Maria Travaglio Ramirez
There exists a fine line separating historical truth from legend. History, while beautiful, sometimes lacks the ability to bring its main characters to life through facts alone. On the other hand, legends offer romanticized versions of history, envisioning the day-to-day drama our favorite historical characters.
King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table is a legend we all know. Reading about it recently, the character of Sir Lancelot du Lac caught my attention: a mighty knight with unbreachable honor and immaculate morals. Such idealistic characteristics left me wondering what could have shaped this man’s character and deemed him worthy of his reputation. In searching for a book that could offer an answer, I found “Lancelot” by Kristian Giles.
Interwoven in tales of Christianity and Pagan powers, Giles tells the story of Lancelot with the utmost historical and geographical precision, and I loved how evident his research is on the page. Every character and location in the novel is sourced from original medieval literature concerning King Arthur. Moreover, Giles incorporates Celtic and pagan influences present at the time. To this end, he crafts a verisimilar ambience that illuminates a familiar setting with fresh perspective – that of the usually secondary character Lancelot. All this to say that I loved how the novel employs a perfect balance of historical input and romantic turbulence to craft a captivating read.
To build upon the rich setting of the novel, Giles incorporates simile and metaphor exquisitely to elevate his descriptions of place and feeling. This renders the novel somewhat poetic, and is perhaps a tribute to the lyrical style of the original Arthurian tales. One of my favorite images in the book arises from this sentence: !To the soaring eagle and the swan we must have looked like a trickle of old blood working itself across clean linen.” Here Giles is describing a group of tired warriors trudging through recently fallen snow. It is perfectly descriptive of their exhaustion, as a parallel is established between them and blood trickling slowly at it is absorbed by the linen.
But that isn’t all. The simile evokes much more upon closer study, for the contrast of old, dark blood on pure, clean linen denotes the pivotal moment when Lancelot’s innocent child soul is stained. This quote follows the moment where he is forced to watch his father, mother, and brother die before him, provoking a trauma he is forced to face alone. It is here that the reader begins to understand the story of the famous Lancelot is not as ‘ideal’ as one could imagine, In fact, not only does Lancelot suffer trauma but he commits mistakes in moments where he succumbs to temptation, or anger clouds his judgement.
These mistakes often come at at a great cost, yet Lancelot is always determined to right his wrongs and it is here where his well know resilience shines through. The way he deals with the aftermath of his errors reveals that they are not committed with ill will at heart, but are a consequence of strong emotions clouding reason, or past trauma poisoning the mind. I found marvelous how Giles humanizes the utopian character of Lancelot highlighting how as humans, mistakes are not what defines us. What is more important is how we respond and learn from them.
Written by Maria Travaglio Ramirez
Proofread & corrected by Kaede Johnson