Tuesday, September 10, 2019

The Lay of Lady Percival Countdown Post: Elaine

The tale of Lancelot and Elaine is perhaps one of the most, uh, problematic of the Arthurian "romances."

Elaine, a lovely young woman, falls in love with Lancelot. He, of course, only has eyes for Guinevere. When he turns her down she...

...pines away and dies.

Seriously. Even by Medieval romance standards the story (which is probably French) is really, shall we say, showing a low opinion of women.

Women don't just pine away and die because they can't get the man they want. Now, broken heart syndrome is a real thing, but it's also not the same thing and generally isn't about 'I love you I'm going to waste away.'

It's a story that most Arthurian retellings don't even want to touch. So, one of the challenges I set myself in Lay was to fix it.

It's a tragedy, because Arthuriana is a tragedy, don't let anyone tell you otherwise. It's still a tragedy. But I hope that what I did with it...

Is there an Arthurian story you personally want to fix?

Preorder on Amazon to find out what happens to poor, dear Elaine.

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