Editing Guinevere (section)

===Portrayals===
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| image1 = Guinevere with Enid and Vivien.png
| image2 = William Morris Guinevere and Iseult - cartoon for stained glass 1862.jpg
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| caption1 = Guinevere with [[Enide|Enid]] and [[Lady of the Lake|Vivien]] by George and [[Louis Rhead]] (1898)
| caption2 = Guinevere and [[Iseult]] by [[William Morris]] (1862)
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In Geoffrey's ''Historia'', Arthur leaves her as a [[regent]]<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Y0yeBAAAQBAJ&pg=PT225|title = The Mammoth Book of King Arthur|isbn = 9781780333557|last1 = Ashley|first1 = Mike|date = September 2011| publisher=Little, Brown Book }}</ref> in the care of his nephew Modredus (Mordred) when he crosses over to Europe to go to war with the Roman leader [[Lucius Tiberius]]. While her husband is absent, Guinevere is seduced to betray Arthur and marry Mordredus ("in violation of her first marriage, had wickedly married him"<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5twmEAAAQBAJ&pg=PT253|title=Britain in the Age of Arthur: A Military History|first=Ilkka|last=Syvänne|date=19 February 2020|publisher=Pen and Sword|isbn=978-1-4738-9522-5 |via=Google Books}}</ref>), who declares himself king and takes Arthur's throne. Consequently, Arthur returns to Britain and fights Modredus at the fatal Battle of Camlann.<ref>{{cite book|last=Wilentz|first=Abigail|title=Relationship Devotional: 365 Lessons to Love & Learn|year=2009|publisher=Sterling|isbn=978-1-4027-5577-4|page=215|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Qr4IyCUeCiMC&pg=PA215}}</ref> Wace's chronicle ''[[Roman de Brut]]'' (''Geste des Bretons'') makes Mordred's love for Guinevere the very motive of his rebellion.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=7M6vuneJGSEC&pg=PA35|title=The Alliterative Morte Arthure: A Reassessment of the Poem|first=Karl Heinz|last=Göller|date=5 March 1981|publisher=Boydell & Brewer Ltd|isbn=9780859910750 |via=Google Books}}</ref> In the later romance Alliterative ''Morte Arthure'', Guinevere is a traitoress who secretly plots her husband's death while pretending to be his devoted and caring wife.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LfLWAAAAQBAJ&pg=PT103|title=The Betrayal of Arthur|first=Sara|last=Douglass|date=1 October 2013|publisher=Momentum|via=Google Books}}</ref>

Early texts tend to portray her barely or hardly at all. One of them is ''Culhwch and Olwen'', in which she is mentioned as Arthur's wife Gwenhwyfar and listed among his most prized possessions,<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3cHdQC1cXLEC&pg=PA400|title=The Celts: History, Life, and Culture|first1=John T.|last1=Koch|first2=Antone|last2=Minard|date=1 April 2012|publisher=ABC-CLIO|isbn=9781598849646 |via=Google Books}}</ref> but little more is said about her.<ref>Christopher W. Bruce (2013). ''The Arthurian Name Dictionary''. p. 243. Routledge.</ref> It can not be securely dated; one recent assessment of the language by linguist Simon Rodway places it in the second half of the 12th century.<ref>Rodway, Simon, ''Dating Medieval Welsh Literature: Evidence from the Verbal System''. CMCS Publications, Aberystwyth, 2013, pp. 16, 168–70.</ref> The works of Chrétien de Troyes were some of the first to elaborate on the character Guinevere beyond simply the wife of Arthur. This was likely due to Chrétien's audience at the time, the court of [[Marie of France, Countess of Champagne|Marie, Countess of Champagne]], which was composed of courtly ladies who played highly social roles.<ref>Noble 1972, pp. 524–35.</ref>

Later authors use her good and bad qualities to construct a deeper character who plays a larger role in the stories. In Chrétien's ''[[Yvain, the Knight of the Lion]]'', for instance, she is praised for her intelligence, friendliness, and gentility. On the other hand, in [[Marie de France]]'s probably late-12th-century [[Anglo-Norman language|Anglo-Norman]] poem ''[[Lanval]]'' (and [[Thomas Chestre]]'s later [[Middle English]] version, ''[[Sir Launfal]]''), Guinevere is a viciously vindictive [[Adultery|adulteress]] and temptress who plots the titular protagonist's death after failing to seduce him. She ends up punished when she is magically blinded by his secret true love from [[Avalon]], the fairy princess Lady Tryamour (identified by some as the figure of Morgan<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-IY-zIn5VHUC&pg=PT58|title=Morgan le Fay, Shapeshifter|last=Hebert|first=Jill M.|year=2013|publisher=Springer|language=en|isbn=978-1137022653}}</ref>). Guinevere herself wields magical powers in ''[[De Ortu Waluuanii|The Rise of Gawain, Nephew of Arthur]]''. The Alliterative ''Morte Arthure'' has Guinevere commit the greatest treason<ref>{{cite web | url=https://childrenofarthur.wordpress.com/tag/king-arthurs-incest/ | title=King Arthur's incest }}</ref> by giving Arthur's sword kept in her possession to her lover Mordred in order to be used against her husband. Throughout most of Malory's ''Le Morte d'Arthur'', a late-medieval compilation highly influential for a common perception of Guinevere and many other characters today, she figures as "a conventional lady of [chivalric] romance, imperious, jealous, and demanding, with an occasional trait such as the sense of humor," until she acquires more depth and undergoes major changes to her character at the end of the book, arguably (in the words of [[Derek Brewer]]), becoming "the most fascinating, exasperating, and human of all medieval heroines."<ref>{{cite journal | url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/27869451 | jstor=27869451 | title=Malory's Guenevere: 'A Woman Who Had Grown a Soul' | last1=Kennedy | first1=Edward Donald | journal=Arthuriana | date=1999 | volume=9 | issue=2 | pages=37–45 | doi=10.1353/art.1999.0079 }}</ref>

Such varied tellings may be radically different in not just their depictions of Guinevere but also the manners of her demise. In the Italian 15th-century romance ''[[La Tavola Ritonda]]'', Guinevere drops dead from grief upon learning of her husband's fate after Lancelot rescues her from the siege by Arthur's slayer Mordred. In ''Perlesvaus'', it is [[Sir Kay|Kay]]'s murder of her son Loholt that causes Guinevere to die of anguish; she is then buried in Avalon, together with her son's severed head. Alternatively, in what Arthurian scholars [[Geoffrey Ashe]] and [[Norris J. Lacy]] call one of "strange episodes"<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=GYWrAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA96|title=The Arthurian Handbook: Second Edition|last1=Lacy|first1=Norris J.|last2=Ashe|first2=Geoffrey|last3=Mancoff|first3=Debra N.|date=2014|publisher=Routledge|language=en|isbn=978-1317777434}}</ref> of ''Ly Myreur des Histors'', a romanticized historical/legendary work by Belgian author [[Jean d'Outremeuse]], Guinevere is a wicked queen who rules with the victorious Mordred until she is killed by Lancelot, here the last of the [[Knights of the Round Table]]; her corpse is then entombed with the captured Mordred who eats it before starving to death. [[Layamon's Brut|Layamon's ''Brut'']] ({{circa|1200}}) features a prophetic dream sequence in which Arthur himself hacks Guinevere to pieces after beheading Mordred.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=7M6vuneJGSEC&pg=PA40|title=The Alliterative Morte Arthure: A Reassessment of the Poem|last=Göller|first=Karl Heinz|date=1981|publisher=Boydell & Brewer Ltd|isbn=978-0859910750|language=en}}</ref> Historically, the bones of Guinevere were claimed to have been found buried alongside those of Arthur (described as "his second wife" on their grave stone as reported by [[Gerald of Wales]]<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.medievalists.net/2018/09/the-discovery-of-king-arthur-and-guinevere-at-glastonbury-abbey/|title=The Discovery of King Arthur and Guinevere at Glastonbury Abbey|date=9 September 2018}}</ref>) during the exhumation of their purported graves by the monks of [[Glastonbury Abbey]] in 1091.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=f899xH_quaMC&pg=PA147|title=Celtic Culture: A-Celti|date=21 March 2006|publisher=ABC-CLIO|isbn=9781851094400 |via=Google Books}}</ref>