Editing Lancelot (section)

===Late years and death===
There are two main variants of Lancelot's demise, both involving him spending his final years removed from society as a hermit monk. In the original from the variants of ''Mort Artu'', after mourning his king, Lancelot abandons society, with exception of his later participation in a victorious war against the young sons of Mordred and their Briton supporters and Saxon allies that provides him with partial atonement for his earlier role in the story.<ref>Dover, ''A Companion to the Lancelot-Grail Cycle'', pp. 121–122.</ref> It happens shortly after the death of Guinevere, as Lancelot personally kills one of Mordred's sons after chasing him through a forest in the battle at [[Winchester]], but himself goes abruptly missing. Lancelot dies of illness four years later, accompanied only by Hector, Bleoberis, and the former [[archbishop of Canterbury]]. It is implied that he wished to be buried beside the king and queen, however, he had made a vow some time before to be buried at Joyous Gard next to Galehaut, so he asks to be buried there to keep his word. In the Post-Vulgate, the burial site and bodies of Lancelot and Galehaut are later destroyed by King Mark when he ravages Arthur's former kingdom.

There is no war with the sons of Mordred in the version included in ''Le Morte d'Arthur''.<ref name="Pyle 1993 238"/> In it, Guinevere blames all the destruction of the Round Table upon their adulterous relationship, which is the seed of all the dismay that followed, and becomes a nun. She refuses to kiss Lancelot one last time, telling him to return to his lands and that he will never see her face again. Upon hearing this, Lancelot declares that if she will take a life of [[Penance|penitence]], then so will he.<ref>{{cite book |last=Umland |first=Samuel J. |year=1996 |title=The Use of Arthurian Legend in Hollywood Film: From Connecticut Yankees to Fisher Kings |publisher=Praeger |isbn=978-0-313-29798-4 |page=91 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LE5mGSVCd7wC&pg=PA91}}</ref> Lancelot retires to a [[hermitage (retreat)|hermitage]] to seek redemption, with eight of his kin joining him in a monastic life, including Hector. As a monk, he later conducts [[last rites]] over Guinevere's body (who had become an abbess). In a dream, he is warned that she is dying and sets out to visit her, but Guinevere prays that she might die before he arrives, which she does; as she had declared, he never saw her face again in life. After the queen's death, Lancelot and his fellow knights escort her body to be interred beside King Arthur. The distraught Lancelot's health then begins to fail (''Le Morte d'Arthur'' states that even before this time, he had lost a cubit of height due to his [[fasting]]s and prayers) and he dies six weeks after the death of the queen. His eight companions return to France to take care of the affairs of their lands before, acting on Lancelot's death-bed request, they go on a [[Crusades|crusade]] to the [[Holy Land]] and die there fighting the [[Saracen]]s ("[[Ottoman Empire|Turks]]" in Malory<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Roland |first=Meg |date=2006 |title=Arthur and the Turks |journal=Arthuriana |volume=16 |issue=4 |pages=29–42 |issn=1078-6279 |jstor=27870787}}</ref>). In the 14th-century romance ''Ysaÿe le Triste'', a hermit uses Lancelot's exhumed skeletal arm to knight the anonymous son of Tristan "by the hand of one of the best knights in the world."<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WdvYaKETyykC&pg=PA13|title=Ysaïe le triste: traduction|first=André|last=Giacchetti|date=26 April 1993|publisher=Presses universitaires de Rouen et du Havre|via=Google Books}}</ref> {{Clear}}