Is King Arthur's wife Guinevere innocent or guilty?

Question

Should we consider her a wife who is innocent, good, faithful but a bit confused by a pure but inevitable love towards someone else or should we regard her as an immoral, cheating wife who indulged herself with a lustful passion towards another man?...

Answer 1

Guinevere had sex with a man who was not her husband. This is adultery. How do you work out that she was the innocent party?

Answer 2

Innocent or guilty of what? The tale of Lancelot and Guinevere is an artifact of the era of courtly love, during which time the tales of King Arthur's Court were being used as exemplars of what the ruling class should do. On the one hand, it probably means it was not true (in the context it was told, and least credible would be Arthur's reaction to this relationship) on the other, it seems, simply, that Guinevere and Lancelot are trying to behave as adults in this situation when the Court of Love is in full operation: to simply call her innocent or guilty -- that is an adultress or not -- oversimplifies things. Whether she and Lancelot actually got it on doesn't matter at all. Most likely they didn't. Most likely they did take their relationship a little further than they should have especially in the context of a feudal situation where Lancelot and Arthur had a relationship which was important to them both. Hence after his death they both retired to religious establishments. This is the story of an adult relationship where some things were good, some were bad, and the people involved coped as well as they could. In other words she was neither virgin nor whore as the old dichotomy goes and you should get those images out of your mind when talking about her.

Answer 3

I think she was innocent, but not for the reasons you're thinking. The Arthur stories which mention Guinevere and Lancelot were written in Old French. When they were written, "courtly love" was in fashion. They also liked to make fun of the Brits, so they'd mistranslate the Celtic whenever it suited them. The Celtic word for bed also translates as altar, so instead of getting up from a bloody bed, they could just as easily have been getting up from a bloody altar, where they'd performed a sacrifice. Arthur's court was supposed to be a Christian court, but he was very tolerant, so if they had been practicing a non-Christian ritual, it would have been a shock, but tolerable. Also, "Lancelot", or L'Ancelot, would have been the Old French translation of the Latin "Anguselsus," or the Celtic Angus. That means L'Ancelot, or Angus, was more likely the head of the Angus clan in Scotland. Picts also lived in the area, and some Pictish women were priestesses. It's more possible that Guinevere was a Pictish priestess, and Lancelot was a co-worshipper. After all, the whole Guinevere/Lancelot tradition started with just the reference to a bloody bed--how on Earth could they have been so wild as to get the sheets bloody without waking up the whole castle?!?

Answer 4

You gotta go guilty on this one...The movie First Knight is a good example... you like all three characters... and Julia Ormond is Hot... so you don't want to think of her an adultress, but she flat out cheats on Arthur and he busts her... with his "best friend" even though they confess and repent, there is no nobility in their actions.

Answer 5

The noble thing to do would be to give her a fair trial, and offer a case for the prosecution and defence.

Unless you're judging the case in its historical setting, in which case there may be no such thing as equality under the law, and a woman may be subject to her husband's absolute will.

I think we need a recess...

Answer 6

There are so many versions of the Arthurian legend which one do you refer to?

The Christian usually sees her as a scarlet woman.

The Celtic sees her as a Christian (Roman)Queen with a Pagan husband as part of a Christianizing of the Celtic(Pagan) culture. This interpation of the legend is much "kinder " to her and paints her as a person placed in changing times rather than a cardboard character.

Answer 7

Nobody knows if Arthur existed let alone Guinevere and if they did if the stories from Le Mort de Arthur had any truth to them.

Answer 8

She cheated. She's a cheater.

If it weren't wrong, it wouldn't have kept Lancelot from finding the Grail.

Answer 9

Guinevere: queen of Arthur who fell in love with Lancelot and failed to give the king an heir. Early Welsh literature names her Gwenhwyfar, the "White Phantom" and the "first lady of the island." Geoffrey of Monmouth names her Gunhamura, a Roman lady. Some accounts, including for a time the monks at Glastonbury, maintain that Guinevere was Arthur's second wife. The idea of her being rescued dates from 11th century literature, which tells of her abduction by King Melwas and rescue by Arthur. With Chretien de Troyes comes the listing of her rescuer as Lancelot, who saved her from captivity at the hands of Melegeant in Gorre. Later traditions have her as the daughter of Leodegrance, who gave as part of her dowry the Round Table. Her first meeting with Lancelot is also in dispute: Some sources say he escorted her to her wedding to Arthur; other sources say they met when Lancelot came to court. Whatever the case, they are always portrayed as lovers in the end. Later tales have her retiring to a nunnery or being abducted by Mordred

In early Welsh and Celtic literature, Guinevere played a significant, if small, role. Occassionally she seems no more than an incidental character, as in the oldest surviving Arthurian tale, Culhwch and Owen, where she is named but twice. Yet much of Guinevere's nature was determined by the Welsh and the attention they paid her.

The name by which she was known, Gwenhwyfar, means "White Phantom". Several of the Welch triads, or stories told in groups of thre e, feature her--sometimes even without her illustrious husband. The triad "Three Unrestrained Ravagings" features Medrault's (later, Mordred) raid on Arthur's hall in Cornwall. One of his men strikes Gwenhwyfar in the battle, and Arthur retaliates with a raid on Medrault's hall in revenge. This feud, according to the triad, led up to the Battle of Camlamn.

Another triad tells of Arthur's "Three Great Queens" all named Gwenhwyfar, a triptych that may have resulted from the Celtic tradition of "ancient portrayals of such deities as the Great Mother in triple form". The popular novel The Mists of Avalon stresses Arthurian legend's Celtic roots, playing upon this triad, and upon Guinevere's association with the Goddess, although Guinevere herself is not Celtic in the novel.

In other triads, Gwenhwyfar's plight is not so noble. In "Three Faithless Wives" Guinevere is counted as a fourth "more faithless than the three, because she deceived a better man." We are to understand that Arthur himself carried on with "implied loyalty". Before she even became a major player in Arthurian legend proper, before she could chose Lancelot over Arthur, before she would become the premier figure of adultery in the Western world, Guinevere was destined for romantic treason. As the British inherited her from the Welsh, Guinevere was a girl with a "dubious" reputation.

There are so many triads about her, so one cannot decide if she is guilty or innocent

Answer 10

Let's go with the noble angle