Guinevere: The Queen Who Broke Camelot?

Was Queen Guinevere a traitorous adulteress who caused the tragic downfall of Camelot, or a complex political survivor? Was she even real? Dr. Eleanor Janega and Arthurian expert Dr. Mary Bateman explore the changing faces of King Arthur’s legendary wife. They discuss her early mythological Welsh roots, scandalous 'affairs' with Lancelot and Mordred, and how medieval queens used this powerful romantic legend for their own real-world political influence. MORE King Arthur with Dr. Mary Bateman Listen on Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/king-arthur/id1564113746?i=1000728025325 Listen on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/3akZUNMcF8RhS7zVfpxjy8 King Arthur's Sex Life Listen on Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/king-arthurs-sex-life/id1564113746?i=1000640317503 Listen on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/0xi2enVEcNgtweZiRUCAdi Gone Medieval is presented by Dr. Eleanor Janega. Audio editor is Amy Haddow, the producer is Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff. All music used is courtesy of Epidemic Sounds. Gone Medieval is a History Hit podcast. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week PLUS early access, ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Matt Lewis?

  From long-lost Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places, to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr Eleanor Janega, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life only on History Hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.

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• 1:16Eleanor Janega?

  Hello, I'm Dr Eleanor Janega, and welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We uncover the greatest mysteries, the gob-smacking details, and the latest groundbreaking research from the Vikings to the Normans, from kings to popes to the Crusades. We delve into the rebellions, plots, and murders that tell us who we really were and how we got here.

• 1:54Eleanor Janega?

  Queen Guinevere, a descendant of the Romans, the most beautiful woman in all the British Isles, and best known as the wife of Britain's mythical king, Arthur. Or, so the ancient Arthurian legends would have you believe. Brought to life in spoken word and song, she graces the pages of chivalric romance, courtly verse, and Arthurian epic. Over the centuries, she has become the stereotypical medieval queen. A noble and fair maiden, blessed with the affections of countless knights vying for her favor.

• 2:38Eleanor Janega?

  But the legend of Guinevere was, and is, far more than just her role as Arthur's famous queen. Beginning in Wales before first being written down in the 12th century, Guinevere's tale was often one of baleful tragedy. Whether led astray by Arthur's wicked nephew Mordred or drawn into a doomed love affair with the gallant Lancelot, medieval retellings paint her as a figure haunted by betrayal, loss, and the destructive consequences of love. So what should we make of all of this? I'm Dr Eleanor Janega. This is Gone Medieval.

• 3:23Eleanor Janega?

  And today, we're going to get to the heart of Guinevere's story. How did she become a queenly myth with so many different faces? How did her legend develop into the tales that we're familiar with today? And what impact did her Arthurian adventures have on the real world of the Middle Ages? To help us answer all of that and more, I am thrilled to be joined by Arthurian expert and lecturer at the University of Bristol, Dr Mary Bateman.

• 3:58Eleanor Janega?

  Mary, welcome to Gone Medieval.

• 4:01Speaker 04

  Hi, so good to be here.

• 4:03Eleanor Janega?

  I am so delighted to have you on. I love forcing my friends to come on Gone Medieval, so that's fun for me. But especially because we've got a really good topic today. I simply love to talk about Guinevere. I think when we get in Arthuriana, it's really easy to get bogged down in knights because there's so many of them. I suppose the best place to start is, can you give us like a kind of a quick potted summary of who Guinevere is? Which I realize is a really silly thing to be saying on a medieval podcast because it's like, hello, hello, listeners. Do you know who Guinevere is? But you are very well placed to give us a summary.

• 4:44Speaker 04

  Sure, we can get into the nitty-gritty later, right? As I'm sure pretty much all the listeners to this podcast know, because she's very well known, Guinevere is the wife of King Arthur, kind of across the Arthurian tradition, really. And she is perhaps best known today for her adulterous relationship with Lancelot. But Lancelot is Arthur's kind of best knight. And that is a narrative about Guinevere that has kind of superseded all of the other interesting versions of her story today. But yeah, so that's probably where most people will be familiar with her. And as a result of this adultery and also potentially another narrative strand where she's adulterous with Arthur's nephew,

• 5:27Speaker 04

  which is potentially even worse, Mordred, history hasn't been that kind to Guinevere. And at some periods and by some authors, she's been treated particularly badly, as it were.

• 5:38Eleanor Janega?

  Do you know what? They, everybody wants a baddie until one appears. That's all I have to say, but.

• 5:44Speaker 04

  As if other Arthurian women didn't provide enough options already.

• 5:48Eleanor Janega?

  I know, right? But okay, let's do the silly question. Was Guinevere real?

• 5:57Speaker 04

  Probably not. I mean.

• 5:58Eleanor Janega?

  Thank you.

• 5:59Speaker 04

  So King Arthur, the figure about whom there is the most kind of like conversation and sources, is also similarly, you know, great big question mark over whether he existed. Guinevere is notably absent in a lot of the early sources where Arthur is kind of mentioned in passing. She doesn't really feature at all. And where you do see her in the earliest sources, it seems pretty obvious that she's a kind of a figure of myth, you know, kind of in more in line with some of the mythical figures, the mythical women that you see in texts like the Mavnogian and things like that. So I would say probably not. But history and art love to imitate each other. So there's definitely been lots of interesting times in history where her story has been made to kind of echo

• 6:42Speaker 04

  real queens, real women, and their goings-on. But yeah, in short, no, unfortunately not. Very little to no evidence that she existed. But then also no evidence that, hardcore evidence that she didn't. You know, I think these figures of myth, sometimes you just don't know if there was something to get them started that had its basis in reality. Yeah, I've kind of, when I was looking into this topic again for this, for this week, I did find some interesting suggestions that perhaps she might be connected with figures from Irish folklore as well, like Finna Bua, who's a daughter of Queen Maeve in like Irish mythology and potentially may have had a counterpart in early Welsh mythology as well.

• 7:26Speaker 04

  We all know that Wales and Ireland had interesting connections at different times in history. Parts of Western Wales at one point were Irish ultimately. So there's always been a lot of kind of overlap in terms of elements of their mythologies. And I thought that was an interesting kind of suggestion, although ultimately it probably is largely to do with her name, I suspect, which is kind of enigmatic, its origins.

• 7:54Eleanor Janega?

  So you've already touched on this very briefly, but an interesting thing about Guinevere is she's portrayed in all kinds of ways. I mean, I think probably, as you say, the primary way we see her portrayed is like this deeply flawed, overtly sexual woman. And, you know, she's a traitor who lets Arthur down and is responsible for the downfall of Camelot. But then sometimes you see her and she's this like a super noble, virtuous lady. Why do you think there are so many different characterizations of her?

• 8:26Speaker 04

  That's a good question. I suspect maybe it has something to do with different attitudes towards kind of sin and adultery, I suppose for want of a better word, at different times and by different writers. There's also some ambiguity in her story when people do start to talk about Lancelot and Guinevere as to whether she knew Lancelot before her wedding to Arthur. So that kind of complicates things. Mallory is even slightly vague on the details as to whether or not they consummate their love. Sexually. So that's interesting. When it comes to Mordred, which is the more sort of historical, chronicle version of Guinevere's narrative, which I'm happy to recap.

• 9:11Speaker 04

  Essentially, Guinevere, while Arthur is in France, this is according to Geoffrey of Monmouth, so it becomes kind of the blueprint version. While Arthur is kind of conquering and fighting on the continent, Mordred, Arthur's nephew, takes over the kingdom, sort of, yeah, usurps the throne back home. And Guinevere is what, you know, we might spend a lot of time thinking about her true motivations for this, whether there is a degree of self-preservation here, if she can see the way that the winds are turning. But she betrays Arthur with Mordred in that version of the story. And then when Arthur comes back and she realises that Mordred

• 9:51Speaker 04

  is maybe not doing so well as she hoped he might be, she flees and takes up refuge in a nunnery. But that relates to what I was just saying as well. So you also have to question what her motives are. In some versions of that story, she orchestrates the whole betrayal. She has children with Mordred. When she realises what's happening, she just like runs off and leaves her kids to Arthur's wrath, which is terrible. On a kind of, it's very easy to see how she's villainised in that story on a personal and political level. Whereas I think in other versions of the narrative, her betrayal of Arthur is framed potentially as something more political, as her union to Arthur in the first place, maybe is. I know Geoffrey of Monmouth is the original narrator of

• 10:35Speaker 04

  this story of her treachery with Mordred, but it is worth saying that she marries Arthur in the first place, almost as a political union, I think, in Geoffrey. And that potentially then at the end of her life, there is a political rather than a personal aspect to her betrayal. Very different to the situation with Lancelot, which is all about feelings and not politics.

• 10:55Eleanor Janega?

  Okay, well, we're on to Geoffrey of Monmouth, because you're such a pro and you know exactly what I'm going to ask you. But can you, for the audience, just kind of tell us a little bit about Geoffrey of Monmouth? Because he's bringing Guinevere in, I mean, he's bringing all the Arthuria in, in the history of the kings of Britain. And this is kind of like 12th century or so. So what's he doing with this? Like, what is the idea of adding these likely mythological characters into a chronicle like this?

• 11:26Speaker 04

  So I think for Geoffrey, he does what it says on the tin, right? He's specifically interested in chronicling the history of the British kings, by which Geoffrey means from Brutus of Troy, who's Britain's mythical founder, comes over from Troy, has a vision from the goddess Diana, and then founds this new nation of Britain and ousts the indigenous giants that live in Britain, which is a whole other interesting topic. And then Geoffrey is really concerned then with recounting the rules of these kings, from Brutus, right the way through King Arthur's reign, and then on to Cadwalader, who's the last king of the Britons before the kind of Saxon heptarchy, as it were. And there are some interesting

• 12:09Speaker 04

  queens and some interesting female figures in Geoffrey's chronicle, no doubt. There's been some great scholarship actually on that and on kind of their, yeah, political manoeuvrings and involvements. But primarily, that's what it's about, right? It's about the series of rule, it's about politics, dynasty, kingship. And so for Geoffrey, Guinevere is really part of that bigger picture of Arthur's kind of rise and fall. And as a result, is not a particularly prominent character. She does appear in the, by far the most detailed set piece in Geoffrey's very long, detailed description of Arthur's rule, which is when time almost seems to stop in the middle of the account. And it

• 12:50Speaker 04

  describes Arthur and Guinevere's festal crown-wearing at Kilian, right in the middle of his reign. And it kind of inaugurates this nine years of peace that Arthur oversees. It's also the first time that Arthur and Guinevere celebrate their marriage as well. And it's incredibly richly detailed. It describes them processing to the different churches after the ceremony, and all of the queens accompanying Guinevere with doves. And it's just very, very rich and very detailed, which is interesting. And I suppose that that is almost a continuation of some of the other early descriptions of Guinevere, in which she almost seems to be a part of the symbolic objects, almost of kingship,

• 13:34Speaker 04

  when it comes to describing Arthur. So there's an early Welsh text called Calichanolwen, which we think is probably earlier than Geoffrey. And it's certainly a very different way of telling Arthur's story to Geoffrey's. And in that story, Guinevere, this is where she first appears actually, as Arthur's queen, in full-fledged detail. And in that text, it describes her as the gentle, gold-talked first lady of the island. And it describes her as the things that, among the things that Arthur is not willing to give up. So it describes her with his ships and his mantle, and all of these other objects of kingship, which I think modern readers sometimes find a bit off-putting, but it is kind of indicative

• 14:18Speaker 04

  of her political ceremonial role as well as a queen and as a kind of marker of Arthur's power. So I suppose there's an extent to which that is also colouring Geoffrey's portrayal of Guinevere before things start to go very wrong and she betrays Arthur.

• 14:35Eleanor Janega?

  This is a really interesting point, because I think there can be this sort of confusing thing, because we see Guinevere in this text that is Welsh. And I think there is this tendency to kind of identify her as perhaps a Welsh queen at first. But then, by the time we get to Geoffrey, he's identifying her more as Cornish, right? Is that correct?

• 14:58Speaker 04

  There is an interesting, I think, detail in that, in some of the very early Welsh texts, although possibly not earlier than Geoffrey, but maybe representing an earlier oral tradition, Guinevere appears as the daughter of a giant called Gogfran. And in Calichanolwen, there's also this great heroine from Cornwall, who's the daughter of a Cornish giant. So I think that's, I don't, I'm not saying the two are related, but certainly by the time we get to Geoffrey, she is Cornish. The story goes that she is kind of raised as a ward in the court of Duke Cador, who is Duke in Cornwall. And it's part of kind of marking that alliance with Cornwall that Arthur marries her. It also tells us that she is of noble Roman stock as well. Although the details of her kinship and her paternal

• 15:43Speaker 04

  kingship, maternal kingship in the Welsh tradition are a lot more varied. But certainly from Geoffrey onwards, we're looking at ultimately a Cornish Guinevere, which is interesting, because Cornwall is of course also strongly associated with the story of Tristan and Isolde and King Mark in Cornwall, which some people in the sort of later on in the Middle Ages, from the 14th century onwards, people really start to kind of observe parallels between those two stories of a love triangle with a king and his retainer and his queen. And yeah, even kind of potentially morally connecting the two. I think Tennyson, famously in his Idols of the King, when Arthur is lambasting Guinevere in the abbey, he says that "your betrayal with Lancelot led to other sins like those of Tristan and

• 16:28Speaker 04

  Isolde and others", which is interesting.

• 16:32Eleanor Janega?

  Well, you've mentioned already that in Geoffrey of Monmouth's history here, we see Guinevere having an affair with Mordred, not Lancelot. Is that standard anywhere else? Or is this just a Geoffrey-only version?

• 16:48Speaker 04

  So there is one, these are not, people often think of Mordred and Lancelot, but there are actually other figures connected with a love affair with Guinevere. But to find these figures, we actually have to look a little more closely at the Welsh tradition, which often does get overlooked, even by scholars, right, who don't necessarily work with that tradition. So, for example, there is a story, there are many stories in folklore about Guinevere's abduction. And this potentially is a willing participant sometimes, but not always. And this may be where some of these narratives ultimately originated. There is one figure in particular that she's connected with really early on, before Geoffrey of

• 17:29Speaker 04

  Monmouth is writing about her in Mordred. And this is a figure called Melwas. He appears in a Latin text that's quite early, we think 1120s or 1130s. And we think because of the emphasis it places on Glastonbury and on the role of the Glastonbury abbot in resolving this whole kidnapping scenario with Arthur's queen, that it may have even been commissioned by the abbey, by the abbot at Glastonbury, kind of, he may have asked Karadok to have written it. But it may be a much older story. And it essentially tells the story that Guinevere is abducted by King Melwas of the Summer Country, which, you know, we can

• 18:11Speaker 04

  presume is meant to be Somerset here. And Arthur then attempts to go and rescue her from his stronghold. And just as things are getting really quite nasty and quite serious, and they're gathering their men, that's when the abbot of Glastonbury steps in and resolves things. But what's interesting is that this doesn't seem to be just a one-off story necessarily, that is connected only with Karadok, because we can see echoes of it in the French romance tradition later on, such as in the romance of the Night of the Car or of Lancelot, where she's kidnapped by this figure called Meliagant. The story is actually quite similar, it's just that Lancelot is her rescuer there. But even

• 18:50Speaker 04

  more interestingly, there are some Welsh poems called Englinion. And two of them, they seem to recreate a dialogue between Guinevere and Melwas, in which she's kind of teasing him and mocking him. But also, there's some flirtation going on there as well. And there's a, there are a couple of different Welsh poets who do actually mention her in connection with Melwas romantically, which is kind of interesting. And again, it just goes to show that there is more to Guinevere's kind of possible narrative threads than just Lancelot and Mordred, if you start to look in other traditions. She's also connected, although we don't know how, it's kind of, the details of this have really been lost to time, but she is connected at a really early point with Edair, who's

• 19:34Speaker 04

  another of Arthur's knights, in one of the early Tristan narratives. So as with many Arthurian things, it's a whole tangle.

• 19:42Eleanor Janega?

  So you've mentioned all of these different traditions. We've talked a little bit about the fact that we have in Geoffrey, this sort of Mordred and Guinevere connection. But really, you know, we've alluded to it repeatedly. I think the story about Guinevere, we tend to think about is her affair with Lancelot. Can you just give us a brief overview of the Lancelot-Guinevere love triangle?

• 20:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, absolutely. So the first writer to mention it at all is Christian de Trois, who is a very famous romance author, kind of the originator really of Arthurian romance. And he's already written a few Arthurian romances by this point, which feature Guinevere as a wonderful queen. She's like a generous, nurturing kind of matchmaker type figure. She guides knights and lovers. She's very positive in all of the other pre-existing romances by Christian. And then he comes along and he writes a romance that is apparently unfinished and has to be completed by somebody else called The Knight of the Cart, Le Chevalier de la Charette, or Lancelot. And the reason why it has two names is because Lancelot

• 20:53Speaker 04

  goes incognito for about half of the romance. We don't know who he is, but we know that he is on a quest to go and rescue Guinevere, who has been kidnapped by Meliagant, again, that figure who seems to be recalling this Melua, so that is a tradition. And during the process of going to rescue Guinevere, Lancelot, much to the horror of onlookers, enters a kind of cart that's being pulled along and is more commonly associated with the basest kind of criminals in society, absolutely not with noble knights. And Gawain and some of the other onlookers are just horrified by this. They can't believe that he's done it. But the reason he does it is to speed along his quest to go and rescue

• 21:35Speaker 04

  Guinevere, because presumably he loves her and he's motivated above all else to go and help her. He, after much difficulty, such as crossing a sword bridge, which presumably must really hurt the hands, he gets to this strange place where she's being held by Meliagant. He does battle with Meliagant and then with Badamagus, Meliagant's father, who is horrified at his son's behaviour, but steps in nevertheless and rescues Guinevere. Unfortunately for Lancelot, Guinevere is pretty frosty with him after this happens. And it's because she, well, her reason that she gives is that she can't believe he hesitated before stepping into the cart, which is, you know, like, talk about having high standards, right, for your

• 22:20Speaker 04

  lover. Like, it's not enough that you should even hesitate for a moment at weighing up all of the competing pressures on you. And this is really what all of Christian's oeuvre is about. If you look across his Arthurian romances, there is this pattern of the competing pressures on a knight. On the one hand, to do with love and to being with being a good lover, and on the other hand, with being a good knight. And that's really what you see in that episode with the cart. And the romance finishes with them making love in a tower in Guinevere's room. And then the story ends quite abruptly. So it's interesting. It's nothing like the later versions of the love triangle, where that is a high point that

• 23:01Speaker 04

  then really starts to go downhill and ultimately leads to the downfall of Arthur's Round Table and everything else. Really, it is a sort of standalone romance that ends at that point. But it certainly becomes an important blueprint for a lot of the other things that come after, not least because it is the first that we hear of Lancelot and Guinevere's love affair. So.

• 23:21Eleanor Janega?

  Well, it's a banger of a story, unfortunately for everybody. The Knight of the Cart goes really, really hard. And it does exactly what I want a piece of courtly love literature to do. I want to see knights on their knees begging, begging for a lady. I want to see a man get in the cart. She's so real for that. Get in the cart faster.

• 23:45Speaker 04

  I really like it. I feel like people are quite harsh about it. I know that a lot of kind of like, I suppose, Christian romance snobs, does such a thing exist? Think it's one of the weaker of his romances. But really, it has everything. It's got like, like weird landscapes, like a sword bridge and an underwater bridge. It's got competing tensions in it. It's got humour, like there's funny bits. And as there is actually in a lot of Christian's work. And yeah, I think we should stand up for it as a romance in terms of its, its.

• 24:15Eleanor Janega?

  I cannot agree more. Yep. Yeah. And like, and you know, fundamentally, you know, it's really introducing this fantastic way of looking at Guinevere and Lancelot, you know, and I think that, you know, until we expand this, when we get to the Vulgate cycle, you know, this is, this is really, this is it, you know. And then everybody likes it so much at the time that it completely changes the way we talk about it. So I think that we have to say, this is a successful piece of literature, just in terms of what it encourages other people to do. But I suppose a good thing to kind of look at here, though, is other than the doomed love affair, which I frankly love to see. We also tend to see

• 25:00Eleanor Janega?

  some new kind of characterizations of Guinevere that come in, like, at this point in time, right? So we have, first, you have Christian de Trois, and then you kind of have, like, people expanding out from there. So there are some ways of looking at her, for example, of saying that, like, oh, okay, wow, she is also, it's interesting that she's having this affair with Lancelot because she's childless. Like, ooh, ooh, like, what good queen is childless, right? You know, and there's also this thing about her having kind of an evil sister. Is that, is that correct?

• 25:34Speaker 04

  It's super interesting, the evil sister thing. And again, I suspect it may have its origins in, like, Celtic literature, because there's this group of texts called the Triads of Britain, which are kind of little, it's like, here are the three, the three great betrayers of Britain. Here are the great three unfaithful queens. They're kind of groups of three. Some people think it may have been a kind of knowledge, sort of mnemonic compendium for people that were composing poems, to be able to kind of draw from these characters for comparative purposes or whatever. And in one of them, it talks about Guinevere. I think it's called something like the three great slaps, or the three hard slaps, which is just like, such an unexpected theme for a poem. And it describes a hard

• 26:16Speaker 04

  slap that was delivered from, I think, off the top of my head, it's either Guinevere to Guinevere, her sister, or from Guinevere to Guinevere. And apparently, this caused the great final battle of Camelain. So she has a sister called Guinevere in some texts. And then if you look to the later French romance texts, you can see some of them that's really snowballed. And she's become a sort of evil twin of Guinevere, which is, is, yeah, wonderful, really. Just goes to show how the tradition has kind of developed over time, but seems to be potentially some kind of origin there in Welsh folklore, that may be the details of which have somewhat been lost to us, but may have travelled over and

• 26:57Speaker 04

  informed ultimately some of those early French tellings that were kind of being told orally, and that ultimately led to texts like Christian's romances and Marie de France's lays and things. She does, in some versions, have a sister. And in some texts, she does indeed have children. But yeah, notably the alliterative Mort Arthur, which is this amazing poem in English, actually, this kind of great heroic telling of the downfall of Arthur.

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• 29:25Speaker 05

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• 30:17Eleanor Janega?

  Can we talk a little bit about the Mort Arthur? Because this is another one of my favorites. And I think that, you know, it is one of the ones where we get, we finally get some meat on the bones. Right? I mean, listen, I am still a little distracted by the three great slaps because it sounds like clickbait. And I love it, but I do think that, you know, that's kind of part of what Mallory is, is doing here. Right? Can you, can you tell us about what goes on in the Mort Arthur?

• 30:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, for sure. So Mallory comes along at the end of the Middle Ages and he does this huge, great big project. I assume he must've just had a lot of time because he was in prison during much of it. But what he manages to do is weave together different versions of Arthur's story into a cohesive whole. And this had been done kind of a little bit in like the Vulgate and the post Vulgate French texts. But Mallory actually combines that with the English heroic tradition. So like the alliterative Mort Arthur that I just mentioned, La Chamon's Brute as well, which is like a kind of early, very early English translation of the Geoffrey of Monmouth version of the narrative by a was. French romance as well was a big kind of influence on Mallory and then also the French Tristan.

• 31:25Speaker 04

  So he's really juggling three very, very different versions of Guinevere. And perhaps as a result, I would say Mallory's Guinevere is the most interesting, variable nuanced figure. And kind of if you follow her throughout her story, there's definite ups and downs. It's more ambiguous in terms of her sexual relationship with Lancelot. Her role in the downfall of Arthur's kingdom, I think, is actually almost not really her fault. There's like sort of almost like a chain reaction of events that she could never really have foreseen to do with kind of infighting and things. And her relationship with Lancelot is part of that chain reaction, but poor Guinevere couldn't really have foreseen that.

• 32:07Speaker 04

  And also the nice thing is she's given some redemption at the end of Mallory because she becomes an abbess at Amesbury Abbey. Not only retreating to a life religious and really meaning it, like in some of Mallory's sources, but actually becoming the abbess. And then he actually makes a point of telling us that she achieved a high place in heaven as well after she dies. So she seems to have redeemed herself by the end, which is, yeah, I think it's easy to be negative about Mallory's Guinevere. But she's, she gets a lovely character arc that ends ultimately positively for her. If you buy into the kind of afterlife story for her.

• 32:44Eleanor Janega?

  Well, I, I think that we have to though, because if we're, we're looking at this, we're looking at it in this expressly Christian context. So we have to, we have to take medieval people at their word.

• 32:55Speaker 04

  Absolutely.

• 32:55Eleanor Janega?

  And I think that this, this is a really important point for me because I think that there is this tendency when we look, for example, at courtly love literature to try to put our own moral frameworks on it, right? And I'm not saying that any of them are like, hey, it's absolutely awesome to cheat on your husband. Go ahead and do that. That's great. You know, like I clearly, what we're seeing very specifically with the Guinevere plotline is that, well, yeah, she does this. She gives in to temptation and everything falls apart, which isn't always the case with, with courtly love literature. But I do like within the Mallory that you can have this redemptive arc where it's like, yeah, it's, it's difficult to be in a political marriage.

• 33:40Eleanor Janega?

  It's difficult to, you know, yeah, okay, it's not this particular poem, but it's difficult for a woman to be conceived of as on par with a crown or some lands or as an object. And people do have these particularized relationships. I mean, what's she supposed to do? There's just like, you know, the world's greatest hottie is here at court and everyone agrees with that. Like even the men are like, yeah, Lancelot's really hot. And you're just supposed to be like, yeah, that's chill. I don't have eyes or whatever in my, my political relationship. So there, there's gotta be a way back for that, from that. And there also has to be very particularly a way back from that within the Christian cosmology. Right?

• 34:23Eleanor Janega?

  The entire point of Christianity is that everyone's a sinner and you do mess up. And there has to be a way of confessing and forgiving. And so I think that seeing her as an abbess is incredibly important because it shows she is made of the stuff of leadership. Right? The queenship role that she's supposed to be exercising at Camelot can be as easily applied within a nunnery. Right?

• 34:46Speaker 04

  Absolutely. And the interesting thing about Amesbury as well is it does have a historic connection with a series of powerful women and kind of queen. Even Henry III, Stowager Queen was a nun at the Abbey. A lot of people don't know that about Amesbury. And originally, I don't, if you've spotted it, originally she retreats to an abbey at Killean. But by the time Mallory is writing, she retreats to Amesbury. And I think there's probably quite a lot behind that. There's a really great article about that by Virginia Blanton, where she kind of breaks down all these historic queens connected with Amesbury. But yeah, to go back with what you were saying, I think is you're absolutely right. And we mustn't forget that, yes, she may have some role in the downfall of Arthur's round table,

• 35:26Speaker 04

  but she also has a role in making Lancelot the best knight of Arthur's brotherhood in Mallory. He's very clear that he becomes the best knight because he is motivated for love of Guinevere, which obviously is going to complicate things a little bit in terms of simply attributing blame to her. Yes, Lancelot isn't able to achieve the Grail because of his sin with Guinevere. And you do see him really torn between his love for God and his love for Guinevere during the Grail quest in Mallory. It's something that's really evident, I think. But yeah, and like just that, all of the details of their love affair in Mallory are so compelling. You can really see how it became like the classic version of the story.

• 36:06Speaker 04

  You know, the account of their adultery being exposed and then Lancelot having to come and rescue Guinevere at the stake. That, that role in the kind of series of events that causes the downfall of the round table, I think, is really a compelling, complicated, powerful story. And that's partly why it's had such good staying power, really.

• 36:29Eleanor Janega?

  Can you talk a little bit about that? Like, you know, the, the varying endings that we see for Guinevere, right? Because everyone kind of knows, all right, so Guinevere eventually gives in. She and Lancelot have this affair and then dot, dot, dot, right? Like, you know, the, the fall of Camelot, but there are, you know, so in some versions she goes off to, you know, Amesbury, as we say. But there is this trial aspect as well, right? It's not just like, oh, well, that's crazy. You better get to your nunnery. It's like there are, there are serious and life threatening consequences, right?

• 37:01Speaker 04

  Absolutely. And yeah, we really see her literally on the verge of being burned, which is a horrible, a horrible fate for anybody. But that Mallory is kind of drawing on his sources there because actually if you look at earlier texts in the English tradition, things like the alliterative Mort Arthur, but also especially La Chamon's Brute, way at the early end, sort of like 1150s or something. I think actually, sorry, La Chamon's 1190s, but either way, really terrible for Guinevere. She's, she's treated with and thought about with such violence by the figures around her, which just goes to show, I think, how serious her betrayal will have been seen. Obviously things are a little different with Mallory because her betrayal is, is with Lancelot.

• 37:45Speaker 04

  It's not incestuous and it's not with someone trying to use up Arthur's throne. Although I do think that with Mallory, there is a very real undercurrent of fraction and kind of like civil war that is, you, you can't really read it and fully understand it in terms of the breakdown of the relationship, particularly between Lancelot and Gawain. And Arthur feeling dragged into that without having really thought about the background of the Wars of the Roses and the way that, you know, complete and utter, kind of like a fracturing of unity can really happen. And I think it's also a really important aspect of reading and understanding Mallory's version of that story as well. It's partly why he's telling it really, I think.

• 38:29Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah. Can you expand on that? Because I think that this is something that when you're presented with fiction or presented with, I mean, in this case, even, you know, mythologies to a certain extent, there is a tendency to kind of write this off as not necessarily being reflective of a culture or history. But we certainly see, you know, in terms of, as you've kind of pointed out with, you know, the varying emphasis is on Glastonbury versus Amesbury and things like this. That is playing into the way that we think about Guinevere. But this, I think, is a really important point that when you're living through the chaos of the Wars of the Roses, that's going to impact the way people write stories about English kings. Right?

• 39:13Speaker 04

  Absolutely. And I think that is the big, that is the big concern and the big focus for Mallory. He even tells us himself in one of the few moments where he breaks the fourth wall and addresses his readers. He says, what a shame that he's, he's specifically speaking about the turning of people to Mordred in Arthur's absence. And he says, what a shame that people are not true and that they are so enamored by things that are new fangled. I think it's one of the early uses of the word new fangled. And England is still, this is still a problem in our current time. Even the author himself is asking us to make that connection. And so when you think about it like that, you really start to gain a sense of actually how Guinevere and her relationship

• 39:58Speaker 04

  is just one part of a much bigger, very tangled, very difficult, tragically difficult to untangle series of connections and relationships. And it is just a masterclass in tragedy reading Mallory. I mean, watching Arthur in real time, seeing the future that can unfold in front of him and realizing there's kind of nothing he can do. There's no, regardless of whether he backs Lancelot or gets involved with taking down Lancelot, there's nothing he can do to stop things completely descending into chaos. Yeah, you can tell that it's been written, I think, by somebody with an insight into that world because Mallory himself, I think his allegiance is actually changed during that period.

• 40:38Speaker 04

  And again, just goes to show how confusing and complicated it must've been trying to live through all of that.

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• 42:31Eleanor Janega?

  I think that this is a really interesting thing, right? Because on the one hand, we see Guinevere as this specific site of politics when we are thinking about the Wars of the Roses. We certainly see her as a site of politics when we're talking about her time at Amesbury. We certainly see it, you know, alive and well when we're like thinking about Glastonbury as well, too, right? Because she also kind of has ties to that town, right? It's not just Arthur.

• 43:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's a really interesting subject, actually. So I think the earliest account of Arthur's grave being found at Glastonbury, which for those who are listening who don't know this already, in 1191, a discovery is made at Glastonbury Abbey. We covered this in our King Arthur episode. Basically, some bones are found. There's a series of accounts written about how they're found, but it's ultimately the bones of King Arthur. And the earliest account of this, from 1193, so very soon after it happened, is Gerald of Wales. And he says that Arthur is also found with the bones of Guinevere, his wife, who Gerald of Wales calls Arthur's second wife, and actually then clarifies, I don't, you know, I mean that he married two people and that this was his second wife. He makes

• 43:47Speaker 04

  that unambiguously clear. I wonder, actually, whether that has something to do with the triads that I mentioned earlier in this tradition that Arthur had three wives called Guinevere, although that has been overlooked by some scholars. But nevertheless, so she's there in that account. Unambiguously, he even says that the monks discovered these, these kind of irresistible traces of her golden hair in the grave, and then reached out to touch them, and, and they crumbled beneath their fingers in a kind of, I just, I always find it very strange when you get these accounts of like beautiful, but like there's, there's another, another account of Guinevere's body from 1591 that talks about how Arthur's bones were really big, and Guinevere's bones were really beautiful, and that that was the thing that people saw.

• 44:28Eleanor Janega?

  Oh, she's got good bones, right?

• 44:30Speaker 04

  Those tempting bones. I just like, I find myself thinking like, what, what did that look like? No, actually, that's Gerald of Wales who said that, about how beautiful her bones were. And then, yeah, it's very strange.

• 44:39Eleanor Janega?

  Listen, they're, they're monks. They're very bored. What can I say, you know?

• 44:42Speaker 04

  I suppose so. But the funny thing about Guinevere at Glastonbury is that the extent to which she's actually mentioned in the epitaphs that accompany Arthur's grave, as it's translated to various places in the Abbey precinct, it waxes and wanes. And there's a really interesting chapter on this, and by a scholar called Charles Wood, in James Carley's book on Glastonbury Abbey and the Arthurian tradition. And he basically thinks that the Abbey wants to play her up more at periods where she's actually a somewhat glamorous and interesting character in literature. So they think that the reason why A Big Song and Dance is made about Guinevere in 1278, when Edward comes to visit with his queen, is that by this point, she's actually quite an interesting figure, and you maybe would

• 45:26Speaker 04

  want to talk more about her. Whereas in 1193, that was quickly hushed up, according to Charles Wood, because he thinks that it would have been, she wouldn't have been really interesting enough in Geoffrey, and also she was a kind of like, political traitor, and just wouldn't have been useful politically for her to have been played up at the Abbey. Obviously, that's quite a difficult thing to prove, but it's an interesting theory. And I think it just goes to show how much Glastonbury Abbey really made a point of interpreting, not just, they weren't just, they didn't just say, you know, Arthur's buried here, come along, we'll take your money. They actually made an effort to try and interpret him as part of, kind of like, the wider context of the Abbey site, and also Guinevere along

• 46:08Speaker 04

  with him, which is, yeah, potentially interesting. But certainly, that's another example of Guinevere's political appeal as well. We can't forget that Edward was visiting with his queen when he went to pay a visit to Glastonbury. And we know that him and his queen both, Eleanor, were, another Eleanor, were interested in Arthurian kind of culture and play acting. It was a very important thing to Edward, so much so that he actually reversed, or his father reversed, a decision to ban kind of tournaments. And then Edward I, in his tournaments that he participated in, which were extremely expensive, engaged in a lot of Arthurian play acting, which demonstrate the kind of appeal of that world

• 46:52Speaker 04

  to Edward I, which makes sense, I suppose, politically for him.

• 46:56Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, can we talk about the tournaments, girl? Because this is one of those, those big things, right? It's like, it's not just that Guinevere's got, got the monks reinterpreting old poems, right? This is also a thing that has real world changes in terms of how women behave at the tourney, right?

• 47:18Speaker 04

  Yes, it's absolutely fascinating. From sanctioned tournaments, like we've just spoken about, to very much not sanctioned tournaments. There was a notable example with Roger de Mortimer and Isabella of France. So just to recap, this is the Edward's mother, Isabella of France, and she and her illegitimate lover, Roger de Mortimer, who is presenting kind of a threat. At this point, the young Edward is a sort of like a child king, really, and they are managing things in his stead. And there is a tournament that Mortimer and Isabella appear at when Edward is 16 years old. So, and it really offends Edward, the

• 48:01Speaker 04

  historical records of this specifically talk about how extremely unhappy with the situation Edward is. Because, this is in 1329, I think this happens, Mortimer, at this tournament, is playing the character of King Arthur, and Isabella, his adulterous lover and, and the queen, is playing the figure of Guinevere. And this isn't the only time, interestingly enough, where you see a little bit of Arthur, a kind of like Guineverean characterization of Isabella. One of my favorite facts about Guinevere, and Lancelot, actually, I suppose,

• 48:40Speaker 04

  in the Middle Ages, is that before the news of the Lancelot-Guinevere affair really makes its way into English literature, in 1331, there was a tiny little note, a tiny note that is made in the margins of a chronicle. And it says something about Nottingham Castle. Now, those who have been to Nottingham may know that there is a series of very interesting caves beneath Nottingham Castle. And the little note in this chronicle tells a story that we don't have from anywhere else, that says that Lancelot hid Guinevere in these caves below Nottingham Castle to protect her from the wrath of King Arthur. This is very exciting for a few reasons. Firstly, this is the first mention in English of the

• 49:25Speaker 04

  affair between Lancelot and Guinevere, which is really cool. So it's showing that it's already there in kind of local folklore. And number two, the year prior, Roger and Isabella had been besieged in Nottingham Castle, where they were holding up. So it just, it's such a beautiful illustration, very obvious, precise illustration of how history and art really do quite quickly mirror each other. It's not even something that's happening, you know, like, years later. It's happening almost in real time, as events are happening. But yeah, so that's one interesting, slightly spicy tournament example. Yeah, as I say, the young King Edward was really not very happy about, about what was going

• 50:07Speaker 04

  on. But there are other examples as well. And there's even an example of a tournament that happened in France, where there is no King Arthur at all, and the whole tournament is actually presided over by Queen Guinevere, which is very interesting.

• 50:24Eleanor Janega?

  I love that. Okay, listen, also, I'm an Isabel partisan. And so I'm like, okay, well, now it's illegal for women to have fun, I guess. Like, you can't even depose your husband, rule with your boyfriend, and then like, dress up for a tournament now. Okay, fine, fine, whatever. But yeah, I think that that is so interesting, because it's so...

• 50:46Eleanor Janega?

  Playful, I guess. And I think that this is why it's so interesting to look at these Arthurian figures, because royalty really do identify with them, right? It is, sure, yeah, it's literature, yeah, but you know, we've got these didactic lessons that they are, you know, putting out into the world. And here's people who want to be associated with them, right? You've just overthrown your husband and now what you want to do is get on the good side of the people. So you're like, hey, everybody, I'm like Guinevere, you know? There are these ways of using this popularity in order to underline your own queenship.

• 51:27Eleanor Janega?

  And I think that it's really interesting to see a desire for an association with a woman that we now tend to just kind of write off as, oh, well, you know, she was sinful, downfall of Camelot, the end, right?

• 51:39Speaker 04

  Absolutely. And it actually does lend some credence to that argument by Charles Wood, that the Abbey at Glastonbury may have played Guinevere up more because of her glamour, like, not just because she was a more moral figure, but because she was more appealing, more interesting, more glamorous. And she is, by the time that the French romances really are kicking off, we are, it's no, she's no longer a two dimensional figure. She's really fully come into her own as a complex, nuanced, flawed character who you want to empathize with as a reader, particularly because we know so many women did read Arthurian romance, particularly noble women and queens, you can absolutely see how they will have empathized with the figure of Queen Guinevere. And I don't know, maybe there were some knights

• 52:22Speaker 04

  in their own court, like Roger Mortimer and others who were appealing. And so you can really see how the story would have been exciting for those women, you know, it does make sense. Yeah.

• 52:34Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, I think that it's nice to see, I don't know, the, the complex ways that people are grappling with this particular legend. It's not as easy as just, oh, well, she's a doultry and, and bad. It's also like, well, you know, who amongst us? And, and I think that that is interesting because it tells us a lot about what life at court is really like, you know, ultimately, the reason why this stuff persists is because, yeah, it's, it's difficult being involved in political marriages, you know, it's, it's a tough road to hoe. And I think the figure of Guinevere allows people to acknowledge the sacrifices that royalty do make in their personal lives for, you know, the diplomacy,

• 53:19Eleanor Janega?

  the country, all these other things.

• 53:22Speaker 04

  Absolutely. And also, it still provides a narrative about female desire among those women, you know, allows narratives of queenship and of female nobility to not only be dictated by politics and power, but also to think about what desire and love might look like for those women, sometimes despite of, you know, in despite of marriage for other reasons. So yeah, it's, it is really, really interesting. And yeah. And I think particularly the fact that you have a tournament that happens where it's presided over by Guinevere, it, that also demonstrates that there are women out there who are relating to different aspects

• 54:03Speaker 04

  of power in these stories as well. There's various kind of theories that people have produced as to why King Arthur was absent in that tournament, which the chroniclers that describe it do tell us that King Arthur was not part of the play acting. Some people think it's to flatter Edward I of England, who was supposedly the ultimate, like, no one else can possibly play Arthur as well as Edward I of England. And it's, it's actually this, one of the sisters of the sponsor of the tournament, who's a sort of an Artesian nobleman, who plays the role of Guinevere and kind of ultimately presides over the tournament as well, which makes a nice difference from the tournaments where women's main role is to provide kisses to the winners, right?

• 54:46Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, absolutely. You know, like, why, why not let the, the women have a chance? And, and I guess that's the thing is that even if we are not supposed to understand this as necessarily a role model, right, for, for femininity, what it is allowing is us to see what women might do or how women might relate to these same stories when you actually allow them a little bit of room to breathe. And I think that in and of itself is an incredibly valuable thing.

• 55:17Speaker 04

  Yeah, absolutely. I would agree with that. And we know, because a lot of these stories, they, when you look at the manuscript traditions, they appear in manuscripts that were owned, sometimes even commissioned by women. And that's not just powerful, and that's women across all sectors of society as well, particularly when you start to look at like the English romance tradition, and you realize that those kinds of stories often are cropping up in household books that may have been enjoyed by all members of a household. And sometimes even in manuscripts, that there is a strong case to be made that they were owned by, and potentially put together by women. So there's obviously something about these stories, and notably at the end of the Middle Ages, when everyone is slagging off Arthurian romance, they're all saying, oh, there's too many women nowadays reading

• 56:01Speaker 04

  Arthurian romance, and isn't it terrible? Like Roger Asham, which in his condemnation, he inadvertently revealed to us a lot about the tastes of women in terms of what they were reading, popular fiction and things, in the early 16th centuries.

• 56:18Eleanor Janega?

  Oh, it has been ever thus. Oh. So I find that so interesting, right? Because it's, right, women commission things too, women read things too. And it's just, it's always the same, you know, like, oh, this is a very serious genre. Arthuriana is very serious, and you must take it seriously until the women like it. And then if women like it, then it's no longer serious. And you, you oughtn't to like it anymore.

• 56:44Speaker 04

  But also, like, so much of the early stuff is really unserious. It's just that we often overlook it in favor of the really serious stuff, which I find funny, right? Because, for example, one of the, like, the early version of Geoffrey of Monmouth translated into English that I mentioned, La Chamond's Brute, survives in two manuscripts, right? And yet there are other texts that survive in multiple manuscripts that we never really talk about or think about. And then you get these funny idiosyncratic texts that are clearly just quite silly and playful. So I was reading recently about a little lay called The Lay of the Horn, or The Lay de Cor, which is really, really early, and is essentially a great big joke about how Arthur's queen, but also everyone else in Arthur's court, is completely unfaithful, and that there's only one knight who has a lover who is faithful

• 57:29Speaker 04

  to him in the whole of King Arthur's court, and he's from Cyren's esther. And it seems to be almost like a local joke. But yeah, like, the idea that Arthurian literature was serious and then became seen as less so is also complicated by some of those more idiosyncratic texts as well, I think.

• 57:46Eleanor Janega?

  Well, listen, I mean, I guess that on the one hand, we are blaming women for the downfall of Camelot, and on the other hand, we're blaming women for the downfall of the seriousness of Arthuriana. So it's, it's all pretty much the same thing, right? That's, that's the same.

• 58:00Speaker 04

  It's a shame. Yeah.

• 58:03Eleanor Janega?

  Well, Mary, it has been an absolute delight to have you back on. Thank you so much for coming to visit.

• 58:09Speaker 04

  Thank you. I had a lovely time. It's always good to see you guys. So yeah, thanks for having me.

• 58:14Eleanor Janega?

  Thanks so much to Mary, once again, for joining me. And thank you for listening to Gone Medieval from History Hit. If you want to find out more about Arthurian legends, then do go back and listen to our older episodes on King Arthur and, I don't know, King Arthur's sex life. Remember, you can enjoy unlimited access to award winning original TV documentaries, including my recent documentary with Matt on the rise of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, as well as ad free podcasts by signing up at historyhit.com/subscription. You can follow Gone Medieval on Spotify, where you can leave us comments and suggestions, or wherever you get your podcasts. And tell all your friends and family that you've gone medieval. Until next time.

• 58:59Eleanor Janega?

  Until next time.

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