Have you heard about Guinevere and Lancelot?

It’s quite funny to look at the love triangle situation from the viewpoint of an office romance. Arthur is the boss, Lancelot the employee, and Guinevere the boss’s wife. You can almost see Agravain standing by the water cooler saying, “Hey, have you heard about Guinevere and Lancelot?” It can also be seen as the all-too-common tale of the wife who has an affair with her husband’s best friend. It’s easy to relate these fantastic stories to the mundane dysfunctionalities (I may have made that word up, my computer doesn’t like it) of society today.


That being said, I absolutely hated Guinevere in The Poisoned Apple. You have Lancelot who just screams “Everything I do, I do it for you” through his actions (trying to stop rumors and slander, fighting for her honor, etc.), while Guinevere picks up the tune of “You Don’t Know What You’ve Got till it’s Gone” after sending him away. I saw her as such a hypocrite. She gets angry with Lancelot and goes as far as to banish him from the court because he has been with other women, while her relationship with Lancelot would be seen in the same light to King Arthur, although it might be a little more personal.

After Lancelot is banished, Guinevere holds a feast for all the knights of the Round Table, despite the grief she has for Lancelot’s departure. It says, “She bare it out with a proud countenance, as though she felt no thought [grief] nother danger.” The behavior she shows throughout the story is very prideful. Not much later, she forgets her pride by kneeling down and begging Sir Bors to be champion for her and misses Lancelot. I wonder if this is trying to show Christian ideology that pride is bad. What’s that saying? Pride came before the fall?