Le Morte d'Arthur

I think it would be difficult to have grown up in the West and not know some basic details of the Arthurian Legend. At the very least, most people have seen the Disney movie. There even was just recently a mini series called, Merlin. But I don't know how many people have actually read the legends. I wasn't one of them and I still haven't read them all. For this independent study I only focused on the death of Arthur, the end of the tale. Because of this, I came into it with my own ideas of what happened and of who the bad guy was. But as I read the story I realized there wasn't just one clear cut villain in "Le Morte d'Arthur," but that there were villainous themes that characters, including the famed Lancelot, followed. The two main villainous themes of this particular story are greed and betrayal (which usual comes out of greed).

The three characters that represent these themes the most are Lancelot, Guenevere, and Mordred. The betrayal of Lancelot and Guenevere is obvious and a well known tell. Lancelot is the supposed best knight of the round table and "the Kynge loved hym passyngly well" (pg. 647). Guenevere was the Queen. It was the most forbidden union, the ultimate betrayal. It was also the perfect chance for Mordred's greed for the throne to strike. He and Agravaine tell Arthur his suspicions and with 12 knights they wait for Lancelot, who believes the other knights and the king to be out on a hunting party, to visit the Queen. Even when one of his men try to warn Lancelot not to visit the Queen and that Agravaine is up to something (pg. 648) he visits the Queen anyways. Lancelot escapes but only by killing some of the knights. The main difference between Guenevere and Lancelot is that they know that they have wronged Arthur. To go back to my opening about the general public's knowledge of Arthurian legend, most people know that Lancelot comes to rescue Guenevere. This is true but in the legend they do not end up together. Guenevere becomes a nun and Lancelot a monk to repent for their sins. It is the repentance that the legend portrays them in a sympathetic light and also puts them on a lesser level of villainy against the protagonist as Mordred, who receives a violent death. This is further shown when the legend states that "the nyne knyghtes put Syr Launcelot in the same hors-bere that Quene Guenevere was layed in tofore that she was buryed" (pg 696). The message the legend is trying to send is clear: Adultery, even by good people in love, will result in destruction. The round table is broken and many men died and the affair of Lancelot and Guenevere was the source. This is relevant to my study because it shows that a character, which had been seen as a hero for the majority of the story, can become a villain of the story.

Mordred is on another level than Lancelot and Guenevere because he uses their relationship to betray Arthur as well and start a war resulting in the death of Arthur. And although he is a knight of the round table, from his birth (he is the illegitimate child of Arthur and his half sister, Morgan Le Fay) it is foreshadowed that Mordred will be a villain. While Arthur goes after Lancelot, Mordred claimed that Arthur was dead and usurped the throne. This leads to an epic battle between father and son, king and traitor, and they kill each other:
"And Sir Mordred saw Kynge Arthur, he ran untyll hym and hys swerde drawyn in hys honde; and there Kyng Arthur smote Sir Mordred undir the shylde, with a foyne of hys speare, thoroqoute the body more than a fadom. And whan Sir Mordred felte that he had hys dethys wounde, he threste hymselff with the myght that he had upp to the burre of Kyng Arthur's speare; and ryght so he smote hys fadir, Kynge Arthure, with hys swerde holdynge in both hys hondys, uppon the syde of the hede, that the swerde perced the helmet and the tay of the brayne" (686).
To his last breath, Mordred is hateful and greedy. Unlike Lancelot and Guenevere, who repent and mourn, Mordred is murderous even while dying.