Lancelot & Guinevere: The Problem with Pedestals

Imagine that you are a proud chieftain of a strong and brave band of people, and you are married to a beautiful and virtuous woman who brings you honor and power among your tribe as well as other peoples. You love her, but you must often be away, fighting to keep your land safe. Thankfully, your bravest, most valiant warrior is sworn to protect her, and he often stays to protect her while you are at war. You are thankful for his service in this capacity.

But you wonder, while you are away … he is doing your duty; protecting your wife … what other of your duties might he be fulfilling with her?

It must have been a deep and serious worry for the ancient chieftains, to be set in such stories: The thought that your right-hand man would seduce your wife’s affections in your absence.

Chivalry was a common-sense, intelligent system in Medieval times, as far as women were concerned. Knights were sworn to protect all women, and usually had a certain woman they considered their patroness or special love. As far as Lancelot went, Guinevere was his queen, and the lady he was sworn to protect above all other women. In theory and in line with the ideals of courtly love, this was appropriate, and besides being a service to his king and queen it was a testament to his honor, since courtly love wasn’t necessarily consummated, and Lancelot was notably pure.

We begin to see cracks in the courtly love model when we realize that Lancelot, although rescuing many attractive young women (all apparently willing to take a relationship to whatever level he desired), never showed an interest in them romantically. Always he references Guinevere when turning down young women. She is the only woman he loves, and in the courtly love model this was all right, since his love might be sparked by her honor and virtue, and not lust.

The ancient chieftains would have had less cause to worry about the knight + queen dynamic if their right-hand man had a lover in court that would be taking his mind off anything improper concerning the queen. He might be protecting the queen, watching the queen, and spending his days beside the queen, but the king could be secure in the knowledge that his nights were spent in a whole different bed. If Lancelot had been lying with another woman – other women, King Arthur wouldn’t have had cause to worry about his devotion to Guinevere. As it is, we don’t read that King Arthur worried too much about it anyway. He knew his queen, and his chief knight, and they were both pure and virtuous people. Right? Right??

Well, yeah … up to a certain point. Lancelot pulled a little stunt that I personally like to call ‘pedestalizing.’ He raised Guinevere to the level of a saint or a goddess – the spirit of all feminine virtues wrapped in a very pretty package. In his mind, Guinevere was the ultimate – the only – woman. As far as courtly love was concerned, that was great. In fact, it was an ideal relationship between a knight and his lady that was most likely not historically accurate. Lancelot, as a knight who could never consummate with his lady, was exhibiting a perfectly pure adoration that would be ultimately admirable.

The problem with pedestals, though, and with the constant desire of an unattainable object, is that you eventually start imagining every possible way to attain that unattainable object. Your feet will start on a path toward the thing that your eyes are constantly watching. It’s simple human nature.

Here’s some passages from The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights, which is a version by John Steinbeck, taken from Thomas Malory and other sources.

She (Guinevere) swept from the room with proud and powerful steps, and the little breeze she made in the still air carried a strange scent to Lancelot, a perfume which sent a shivering excitement coursing through his body. It was an odor he did not, could not, know, for it was the smell of Guinevere distilled by her own skin. And as she passed through the door and descended the steps, he saw himself leap up and follow her, although he did not move. And when she was gone the room was bleak and the glory was gone from it, and Sir Lancelot was dog-weary, tired almost to weeping.

Here Lancelot reports and discusses his mission further with King Arthur, before leaving for the night.

…………………………. ‘As he came to the level of the next landing Guinevere issued silently from a darkened entrance. He could see her in the thin light from the arrow slit. She took his arm and led him to her dark chamber and closed the oaken door.
“A strange thing happened,” she said softly. “When I left you, I thought you followed me. I was so sure of it I did not even look around to verify it. You were there behind me. And when I came to my own door, I said good night to you, so certain I was that you were there.”
He could see her outline in the dark and smell the scent which was herself. “My lady,” he said, “when you left the room, I saw myself follow you as though I were another person looking on.”
Their bodies locked together as though a trap had sprung. Their mouths met and each devoured the other. Each frantic heartbeat at the walls of ribs trying to get to the other until their held breaths burst out and Lancelot, dizzied, found the door and blundered down the stairs.

And he was weeping bitterly.

Two people clearly in passionate love with each other, connected by a spiritual bond of mythical proportion, right? Yeah, maybe. But Lancelot is weeping because he understands the depth of the betrayal he is committing.

No depth of passion excuses the cuckolding of a king.

A king is representative of his country. In the old days, the king was addressed as if he were the country itself. Besides, Arthur was Lancelot’s friend, and a trusting friend, unsuspicious of any wrongdoing. Lancelot cucks the king, and he cucks the country in the process, as well as committing betrayal against the trust that his friend had placed in him. The repercussion of this passionate adulterous coupling is a legitimate, actual division of the kingdom.

Lancelot’s constant pedestalizing of Guinevere as the ideal woman resulted in a lessening of inhibitions when he was tested with fire, or in this case, Guinevere’s closeness and warmth. In Steinbeck’s book, on the last page of Lancelot’s story, I have placed a sticky note. It says: The moral of Lancelot’s story is that focus on a desire over long periods of time leads one to lose barriers against pursuing that desire. Losing those barriers means that one might commit regrettable actions – say, adultery with a queen – and the punishment of that adultery might mean the destruction of a kingdom.

I find it interesting that Lancelot was an example of a knight who perfected the ideal of courtly love: He pedestalized a deserving woman, served her with his all even though he could not consummate his love, and did not sleep with or become romantically involved with other women. This courtly ideal may have been strived for, but other knights commonly took advantage of sexual liaisons when they were available. 

Only Lancelot was truly true … until the explosive point that he wasn’t. That tells me that the ideals of courtly love were most effective in a society that regularly settled for less. I’m not saying that Lancelot should have gotten himself laid like the other knights, but that it may have prevented a civil war if he’d just found himself a nice, NON-epitome-of-womanly-perfection girl and given up his constant refusal of women’s sexual offers on the basis that his heart was Guinevere’s.

Of course, to be fair, we must examine Guinevere’s misbehavior as well, since, at least in this story, she is the provoker and makes the first move, by taking him into her chamber. I have thought of her possible barrenness at this point in the story: she had borne no children for the king, and the pressure a queen would feel from that might loosen her inhibitions about starting an affair with a man who idolized her without expecting children from her in return. Lancelot’s idealization of her as the perfect woman would have been refreshing to her, who had produced no children, as opposed to Arthur, whose presence would remind her of her duties in providing an heir. This possibility is outlined nowhere in the story, but it is my pleasure to infer things from the story to try to understand Guinevere’s position. To a woman who feels herself flawed, a man adoring her as perfect is an attractive prospect.

We do not typically blame the object of adoration for the adorer’s actions, but in this case, Guinevere was responsible as a ruler, and as the spouse of a ruler, to keep her kingdom’s best interests at the top of her priorities. She knew the disarray adultery could spark in a royal household. It is naïve to think that she did not comprehend Lancelot’s desire; she entertained it, and even if she didn’t encourage it, she didn’t take serious steps to discourage adulterous action.

I cannot claim to be someone who has been in a situation even slightly like this, or to have felt earth-shattering passion for another person. But I can understand the ancient anxiety of the warrior king leaving his wife with his friend, and I can understand, as a woman, the message to myself. It is this: do not risk the kingdom for your own pleasure. We often cannot help the way we feel, but we can always control the way we act.