Love, Lancelot, Guinevere, and Fate

So at the beginning of this class, Lancelot was my favorite knight, he was strong and mighty and being a sucker for romance his affair with Guinevere intrigued me. The story of the Knight of the Cart kept this view of Lancelot for me. In a previous post I mentioned the couple reminded me of Will and Jocelyn from the movie A Knights Tale. I loved his devotion to her and how their love was strong and true. As we progressed my opinions began to change. The biggest change occurred when my group did our project on Camelot. Seeing the illicit affair and the hurt it gave Arthur on the screen started to sour me to their epic romance and love. In most tales featuring their affair at the forefront up until I watched that had little to do with Arthur or his feelings. Watching him love both Lance and Jenny and get hurt by both of them made me hate their relationship. I realized as I read the end of Once and Future King that what really made me hate the character of Lancelot and his relationship with Guinevere was not only that I saw its affect on Arthur that made me not like it; it was the songs! They annoyed me with their constant singing and I just wanted them to go away and stop! As we read Once and Future King my warm feelings towards them began to come back, i'm not sure how much of it had to do with the fact that Lancelot was indeed ugly in this, so I saw real true love in their affair. I skimmed some of the chapters before this morning and saw some of the tenderness they felt for each other. I then rethought their on screen love in Camelot, minus the songs, and saw some of the same tenderness. I fully believe as I stated in class that Lancelot and Guinevere are fated and destined to be together, this however does not mean that they do not have free will. They used this free will to make some really bad decisions, they could have run when they fell in love instead of waiting 15 years, but you know what people say "You do stupid things when you're in love". Not only was their judgement blinded by their love, I think they could not leave Arthur. Lance loved Arthur, it was his best friend who had trusted him and they had been friends for years. Guinevere was Arthur's wife, whether she ever loved him, I'm not really sure but she did care for him. I feel like you cannot have some kind of care for the person you have been married to for years and especially if that person has helped you run a kingdom. I think their loyalty to Arthur kept them from running and that shows more about their character than the fact that they did not try and circumvent their destiny, as we saw so many try to do only to end up in the same place.

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