Why is lancelot ill made

She had put on a make-up which she did not need, and put it on badly. She was forty-two. When Lancelot saw her waiting for him at the table, with Arthur beside her, the heart-sack broke in his wame, and the love inside it ran about his veins. It was his old love for a girl of twenty, standing proudly by her throne with the present of captives about her — but now the same girl was standing in other surroundings, the surroundings of bad make-up and loud silks, by which she was trying to defy the invincible doom of human destiny.

They cannot participate in quests as the knights do, and their only "purpose" is portrayed as child bearing. Much is made therefore of the the infertility of Guinevere, and poor Elaine spends a score of years apparently waiting for Lancelot's promised return with nothing to show for it but a token for him to wear in the Tournament: "It was a scarlet sleeve embroidered with large pearls.

You can do good embroidery in twenty years. And I like embroidery. It is a crying shame and a blow for feminism that these women are given only one dimension, and further, one which is not even independent of the men in their lives. This is not a book to inspire girls. I accept that the stories are not the result of pure original thought being based on Arthurian Legend , but White manages to make the case for pacifism through his adaptations within a narrative culture focused largely on combat , so I hardly feel that exploring and deepening his female characters would have presented an impossibility.

I keep coming back to Terry Pratchett , because I'm almost never not reading or otherwise experiencing Discworld, and the contrast here is particularly stark, especially when you think of books like Monstrous Regiment or Equal Rites.

Overall, a compelling retelling of the Lancelot-centric parts of Thomas Malory 's Le Morte D'arthur , but not a book that has aged well. Sep 06, Angelo rated it liked it.

Dec 13, Makiyah P rated it liked it. This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. This book was just like the movie we watched in class about Lancelot and Arthur. In this book there's a love triangle between them both and arthur's wife, Guenever. Lancelot is in love with the king's wife and they both betray Arthur. I personally thought the book was boring at first but just like Harry Potter it gets better if you keep reading. Dec 05, Brendan Leipelt rated it liked it Shelves: not-comics.

Skip the first two books and just read this one. Finally fulfills the promise of the other parts as a serviceable story without the droning comic relief and silliness. I couldn't tell you anything that happened in book 2 besides some random lady boiling a cat, but this one had genuine character development, thoughtful prose, and introspective poetry. No more than 3 stars, but worth a rainy day. Apr 01, Ahmed Al-shamari added it Shelves: once-and-future-king. Lancelot is brave and really wants to impress Arthur since he was a kid.

He got used to discipline and hard work. The book has lots of foreshadowing, which I enjoy. I also really enjoy the betrayal and the backstabbing of Guenever and Lancelot. When Lance discovers that his uncle Dap knows about his affair, he asks him to leave which tells us that Lancelot is the kind of person who runs away from his problems rather than faces them. The adventures he goes through are very interesting and wicked and were full of wicked people.

I felt nothing but sympathy for the poor thing, especially when he was tricked into sleeping and having a baby with Elaine. Later, I felt really, really bad for him when he went crazy and mad after his fight with Elaine and Guenever, and all the crap he went through, and becoming skinny, weak, starved, and made a fool of.

And the way Lionel ends his story when he says that all of the sudden God came and something happens and the sun burns their shields and they start laughing and patch things up just like that; out of nowhere. However, I started to like the story when Lancelot came back because it was interesting and his story was fun.

How he lives with his son on the boat and makes a good relationship with him on a holy boat was a fun story. All that was really exciting to read.

After that, I felt horrible for Elaine. The poor woman just committed suicide, I mean her only fault was that she loved Lancelot, and died for it. Sad sad. Throughout the entire book, I have been grossed out by the affair between Lancelot and Guenever. I believe Arthur had every right to be against Lancelot in the whole Round Table thing. The freeing of Guenever from Meliagrance was the last demonstration of his bravery, sadly.

Especially the way he slaughters Meliagrance. And then I read the last chapter and kind of got frustrated. It said earlier that only virgins can perform miracles, and then Lancelot just performs a miracle on the man with the wound healing issue. But in the end, the book was very fun, interesting, and exciting to read. Like what happened with the knights after the Holy Grail quest. I was not expecting this book to be about Lancelot given the ending of the previous book but it was interesting nonetheless.

I had to look up T. White when I had finished because there are some very Australian references in there that were peculiar, especially to Bradman and St Kilda, but as odd as they were they did have a comparative place within the novel. I do not have any real strong opinions about this book either way, it was pretty straightforward, the story or Arthur and his creation I was not expecting this book to be about Lancelot given the ending of the previous book but it was interesting nonetheless.

I do not have any real strong opinions about this book either way, it was pretty straightforward, the story or Arthur and his creation and aftermath of the round table.

Lancelot and his relationship with Arthur and Guinevere. It focuses more on Lancelot's adventures but it does blend into Arthur's perspective on occasion which was good. It is hard, especially reading each book so close to one another, to picture Arthur as a king after such a long time in his childhood in Sword in the Stone.

Now he is thirty and still aging as is everyone else and a ruling king trying to create order. Once again past characters from the other tales resurface, not in a predominant way but they are mentioned and have small roles and influences.

We follow Lancelot's journey and the advancements and troubles of Arthur's kingdom, and the famed Holy Grail comes into the story as well. The trials and tribulations of trying to recover it and the battles both internal and external of the knights involved. The one thing that did bug me was when characters were written in dialect. Though much of the previous book was written like this but in a more understandable manner I felt. My enjoyment went up and down.

It started slow, got more interesting and I thought it was going to be ok, then it slowed down again and got a little boring.

Nothing against White it is a very detailed and well researched story, but there are certainly bits that did not hold my attention.

I do not claim to know everything about this legend, typically Monty Python is my limit and the odd other film like Mists of Avalon, and I don't only want to read these stories to see the famous and well known plots of the story. There is a lot more to this tale, especially about a knight like Lancelot, and a lot of the time it was intriguing and I didn't know what would happen, but unfortunately there are blocks where I am fighting to urge to skip sections onto the next scene.

White's detail of making sure each story is told, every detail known and nothing left out sometimes makes for a drawn out revelation, whether this is for reader suspense or not I am not sure. For the little suspense there is I felt it was overshadowed by an overload of minor and extra details. Towards the end it did become like a medieval romance novel with overwrought and emotional women, and the men fighting for their hearts.

Perhaps I was just eager to finish the book, not by any means long, but a lot harder to get through than previous ones. About three quarters of the way through my interest really waned and every time I took a break I had no real enthusiasm to return.

The bits that were interesting is where the three stars come from, it was a good story and as I say, very well planned out and detailed. But as the last hundred or so pages were a struggle. By the end of the story I did feel a bit sorry for poor Arthur. After the joys of his youth, Merlin's training and his rise to power, the effort to make England a better place, what he ended up with and the life he was dealt was depressing.

But I mean if you are interested in the legend all the intricate details, research and stories would interest you, and it is a good read to learn more, but be warned it does get drawn out. Oct 05, Matt rated it it was amazing Shelves: classic-sci-fi , fiction. This was awesome. This is the third section that makes up "The Once and Future King," and it was by far my favorite so far. I don't know if I am becoming more used to White's writing, or if this was truly a better book, but I really loved this telling of Lancelot's story.

I find Lancelot to be an incredibly compelling character, much more likable, in fact, than King Arthur himself. Arthur's motivations are sometimes unclear, and he sometimes comes off as dumb.

Lancelot can also come off as slow- This was awesome. Lancelot can also come off as slow-witted, but there is a genuineness and innocence to him that seems to make his decisions make sense. I'm torn on this, but for now I'll say that I think you could read just this book and, with very minimal knowledge of the King Arthur mythology, you could enjoy Lancelot's story without reading the other parts of "The Once and Future King. Mar 20, Ashley. The Ill made knight told the story of Lancelot.

Lancelot was a brave, kind and upstanding knight, and he was the best knight of the round table and the world. But he rescued a girl called Elaine and Elaine had a kid with him, which was an accident and then The Ill made knight told the story of Lancelot. But he rescued a girl called Elaine and Elaine had a kid with him, which was an accident and then Guenever was angry.

It told a lot about love, the love between Lancelot and Guenever, the love between Arthur and Lancelot and the love from Elaine to Lancelot. Arthur loved Lancelot as his best friend and so does Lancelot and they love the same woman, Guenever.

Guenever loves Arthur, but she loves Lancelot, too. On one side, he has his best friend. On the other side, he has the woman he loved the most. Kindness of the two men just hurt themselves the most. They suffer for each other. Also, Arthur was always a little boy with Merlyn, and now he has to deal with all kinds of problems by himself. Not with his queen, nor with his best knight and best friend. About Elaine, She was a good girl but she made a mistake for her love.

Lancelot hated her for lying to him. But I think Elaine will be a better wife than Guenever. First of all, Elaine loved Lancelot very much. Guenever did too, but she also loved Arthur, and how can she love two people at the same time which confused me so much!

Also, what if Guenever get to live with Lancelot and then she fell in love with someone else and loved him at the same time?

Because when she was with Arthur, who was pure and kind and was the great king of England, she fell in love with Lancelot. But the book was good, with all the details about the struggle in the triangle.

Like when Arthur saw Lancelot and Guenever standing together and looking at each other, he just kept eating his food and said nothing, like he was pretending to see nothing.

I really want Arthur to do something about this!! Why would he still love Guenever anyway! Mar 08, Matthew Kozak rated it it was amazing. Of course he felt that God was much better than Guenever or Arthur, but the point was that he was personal. Lancelot had a definite idea of what he looked like, and how he felt; and he was somehow in love with this "This knight's trouble from his childhood-which he never completely grew out of, by the way-was that for him God was a real person: not an abstraction who punished you if you were wicked or rewarded you if you were good, but a real person like Guenever or Arthur or like anybody else.

Lancelot had a definite idea of what he looked like, and how he felt; and he was somehow in love with this Person. So Lancelot was not really involved in an Eternal Triangle: it was an Eternal Quadrangle, if you catch the idea, which was eternal as well as quadrangular. He had not 'given up' his mistress because he was afraid of some Holy Bogy, but he had been confronted by two people whom he loved.

The one was Arthur's Queen, the other a wordless presence who had celebrated Mass at Castle Carbonek. Unfortunately, as so often happens in love affairs, the two objects of his affection were contradictory. It was as if he had been confronted with a choice between Jane and Janet; and as if he had gone to Janet, not because he was afraid that she would punish him if he stayed with Jane, but because he felt, with warmth and pity, that he loved her best.

He may even have felt that God needed him more than Guenever did. This was the problem, an emotional problem rather than a moral one, which had taken him into retreat at his abbey, where he had hoped to feel things out. Still, it would not be quite true to say that Lancelot did not come back from some motives of magnanimity. He was a magnanimous man. Even if God's need for him was the greater in normal times, now it was obvious that his first love's need was pressing.

Perhaps a man who had left Jane for Janet might have enough love inside him to return for Jane when she was in desperate need, and this love might be compared to pity or to magnanimity or to generosity, if it were not unfashionable, and even a little disgusting, to believe in these emotions. Lancelot, in any case, who was wrestling with his love for Guenever as well as with his love for God, came back to her side as soon as he knew that she was in trouble, and, when he saw her radiant face waiting for him under shameful durance, his heart did turn over inside its habergeon with some piercing emotion Readers also enjoyed.

About T. Born in Bombay to English parents, Terence Hanbury White was educated at Cambridge and taught for some time at Stowe before deciding to write full-time. White is best known for his sequence of Arthurian novels, The Once and Future King , first published together in Other books in the series. The Once and Future King 5 books. Books by T. Lancelot decides to leave for England immediately.

Uncle Dap accompanies Lancelot as his squire. Lancelot defeats the knight, who turns out to be King Arthur. Arthur is thrilled to see Lancelot and knights him back at Camelot. At first, Lancelot is jealous of Guenever because he is fiercely protective of his friendship with Arthur and thinks she is coming between them. Lancelot and Guenever, now reconciled, begin spending more time together. To erase his doubt, Arthur decides to bring Lancelot with him to fight the Romans.

Lancelot is angry that he is not left behind to guard Guenever, but he goes nonetheless. The war lasts several years—Arthur eventually becomes the overlord of most of Europe, with Lancelot as his new champion and friend. Lancelot and Arthur return to England determined that nothing can divide them, and they are welcomed with great cheer.

When Guenever greets them, however, it becomes clear to Lancelot that she can indeed come between him and Arthur. If he were a less principled man, the narrator says, Lancelot might simply run off with Guenever. Another of the captives, he tells Lancelot, is Agravaine. One day in the summer, a beautiful lady asks Lancelot to climb a tree to retrieve her falcon. Lancelot eventually kills the fat knight.

Later, Lancelot meets a knight who is trying to kill his own wife for adultery. The knight then begs for mercy, and Lancelot, unable to kill a man begging for his life, spares him. She still loves Arthur, but with a sort of awed affection. He worries particularly about the Orkneys, whose father, Lot, was accidentally killed by Pellinore.

Now that her husband is dead, Morgause is trying to seduce every knight she can, and the Orkney knights are becoming uncontrollable as a result. In the first two books of the novel, White tries to produce his own version of the Arthurian legend. This third book elaborates on the evil knight, a topic that is only hinted at earlier in the novel.