 | Title: Knights of the Round Table: Lancelot Author: Gwen Rowley Publisher: Berkley (Kindle edition) Pages: 362 Synopsis: (courtesy of Amazon) Strong and powerful warriors of nobility and honor, the Knights of the Round Table fought for kings, rescued damsels, and undertook dangerous quests. But true love may be the most perilous quest of all… |
Spoilers, etc…
The Twist: Elaine
of Corbenic is Lancelot’s true love, not Guinevere!
The biggest twist that stems from this, and I don’t think
I’ve seen this done in any other retelling, is that Lancelot and Guinevere are
half-siblings, and that explains why they’re so close, why they’re so
compatible, and why they appear to have a secret aspect to their relationship.
Yes, you read that right. Lancelot is King Ban of Benwick’s legitimate son by
his queen, stolen by the Lady of the Lake after Ban’s death to be raised in
Avalon. Guinevere is Ban’s illegitimate daughter by Leodegrance’s wife. So
there is no sexual aspect to Lance and Gwen’s relationship in this story, but their
odd closeness that is noted by others is explained by them being secretly
brother and sister.
There is no tricking of Lancelot by Elaine. All of their
relations are 100% consensual. The Elaine-disguising-herself-as-Guinevere thing
is a rumor that starts once Elaine turns up at Camelot with Galahad. It’s
implied the rumor was perpetuated, if not begun, by Morgause in order to cause
problems between Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot, and Elaine and thus weaken
Camelot.
The Plot: Lancelot
du Lac is miserable. He’s caught between his oaths to obey both Arthur and
Guinevere—they’ve ordered him to do contradictory things, and part of his deal
as Avalon’s representative in Camelot is that he can’t break an oath or the
Lady of the Lake will forswear him. So he runs away, determined to return
incognito to fight in the tournament Arthur had forbidden to him and Guinevere
demanded he compete in: this way he is technically obeying both of them. But he
knows that he can’t escape the noose being drawn around his neck as Arthur and
Guinevere are increasingly at odds—over the nature of Lance and Gwen’s
relationship. There is no way for Lancelot to extricate himself from the
situation without compromising himself that he can see, when all he wants is to
be Arthur’s loyal knight and Guinevere’s bestie without either of them being
mad at him.
He accidentally stumbles into Corbenic and meets
practical Lady Elaine. The pair are immediately smitten (r/e:instaLove, urgh)
and embark on a flirtation, complicated by the fact that at first she doesn’t
know it’s Lancelot, and isn’t exactly a Lancelot fangirl after one of his more
spectacularly callous moments several years previous when he crippled her older
brother in a tournament. Rowley dodges the cliché “you lied to me!” plot by having
Elaine figure out who he really is fairly quickly, but by the time she does
they’ve spent enough time together that she realizes he’s grown up somewhat
from the oblivious ass who accidentally ruined her family. Or she’s too head
over heels to care. Rowley wants us to think it’s the former; I’m inclined
towards the latter.
All of Lancelot’s efforts to dodge compromising his oaths
appear to have been in vain. The Lady of the Lake has withdrawn her favor and
Lancelot is grievously injured in the tournament (previously he had been
magically invulnerable). He manages to get himself back to Corbenic where he is
tended by Elaine and her lady-in-waiting Brisen, who had been one of Morgana (le
Fay)’s apprentices. He recovers, and, deciding he’s been rejected by both
Arthur and the Lady, asks Elaine to marry him and they plan to settle down at
his home at Joyous Guard. However, both Arthur and the Lady’s favor is restored
to him because Arthur has decided he needs to campaign against Emperor Lucius
and wants his best fighter back, so Lancelot rides off to battle leaving Elaine
unwed but pregnant with Galahad.
More than a year later, Lancelot has still not returned
to Corbenic. When Elaine hears he is finally back at Camelot, and troubled by
the rumor that he has resumed his illicit relationship with Guinevere rather
than return to her, she sets out with baby Galahad in tow to confront him. In
the process she inadvertently tips the fragile balance between Arthur,
Guinevere, and Lancelot, and Lancelot once again finds himself trapped by his
separate oaths to king and queen. This time, as in Malory, he goes mad and runs
away to live in the forest as a wild man (this seems to happen with interesting
frequency to Arthur’s knights when they’re stuck in a moral conundrum).
Elaine returns to Corbenic to wait for Lancelot’s return.
She is tricked by Morgause into being trapped in a perpetually-burning tower,
saved Sleeping Beauty-style by Brisen to be imprisoned there in deathless sleep
until the greatest knight ever comes to get her out. Of course that’s Lancelot.
(We firmly establish it’s not Gawain, though Rowley makes it clear Gawain is
the better man.) After yet another year Lancelot does turn up, regains his
senses, and goes to rescue Elaine. They somehow wind up in Avalon where
Lancelot has to fight the Green Knight. The Lady of the Lake rejects meddling
in the World of Men, at least for the time being, and Lancelot and Elaine
return to the mortal world where they marry and set up house at Joyous Guard.
Arthur meanwhile has finally discovered the truth about Guinevere’s origins and
the pair of them have made up, so Lancelot is free to serve them if called but
he will always be able to come home to Elaine and Galahad.
The concept of the Holy Grail is bandied around, especially
by Elaine’s somewhat-senile father Pelleas, but there is no actual quest for a
physical cup.
The Characters:
Lancelot: It’s hard to get a bead on his character
because he behaves completely differently when he’s around Elaine than he does
anywhere else. He’s not as much of an outright jerk as he is in Gawain, but he’s just sort of oblivious
to the way his actions affect others. He feels bad when he realizes he has hurt
other people, but he seems utterly baffled about how to prevent it and has a
tendency to try to avoid his problems as much as possible and hope they’ll just
go away. Thus his running away when Arthur and Gwen give him contradictory
orders. When Elaine is around he is kind and protective, and solicitous even of
others. Her influence seems to fade the further away he gets from her, since he
has every intention of abandoning her “for her own good” after he goes off to
war (not knowing he left her pregnant). He spends a lot of mental time
handwringing and acting as if he’s caught up in forces beyond his control, when
really he still does have choices on how to respond to the things that happen
to him. Which I guess is an improvement over the usual “fight everything in
sight and then come home and pant after Guinevere” Lancelot of the original
stories, but it does make him hard to like.
Elaine of Corbenic: Elaine too is hard to get a bead on
because her character also changes when Lancelot’s around. Usually she is
practical and levelheaded, and seems to take disasters in stride. She is always
thinking ahead, and always planning to make the best of things—except where
Lancelot is concerned. She seems the type to protest bedding before wedding, at
least on principle, but nary a peep do we hear about her reputation or the
possibility of a child. Both times Lancelot runs out on her she decides to
passively wait him out and see if he returns. She never gets angry with him for
abandoning her with a bastard child. Again, I suppose this is an improvement
over the conniving Elaine of Corbenic who schemes to rape Lancelot (twice!)
knowing full well he’s in love with another woman; Elaine here is certainly
likeable and seems to do a good job as Lancelot’s anchor. She is just slightly
too passive for my taste, especially compared to the fiery Aislynn from Gawain.
Arthur: Everyone adores him; we don’t get to see as much
of his flawed side as we did in Gawain
as he is justifiably suspicious of the amount of time Lancelot and Guinevere
are spending together.
Guinevere: While not as annoying as she is in Rowley’s Gawain, she is still pretty selfish for
most of the book. She doesn’t notice the strain her demands for attention and
obedience put on Lancelot; she’s just so desperately lonely that she doesn’t
seem to care when a deeply frustrated Lancelot tries to point out the damage
their closeness is doing to both of their reputations and to their
relationships with Arthur. She’s afraid if Arthur finds out she’s illegitimate
he will have even more ammunition to put her aside for someone else, since
she’s already having trouble conceiving. With the eventual loss of Lancelot as
her confidant she finally does turn to Arthur and they reconcile. Arthur still
refuses to put her aside even after forcing Leodegrance to tell him the truth.
Brisen (Dame Brusen): Here Elaine’s lady-in-waiting, she
was also one of Morgana’s favorite apprentices but abandoned it to serve the
Corbenic family. Obviously she doesn’t help Elaine trick Lancelot into sleeping
with her; she mostly serves as a sounding board for Elaine and as a healer when
any of the characters need medical assistance, and she saves Elaine when
Morgause tries to kill her. She also has a crush on Elaine’s crippled brother
that remains unrequited for awhile even though all the other characters are
aware of it and like to needle them both.
Gawain: Good old honorable, dependable Gawain. Lancelot
is constantly jealous and has the sneaking suspicion that without the Lady’s
invincibility protection, Gawain would be the better knight in addition to just
being overall a better man. So just seeing Gawain or hearing him mentioned
makes Lancelot jumpy and irritable. As it should. We get hints that Gawain
isn’t as perfect as Lancelot believes, which is fine, a too-perfect Gawain
would also be annoying, but he does serve here as an excellent foil to Lancelot
in just about every way. It’s mentioned he and the Green Knight had their
run-in before this story begins; for a little while I was afraid we were going
to give the Green Knight story to Lancelot instead, which would have upset me
greatly.
The Green Knight: The Lady of the Lake’s consort. While
he was Lancelot’s instructor in the fighting arts, he also appears to have been
less than pleased with the Lady’s attempt to raise Lancelot as a “pet” human.
Thus he frequently appears in order to taunt Lancelot and eventually fight him.
The Lady of the Lake: Ruler of the faeries and Lancelot’s
foster-mother. Her reasons for taking Lancelot as a child are somewhat
ambiguous, as she seemed to want to give Arthur a part-magical champion but
also just wanted to experiment with raising a mortal child. Elaine tries to
convince Lancelot that what the Lady did to him was actually wrong and cruel,
since Lancelot’s mortal mother was still alive and perfectly capable of raising
him. Lancelot is still determined to fulfill what the Lady told him was his
destiny: serving Arthur as Avalon’s representative, even though he himself is
somewhat dubious about the Lady’s intentions.
Galahad: The son born to Elaine while Lancelot is off at
war. Galahad is the name Lancelot used when trying to travel incognito when he
and Elaine first meet; it’s implied it was the original name his parents gave him
before the Lady of the Lake stole him and (I guess) rechristened him Lancelot
du Lac. Elaine named their son in honor of this and to make sure Lancelot knows
the child is his. Galahad is golden-haired and cherubic and takes after Elaine
much more than dark-haired Lancelot.
Agrivaine: One of Gawain’s brothers. There is a small
take-off on Agrivaine “catching” Lance and Gwen together as proof of their
affair, though it does not lead to anyone’s death fortunately.
Morgause: Randomly turns up to cause trouble for everyone
whenever a push towards chaos is needed.
Lancelot’s cousins Lionel and Bors make cameo
appearances, as does Elaine’s father Pelleas. Morgana is mentioned frequently
but never actually appears, same with Leodegrance. Leodegrance is the cause of
a lot of Guinevere’s unhappiness, as he sought to undermine her marriage to
Arthur by destroying her confidence that Arthur could like her for who she is
as revenge for Guinevere’s mother abandoning him to have an affair with Ban.
Overall
3.5 stars graded down to 3. Rowley does some creative things
with the legend but I still couldn’t get into the characters.
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