Plot summary
Much of The Ill-Made Knight takes place mainly in Camelot, and tells of the adventures, perils and mistakes of Sir Lancelot. Despite being the bravest of the knights, Lancelot is ugly and ape-like, and calls himself the Chevalier mal fet, "The Ill-Made Knight". As a boy Lancelot loved King Arthur and trained to be a knight of the Round Table. When he arrives and becomes one of Arthur's knights he also becomes the king's close friend. This causes some tension, as he is jealous of Arthur's new wife, Guinevere. In order to please her husband Guinevere tries to befriend Lancelot and the two eventually fall in love. T.H. White's version of the tale elaborates on the passionate love of Lancelot and Guinevere. Suspense is provided by the tension between Lancelot's friendship for King Arthur and his love affair with the queen. This affair leads inevitably to the breaking of the Round Table and sets up the tragedy that is to follow in the concluding book of the tetralogy, The Candle in the Wind .
Lancelot leaves Camelot to aid people in need. Along the way he meets a woman who begs him to climb a tree and rescue her husband's escaped falcon. After he removes his armour and does so the husband appears and reveals that he wanted Lancelot to remove his armour so that he can kill the knight. Despite being at a disadvantage, Lancelot manages to kill the man and tells the wife: "Stop crying. Your husband was a fool and you are a bore. I'm not sorry" (though he reflects that he is). Later he comes across a man attempting to murder his wife for adultery. Lancelot attempts to protect the woman, who denies the charge, by riding in between the two, but the man manages to cut off his wife's head. The man then throws himself at Lancelot's feet and asks for mercy. It is revealed later that the man is punished by being charged to take his wife's head to the Pope and ask for forgiveness. Finally, Lancelot comes to a town where the inhabitants beg him to rescue a young woman named Elaine, who is trapped in a tower. The tower is full of steam and she is forced to sit in a tub of boiling water. He manages to save her and her father has him spend the night. The servants and Elaine devise a plan in which the servants get Lancelot drunk and trick him into thinking that Guinevere is in the house. When he awakens in the morning he discovers that he has slept with Elaine. Furious at the loss of his virginity, which he believes has also cost him the ability to work miracles, and frightened at the thought that Elaine might have a baby, he leaves. He confesses the affair to Guinevere, who forgives him. They later discover that Elaine has a baby, which she names Galahad (Lancelot's real name). She brings the baby to Camelot to show to Lancelot and together they spend time with Galahad. Guinevere is furious at this and Lancelot goes mad and runs from the castle. Two years later he is found by Elaine's father, who does not recognise him, and is kept as a fool until Elaine recognises him. He lives with Elaine for some time, but then returns to Camelot. When Galahad grows older he is brought to Camelot to be knighted.
The Ill-Made Knight also deals with the quest for the Holy Grail. Arthur notices that the drop in crime has caused the Knights of the Round Table to fall back into their old habits, especially Gawaine, Agravaine, and Mordred, who find their mother in bed with one of Sir Pellinore's sons and murder both of them. In order to give the Knights a new goal Arthur sends them to find the Holy Grail. The quest ends when Sir Galahad, Sir Percival, Sir Bors, and Sir Pellinore's daughter find the Grail. Sir Lancelot sees the four in a room, with the Grail, an old man, and several other knights, but he is unable to enter the room himself. One of the knights returns with the news that the Grail could not be brought to England and as a result Sir Galahad and the other knight brought it to Babylon (and neither of them could return to England as well). Sir Pellinore's daughter died when she allowed her blood to be taken to cure a dying princess.
Elaine commits suicide after Lancelot tells her that he will not return to stay with her permanently. The book ends with Lancelot performing a miracle, even though he is not a virgin, which is the usual requirement for being able to do so.
Guinevere, also often written in Modern English as Guenevere or Guenever, was, according to Arthurian legend, an early-medieval queen of Great Britain and the wife of King Arthur. First mentioned in popular literature in the early 12th century, nearly 700 years after the purported times of Arthur, Guinevere has since been portrayed as everything from a villainous and opportunistic traitor to a fatally flawed but noble and virtuous lady. Many records of the legend also notably recount the story of her abduction.
Idylls of the King, published between 1859 and 1885, is a cycle of twelve narrative poems by the English poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson which retells the legend of King Arthur, his knights, his love for Guinevere and her tragic betrayal of him, and the rise and fall of Arthur's kingdom.
Lancelot du Lac, also written as Launcelot and other variants, is a character in some versions of Arthurian legend, where he is typically depicted as King Arthur's close companion and one of the greatest Knights of the Round Table. In the French-inspired Arthurian chivalric romance tradition, Lancelot is the orphaned son of King Ban of the lost Kingdom of Benwick, raised in the fairy realm by the Lady of the Lake. A hero of many battles, quests and tournaments, and famed as a nearly unrivalled swordsman and jouster, Lancelot becomes the lord of the castle Joyous Gard and personal champion of Arthur's wife Queen Guinevere. But when his adulterous affair with Guinevere is discovered, it causes a civil war that is exploited by Mordred to end Arthur's kingdom.
Mordred or Modred is a figure who is variously portrayed in the legend of King Arthur. The earliest known mention of a possibly historical Medraut is in the Welsh chronicle Annales Cambriae, wherein he and Arthur are ambiguously associated with the Battle of Camlann in a brief entry for the year 537. His figure seemed to have been regarded positively in the early Welsh tradition and may have been related to that of Arthur's son.
Sir Galahad, sometimes referred to as Galeas or Galath, among other versions of his name, is a knight of King Arthur's Round Table and one of the three achievers of the Holy Grail in Arthurian legend. He is the illegitimate son of Sir Lancelot du Lac and Lady Elaine of Corbenic and is renowned for his gallantry and purity as the most perfect of all knights. Emerging quite late in the medieval Arthurian tradition, Sir Galahad first appears in the Lancelot–Grail cycle, and his story is taken up in later works, such as the Post-Vulgate Cycle, and Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur.
The Knights of the Round Table are the knights of the fellowship of King Arthur in the literary cycle of the Matter of Britain. First appearing in literature in the mid-12th century, the Knights are an order dedicated to ensuring the peace of Arthur's kingdom following an early warring period, entrusted in later years to undergo a mystical quest for the Holy Grail. The Round Table at which they meet is a symbol of the equality of its members, who range from sovereign royals to minor nobles.
The Once and Future King is collection of fantasy novels by T. H. White about the legend of King Arthur. It is loosely based upon the 1485 work Le Morte d'Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory. It was first published in 1958 as a collection of shorter novels published from 1938 to 1940, with some new or amended material. The title refers to a legend that Arthur will one day return as king.
Sir Gareth is a Knight of the Round Table in Arthurian legend. He is the youngest son of King Lot and Queen Morgause, King Arthur's half-sister, thus making him Arthur's nephew, as well as brother to Gawain, Agravain and Gaheris, and either a brother or half-brother of Mordred. Gareth is particularly notable in Le Morte d'Arthur in which he is also known by his nickname Beaumains.
Elaine is a name shared by several different female characters in Arthurian legend.
Bors is the name of two knights in Arthurian legend, an elder and a younger. The two first appear in the 13th-century Lancelot-Grail romance prose cycle. Bors the Elder is the King of Gaunnes (Gannes/Gaunes/Ganis) during the early period of King Arthur's reign, and is the brother of King Ban of Benoic and the father of Bors the Younger and Lionel. His son Bors the Younger later becomes one of the best Knights of the Round Table and participates in the achievement of the Holy Grail.
King Pellinore is the king of Listenoise or of "the Isles" in Arthurian legend. In the tradition from the Old French prose, he is associated with the Questing Beast and is the slayer of King Lot. His many children include the sons Aglovale, Lamorak, and Percival, and the daughter Dindrane.
Merlin is a two-part 1998 television miniseries which originally aired on NBC that retells the legend of King Arthur from the perspective of the wizard Merlin.
Gaheris is a knight of the Round Table in the chivalric romance tradition of Arthurian legend. A nephew of King Arthur, Gaheris is the third son of Arthur's sister or half-sister Morgause and her husband Lot, King of Orkney and Lothian. He is the younger brother of Gawain and Agravain, the older brother of Gareth, and half-brother of Mordred.
Sir Agravain is a Knight of the Round Table in Arthurian legend, whose first known appearance is in the works of Chrétien de Troyes. He is the second eldest son of King Lot of Orkney with one of King Arthur's sisters known as Anna or Morgause, thus nephew of King Arthur, and brother to Sir Gawain, Gaheris, and Gareth, as well as half-brother to Mordred. Agravain secretly makes attempts on the life of his hated brother Gaheris since the Vulgate Cycle, participates in the slayings of Lamorak and Palamedes in the Post-Vulgate Cycle, and murders Dinadan in the Prose Tristan. In the French prose cycle tradition included in Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, together with Mordred, he then plays a leading role by exposing his aunt Guinevere's affair with Lancelot, which leads to his death at the hands of Lancelot.
Palamedes is a Knight of the Round Table in the Arthurian legend. He is a Middle Eastern pagan who converts to Christianity later in his life, and his unrequited love for Iseult brings him into frequent conflict with Tristan. Palamedes' father King Esclabor and brothers Safir and Segwarides also join the Round Table. The romance Palamedes was named after him.
Camelot 3000 is an American twelve-issue comic book limited series written by Mike W. Barr and penciled by Brian Bolland. It was published by DC Comics from 1982 to 1985 as one of its first direct market projects, and as its first maxi-series. It was also the first comic book series to be printed on Baxter paper instead of newsprint.
The Candle in the Wind is a fantasy novel by British writer T. H. White, the fourth book in the series The Once and Future King. Written in 1940, it was first published in 1958 in the collected edition. It deals with the last weeks of Arthur's reign, his dealings with his son Mordred's revolts, Guinevere and Lancelot's demise, and his perception of right and wrong.
Queen of Camelot is an Arthurian-legend based novel shown through the viewpoint of Queen Guinevere. It is a combination of two of Nancy McKenzie's previous books The Child Queen and The High Queen. She states in the foreword that she originally intended the novels to be combined, but they were split at the time of publication because of their length.
Elaine (Helaine) or Elizabeth, also known as Amite, and identified as the "Grail Maiden" or the "Grail Bearer", is a character from Arthurian legend. In the Arthurian chivalric romance tradition, she is the daughter of the Fisher King, King Pelles of Corbenic, and the mother of Galahad from her rape of Lancelot. She should not be confused with Elaine of Astolat, a different woman who too fell in love with Lancelot.
