Sir Lancelot
“Where is your yellow jersey Lancelot?”
“Do you know it is rude to go to bed with a queen in your armour Lancelot?”
Sir Lancelot was the noble knight at the court of King Arthur who did the dirty with Queen Guinevere whilst everyone else was looking for the Holy Grail. Lancelot's meddling with the the Queen's person brought down the Golden Age and led to the triumph of the Anglo-Saxons.
Lancelot is usually depicted as an honourable man who allowed himself to be tempted by some high class skirt. In other words, it was all Queen Guinevere's fault and that she should have stuck to home and baby making, something she evidently failed at doing so.[1]
A Life Aquatic[edit]
Lancelot was brought up in the bottom of a French lake[2]. He wasn't born there but his adoptive mother - 'The Lady of the Lake'[3] - had snatched him from his baby stroller after his parents had been attacked by a swarm of bees whilst out on a picnic. If the said 'Lady' had done this deliberately or not is not recalled. The Lady was also a supplier of magic swords and had given one to King Arthur's father Uther Pendragon in exchange for the latter's boy. When Uther didn't deliver on that promise, the Lady had engineered a defeat for Uther. He refused to return the sword and had it stuck in a stone which pissed off the said Lady.
So she planned a long term revenge of Uther and his family. The Lady brought of Lancelot amongst the fishes and dumped shopping trolleys and showed him the ways of becoming a knight. Lancelot didn't object to this peculiar lifestyle and was able to develop into a pretty decent swimmer - even with a full set of armour on. Eventually the Lady said it was time for him to go and wrote out his CV to be presented at Camelot. To give him some extra class and a dash of foreign, Lancelot became 'Lancelot Du Lac' and pedalled to his destiny on a bicycle in top quality steel suit.
Camelot[edit]
- Lancelot:Bonjour! Jeux San Frontiers!! Ici Lancelot pour de lac. Jamais entree moi??
- Guard: Eff off back to France you effing foreigner.
- Lancelot. I am 'ere for a job.
- Guard. You come here, taking our jobs! You got a family hiding behind the trees if I let you in?
- Lancelot. I will prove my valour to anyone. I can fight fair or foul.
- Guard. Vote UKIP.
Lancelot was eventually spotted by another knight, Sir Pilsner. He asked if Lancelot had any skills like 'polishing, juggling or cooking' until Lancelot volunteered he could perform 'underwater ballet'. Since it was a quiet night at Camelot and King Arthur wasn't in the mood for Celtic bards repeating their lore of Merlin jokes, Lancelot was given a slot to perform.
Wearing just a pair of waterproof leather pants[4], Lancelot performed his dance in front of his male knightly audience[5]. Arthur awarded him a knighthood, on condition he advanced some money in the current business of 'looking for the Holy Grail'. It was then that Lancelot revealed his origins and that the Lady of the Lake as his patron had already made the donation - Excalibur. Arthur was surprised. He was carrying a sword made by a woman! The King hoped this part of his legend would be overlooked[6].
One woman had been able to see Lancelot's show. French born Queen Guinevere had access to a spy hole which she had used before to see what Arthur and his knights were up to [7] when the Ladies of the court had been excluded. The Frenchman's smooth torso compared very favourably with the usual hairy beasts she had seen in that 'gentle knights' room before. In three words...she was smitten.
It was Guinevere who persuaded Arthur to knight 'Lancy' so that he could share the high table with them as a social equal. The King agreed and sat the Queen between them. She beamed a broad smile and stopped moaning about living in Britain and eating boiled cabbage every night.
Heroic Deeds and Holy Grail[edit]
Life at Arthur's court had been till recently a bit slow. The Anglo-Saxon invaders had been walloped but not expelled. Arthur's relations with his sister Morgan Le Fay[8] had got awkward when they had got into an incestuous affair[9] which had produced the twitchy bad son called Mordred[10]. Guinevere had come along later but unsurprisingly persuaded Arthur to banish both Morgan and Mordred away from Camelot. She also had got rid of Merlin ('the deadbeat Druid') as he had a fondness for princely heirs and had liked to organise charity fun runs of questionable purpose in a purple tracksuit.
Yet with no work to do at Camelot except to bore each other silly with heroic stories, Arthur had come up with a plan to keep everyone busy with his proposal to locate and bring back the Holy Grail[11]. For what purpose he didn't say but all the knights agreed this was a good thing to do. So off they galloped looking for the thing. Arthur went too but decided to leave Lancelot behind in Camelot.
Lancelot felt left out of the Grail business and mooched around Camelot cursing his lot. Whether by accident or design, Guinevere forgot to pull her bedroom drapes as she stepped into a bath tub situated opposite to where Lancelot was in a furnished tower. Gallantly he noticed she had forgotten a towel and crossed the courtyard to supply her with one of his own (supplied by the Lady of the Lake).
But a cruel trick was played. Arthur's nephew Mordred happened to be visiting the castle looking for his sadistic toys and saw Guinevere and Lancelot standing together in the same tub. He informed his mother and message was sent to Arthur.
Burn Baby Burn[edit]
Outraged, Arthur abandoned his search for the Holy Grail and made his way back to Camelot to separate Lancelot from his wedding tackle and cast Guinevere to the flames. The Lady of the Lake sent warning (the usual talking bird nonsense) and Lancelot left, pedalling furiously as the sound of distant horse hooves could be heard. Guinevere was all set to join him side Saddle but her long dress got caught in the spokes and she was flung to the ground. Mordred captured her and trussed up like a turkey, attached the queen to large wooden stake he happened to have with him. Surrounded by his evil knights and his mother in her best black witch wardrobe, encouraged Arthur to keeping raging and to set fire to his faggots (supplied) to get the bonfire going.
But Arthur was a stickler for rules and regulations. 'Trial first, burning second' as he was Godly knight and Merlin trained to present the best face to a situation. So Guinevere was released and was told to prepare herself for a 'You Decide:Guilty or Innocent'.
Unable to call anyone to defend her, Guinevere admitted her infidelity but blamed Arthur for his long neglect and time spent with the Knights in their late hour entertainment. The crowd growled in anger at this attack on their brave representatives and their king. Now they remembered too that Guinevere was French, her father Leotard had been King of Cameltoe and had forged the union of the two humped cities of Cameltoe' and Camelot'. Leotard had also given Arthur the Round Table as a wedding present but this was forgotten as popular fury remembered Guinevere's crime and was stoked by Morgan Le Fay in full black gartered fury.
"Guinevere has committed treason with her body against her monarch," spat Morgan Le Fay. "Punishment is death isn't Arthur? Let flames consume her guilt and, by the way, Mordred is an ideal substitute ruler whilst you're away."
Arthur nodded but really wanted to ask Merlin what he should do. So he prevaricated, locked up Guinevere and left Mordred in charge whilst he went back grail hunting. Morgan Le Fay was bitter with Arthur's 'wait and see' approach and made sure the disgraced queen was given the coldest turret to stay in whilst her husband made up his mind.
Return of Lancelot[edit]
Lancelot threw himself into many heroic adventures to atone for his moment of lust. Maidens saved, dragons brutalised and bullies butchered helped to salve a guilty conscience but he couldn't forget Guinevere. In time Lancelot abandoned his knightly ways, even throwing his bicycle into a non-magic lake and lived the life of tramp: eating squirrels and suffering terrible bowel movements later. He sees every woman (and sometimes men) as Guinevere and by chance one of his moody couplings produces a son called later Sir Galahad[12].
Yet with Arthur away, the Anglo-Saxons returned with more fire and more designs on Late Roman trinkets. The people of Britain demanded Arthur and his men to quit looking for some dubious religious relic and defend Britain. Mordred agreed and declared his 'uncle' (father) mad and became King himself. Morgan Le Fay went along with that but Mordred now added his own rider - Guinevere would be his queen.
In her anger and witchery, Morgan Le Fay cursed just about everyone and declined to appear at court. The Lady of the Lake caught a whiff of this. She also knew Arthur would never find Merlin as she had long ago met him and he had taught all her tricks (rabbits and hats, sawing people in half, card tricks). He had known her as 'Vivienne' and when Merlin's box of magic tricks had been exhausted, she had him imprisoned and had sucked out of him all his wisdom - like a spider does with a fly when stuck in a web'. So there Merlin remained, stuck in a greenhouse with just tomatoes to keep him replenished and black fly to spray[13].
The Lady of the Lake heard Morgan's curse - and knowing that once a curse is uttered, it can't be unuttered - now wanted Lancelot to return to Camelot and rescue Guinevere. Arthur, Mordred and Morgan could all go hang. So with more magic - she recovered Lancelot's rusting two wheel steed and returned it to glory. New armour supplied and once again Lancelot rode his bone shaker to Camelot.
Quite a Few Deaths[edit]
Yet as Lancelot rode like a Tour de France entrant, he arrived just in time for Arthur and Mordred to have their final falling out. Knight slaughtered knight, knave knifed knave and peasant punched peasant. Morgan Le Fay's spells fell flat and she was trampled to death by a red dragon. Lancelot slew many of his old drinking partners but then chose to find Guinevere and look for a happy ending to his tail. So he missed Arthur's last stand and the Lady of the Lake's repossession of Excalibur as the King of the Britons had failed to keep up with his repayments.[14]
With so much kin slaughter, the Anglo-Saxons moved in to the vacated positions of power and turned Britannia into Anglo-Saxony. Arthur's body was never found, his body spirited away to Avalon to feature in an endless loop of Bryan Ferry shopping mall re-tunes. Lancelot married Guinevere and they moved back to Lancelot's lake. A later descendant of Lancelot would let disgrace the name but let Lance Armstrong tell his side of that story ($$$ please).
References[edit]
- ↑ Lancelot and Guinevere are portrayed as both saints and sinners in the Arthurian legends. It looks like two very different traditions were stitched together to create the story as we know it today.
- ↑ Presumably not on the actual lake bottom but in a cavern underneath.
- ↑ Vivienne or Vivien, former one half of a magic act with Merlin. No relation to Florence Nightingale who was called 'The Lady with the Lamp'.
- ↑ The first mention of something that looks like a bathing costume in 5th Century Britain.
- ↑ What this dance actually was is glossed over by all contemporary writers. Some just add the aside 'it was pretty damn filthy'
- ↑ As indeed it usually is
- ↑ Page boys since you asked.
- ↑ Strictly his half sister according to Arthurian legend writers but it still counts as 'sleeping with your sister'.
- ↑ This being the Dark Ages when candles were in short supply, a mistake any king could make.
- ↑ Now you know where Mordor comes from
- ↑ Supposedly Jesus's own special drinking mug
- ↑ Galahad has his own legends but frankly they are boring pious stories that will make your slippers curl. Supposedly the only Round Table knight to actually see and touch the Holy Grail. Nuff said.
- ↑ Merlin's entrapment shows that he was useless when it came to women. He thought Vivienne wanted him for his sparkly wit and reasonably fit body. He was wrong
- ↑ Arthur's shameful inability to pay his debts were later glossed over with some nonsense about him throwing the sword away to collect the insurance money.