross between James Bond and Superman, traveling incognito, busting up everything but his beloved during the rescue, and fighting the abductor with one hand tied behind his back because honor demands it. And he still splits this guy's head open. There is a reason this man is described as the best knight in the world. And it is because he is the best knight in the world.

One could argue that if it weren't for everyone else's insistence on his perfection, Lancelot would be seen not as irreparably fallen and kind of bland, but as the badass to end all badasses. I'd bet on him versus anyone. Batman? Please. Darth Vader? Don't make me laugh. Lancelot could take out Jaws if he wanted to. Without even using a boat.

Gawain and the Green Knight, David Hitchcock

Look at Gawain, another badass from the same cycle, and another owner of the "best in show" title (before Lancelot came along, that is). No sissy perfection for Gawain. He runs headlong into danger, carried away by his impulses, and he too wins more than should be humanly possible. But he (and his authors) aren't nearly as obsessed with his perfection as Lancelot. Sure, "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" takes valuable time out of the quest shenanigans to explain why his pentangle shield is the most sacred thing ever, but it's really just ironic foreshadowing of Gawain's ultimate failure. He carries the perfect shield, but the knight it guards is only human.

Sound familiar? Perfect knight, fatal weakness, inevitable fall... It's the same story as Lancelot's ill-fated romance with Guinevere. On the outside, he is all that a knight should be; inside, he knows himself to be unworthy.

The difference between them, though, is that Gawain moves on. Humiliated and angry with himself, he tells all of Camelot about his disgrace. But Arthur, demonstrating exactly why he's awesome, gently reminds Gawain of his many accomplishments over the course of the quest, not least of which is the fact that the Green Knight honored him enough to leave him alive. Arthur takes it a step further by declaring that Gawain's green garter, until now a badge of shame, will be regarded by all as a symbol of Gawain's honor and courage in revealing his own weakness.

For obvious reasons, Lancelot cannot do the same. But that's a cop-out, because of course Arthur isn't stupid and already knows about Guinevere. Gawain's declaration allows him to get his failure off his chest, and in fact helps him reclaim the honor he thought he had lost; Lancelot's unwillingness to jeopardize that very same appearance of honor dooms him to cling to his sin. With no expiation, it festers, becoming the central facet of his character, while Gawain is able to grow beyond his misdeed.

So in addition to being the biggest badass at the Round Table, Lancelot's also got the most emotional turmoil of anyone (except maybe Arthur). Constantly aware of the hypocrisy on which his life is built, hating himself but loving Guinevere more, he has the most fascinating inner life of all the knights. He is a man desperate for perfection who can't help clinging to his one flaw. And he knows it the whole time. He is never allowed a moment to forget the contradiction of himself. He wrestles with it every single day, and always comes back with the same answer: he is not strong enough to reject what is at once the best and worst thing in his life.

He's not just a badass. He's a relatable badass.

Lancelot of the Lake, Delphine Gache

Everyone knows about the struggle to succeed; everyone understands the unexpected roadblocks that get in the way; everyone knows how bitter failure tastes. Lancelot's story is the story of every time we couldn't make something better. He is universal and human like no other character in the entire cycle.

I think it's time we reclaimed Lancelot. It's not going to be easy; his character forms around the very thing that holds him back. But we can definitely start celebrating his feats of arms as the ridiculously awesome career that they are. We can see the good as well as the sinful in his love for Guinevere; it's hard to do justice to the man when we keep dismissing and belittling the passion for which he sacrificed his soul. And instead of complaining about how boring he is, we - and I include myself here - can instead start asking why, for hundreds and hundreds of years, we've kept coming back to his story and finding things in it that touch our hearts.

Chivalry in Skirts

Arthurian legend has no shortage of uppity women. From Guinevere to Nimue to Morgan le Fay, the legends abound with damsels and ladies who know their own minds, set their own goals, and aren't afraid to admit their ambitions. Unfortunately, most of them get absolutely squashed. Whether by outside interference or their own backfiring machinations, scarcely a go-getting Arthurian lady gets what she came for.

So it stands to reason that when one of them does, she is vividly remembered.

Linette, the razor-tongued sister of Lady Lionors, is unique among the ladies of Arthuriana not only because she gets everything she set out to get, but because she is one of the only successful cases of character development in the legends. So many characters spring to life already equipped with their defining personality traits: Lancelot is noble and has a guilt complex, Mordred is evil and scheming, Merlin is wise, Guinevere is beautiful and capricious. We see Arthur develop in the early going from impulsive youth to mature and just king, but he's pretty much the only one.

Sir Gareth and Lady Lynette, Arthur Rackham

Besides Linette. We first meet her when she demands a champion from the king while refusing to give her name, the name of her sister (for whom she's requesting said champion), or even the common courtesy due to another person. When Gareth, incognito as a kitchen boy, calls in the favors Arthur owes him and claims her quest as his, she spits out a few choice insults and rides in high dudgeon from the court. Undaunted, Gareth catches up; equally unfazed, Linette proceeds to blister the air for days with details of his idiocy, his inadequacy, and his incapability to survive a poke, let alone a series of one-on-one combats. There is literally no reason at all to like her.

And then she gets her wake-up call. The second of four knights that Gareth trounces is a real gentleman, inviting his ex-foe and his companions to dinner. Linette does her usual awful shtick; unlike Gareth (who handles his crappy damsel with true chivalry), the defeated knight calls her on it. And suddenly Linette realizes she's been a complete hag to the one man who was willing to help her sister.

For comparison: Lancelot gets a similar wake-up call on the Grail Quest, when his sinful love for Guinevere bars him even from seeing the Grail. He gets the message loud and clear. He is the greatest earthly knight in the world; he knows just how badly he failed. And when he gets back to Camelot, he promptly forgets all about it.

La Belle Dame Sans Merci, Frank Dicksee

Not Linette. The very next day she apologizes to Gareth. When he fights his next foe, she acts as his own personal cheerleading squad; it's her cry of support that energizes him when he was ready to give up. The most atrociously snobby character in Arthuriana becomes, in the space of a few paragraphs, one of the most endearingly human: she recognizes her fault and takes every possible step to amend it. Some versions (Tennyson's among them) even end with Gareth marrying Linette, rather than her beautiful and anonymous sister to whose rescue he rode.

So what gives? Why does Linette get off with a scolding, while other ambitious women get utterly broken? Morgan le Fay is foiled, exposed, and vilified. Guinevere is disgraced and often portrayed as a jealous shrew. The Lady of the Lake gets her head chopped off by Balin, who offers a deeply insufficient excuse: "She was a witch!" Geraint's wife Enid, as haughty and outspoken as Linette, is mocked by her neighbors, verbally abused by her husband, and threatened with rape on multiple occasions. In

The Lady Lyonors, Katharine Cameron

contrast, Linette's only real peers are Lady Ragnell, who also takes her fate into her own hands and is amply rewarded, and her own sister Lionors, who concocts a scheme to expose Gareth's identity before she'll marry him. Unlike her sister, Lionors' uppityness is very subversive; Linette wears her heart on her sleeve, while Lionors hides her quick wits behind a frigid courtly mask and bids to control her own life behind the scenes. Neither sister suffers in any material way for daring to shape their destinies.

The answer to their mysterious get-out-of-jail-free cards lies in their circumstances. The women punished for their ambition all have men to speak for them. Guinevere's duty is to be true to Arthur; Morgan is actually married, and supposed to be subordinate to her husband, when she concocts her deadliest plots against her brother; Enid's troubles stem from her flouting of her owed obedience to husband and father. Even the Lady of the Lake uses Merlin as intercessor with Arthur; her death is the end result of the one time she came on her own. Their downfalls come about because they disregard the rules of the world they live in.

Erec and Enide, Rowland Wheelwright

But the social order and the chivalric code have utterly failed all the successful uppity ladies. Linette and Lionors are trapped by a pack of rogue knights no one challenges; Ragnell's own brother has turned against her. No one speaks for them; no one is coming to their rescue. Lacking any socially-expected champion, these women have to stand up for themselves in order to survive. In extremis, it's not only okay to own your fate - it's actually celebrated.

In that sense, Linette and her fellows are actually playing the roles of knights-errant, filling in the gaps of an idealistic system put into practice by flawed human beings. They know exactly what's due to them, they know why they're not getting it, and they possess the wit and courage to get it for themselves when the system fails. They operate within that system, fixing it as best they can, and upholding the very social order they seem, at first glance, to subvert.

Someone get these girls a couple of chairs at the Round Table.