Editing Idylls of the King (section)

=== Lancelot and Elaine ===
[[File:La Dame du Lac.jpg|thumb|The [[Lady of the Lake]] steals [[Lancelot]] from his mother, illustration by George Wooliscroft Rhead Jr., 1898]]
"Lancelot and Elaine" is based upon the story of [[Elaine of Astolat]], found in ''Le Morte d'Arthur'', the [[Lancelot-Grail]] Cycle, and the Post-Vulgate Cycle. Tennyson had previously treated a similar subject in "[[The Lady of Shalott]]", published in 1833 and revised in 1842; however, that poem was based on the thirteenth-century Italian ''novellina'' ''[[La Damigella di Scalot]]'',<ref>[https://www.liberliber.it/online/autori/autori-n/novellino/il-novellino/ Il Novellino: Le ciento novelle antike (LXXXII)]</ref> and thus has little in common with Malory's version.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/tennyson/los1.html|title="The Lady of Shalott"|website=Victorianweb.org|access-date=9 September 2017}}</ref>

Long ago, Arthur happened upon the skeletons of two warring brothers, one wearing a crown of nine diamonds. Arthur retrieved the crown and removed the diamonds. At eight annual tourneys, he awarded a diamond to the tournament winner. The winner has always been Lancelot, who plans to win once more and give all nine diamonds to his secret love Queen Guinevere. Guinevere chooses to stay back from the ninth tournament, and Lancelot then tells Arthur he too will not attend. Once they are alone, she berates Lancelot for giving grounds for slander from court and reminds Lancelot that she cannot love her too-perfect king, Arthur. Lancelot then agrees to go to the tournament, but in disguise. He borrows armour, arms and colours from a remote noble, the Lord of [[Astolat]], and as a finishing touch, agrees to wear Astolat's daughter Elaine's token favour, which he has never done "for any woman". Lancelot's flattering chivalry wins over the impressionable young Elaine's heart. Here the Idyll repeats [[Elaine of Astolat|Malory's account]] of the tournament and its aftermath.

Elaine has thus fallen in love with Lancelot. When he tells her that their love can never be, she wishes for death. She later becomes weak and dies. As per her request, her father and brothers put her on a barge with a note to Lancelot and Guinevere. Lancelot has returned to Camelot to present the nine diamonds to Guinevere. In an unwarranted jealous fury, the Queen hurls the diamonds out the window into the river, just as Elaine's funeral barge passes below. This is fulfilling of a dream Elaine spoke of in which she held the ninth diamond, but it was too slippery to hold and fell into a body of water. Elaine's body is brought into the hall and her letter read, at which the lords and ladies weep. Guinevere privately asks Lancelot's forgiveness. The knight muses that Elaine loved him more than the Queen, wonders if all the Queen's love has rotted to jealousy, and wishes he was never born.