The Once and Future King: Post 4, The Ill-Made Knight

Elaine (not the sister of Morgause, but a different Elaine) Is a girl who Lancelot rescues on a quest. She had been locked in a tower full of boiling water by Morgan Le Fay, and she fell in love with Lancelot when he rescued her. She tricked him into thinking she was Guenever and ended up having Lancelot's child. Elaine is certainly the damsel-in-distress type and she is said to be only eighteen, yet very beautiful.

Mordred is the illegitimate child of Arthur and Morgause, who joined Arthur's court. Mordred was, "a thin wisp of a fellow, so fair haired that he was almost an albino: and his bright eyes were so blue, so purely azure in their fadad depths, that you could not see into them" (White 453). Mordred has no problem killing his mother or her lover and is a dastardly character who has very low morals.

Lancelot, after going on many journeys to escape the situation with Arthur and Guenever, returns to the castle in england and ends up continuing his affair with Guenever. But conflict arises when Lancelot is tricked into thinking that a woman, Elaine is Guenever and having an affair with her. Lancelot chooses not to tell Guenever about his affair with Elaine, only about how he had saved her on one of his quests. When Guenever finds out that Elaine had a child and named him Galahad (Lancelot's first name) She breaks off all relations with him and, "She said to herself that Lancelot had betrayed her, that she was a victim of Elaine's cunning, that her lover was sure to betray her again. She tormented herself with a thousand words of the same sort" (406).

The situation deepens when Elaine arrives at Camelot with Galahad and once again tricks Lancelot into thinking that she is Guenever under the cover of night. Guenever finds out and her wrath is impenetrable, she yells at Lancelot, "Get out of my castle. Never show your face in it again. Your evil, ugly, beastlike face" (414). Lancelot goes mad and runs from the castle after jumping out a first-story window. Lancelot, after regaining his senses, calls himself the Chevalier Mal Fet (the Ill-Made Knight), because of his misfortunes with Elaine. Lancelot leaves elaine and returns to the court, picking up where he had left off with both Arthur and Guenever