Editing Lady of the Lake (section)

===Merlin's beloved and captor===
{{Further|Merlin}}

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| image1 = W. Otway Cannell 2 Merlin and Vivienne.jpg
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| caption1 = ''Merlin and Vivienne'', [[Otway McCannell]]'s illustration for [[Lewis Spence]]'s ''Legends and Romances of Brittany'' (1917)
| caption2 = "Waving her hands and uttering the charm, [she] presently enclosed him fast within the tree." [[Lancelot Speed]]'s illustration for [[James Thomas Knowles (1831–1908)|James Thomas Knowles]]' ''The Legends of King Arthur and His Knights'' (1912)
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The Vulgate Cycle is first to tell of (depending on the version) either possibly a different or explicitly the same Lady of the Lake in the [[Merlin (Robert de Boron poem)|Prose ''Merlin'']]-derived section. There, she also uses other names, including [[Elaine (legend)|Elaine]].<ref>{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mjsWsH6tKwUC&pg=PA61 | title=Paganism in Arthurian Romance | isbn=9780859914260 | last1=Darrah | first1=John | year=1997 | publisher=Boydell & Brewer }}</ref>

The story takes place before the main Vulgate ''Lancelot'' section but was written later, linking her with the disappearance of Merlin from the romance tradition of Arthurian legend. She is given the name Viviane (or similar) and a human origin, although she is still being called a fairy. In the Vulgate ''Merlin'', Viviane refuses to give Merlin (who at this time is already old but appears to her in the guise of a handsome young man) her love until he has taught her all his secrets, after which she uses her power to seal him by making him sleep forever. The text explains this by a spell she put "on her groin which, as long as it lasted, prevented anyone from deflowering her and having relations with her."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Lacy |first=Norris J. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cTY44q6n0MgC&pg=PA21 |title=Lancelot-Grail: Lancelot, pt. I |date=2010 |publisher=Boydell & Brewer Ltd |isbn=978-1843842262 |language=en}}</ref> In an alternative Bristol ''Merlin'' fragment, she resists his seduction with the help of a magic ring during the week they spend together.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/rediscovered-medieval-manuscript-offers-new-twist-on-arthurian-legend-180978705/|title = Rediscovered Medieval Manuscript Offers New Twist on Arthurian Legend}}</ref> The Post-Vulgate revision changes it into Viviane (Ninianne) causing Merlin's death out of her hatred and fear of him. Though Merlin knows beforehand that this will happen due to his power of foresight, he is unable to counteract her because of the 'truth' this ability of foresight holds. He decides to do nothing for his situation other than to continue to teach her his secrets until she takes the opportunity to get rid of him.

Consequently, she entraps and entombs her unresisting mentor within a tree, in a hole underneath a large stone, or inside a cave, depending on the version of this story as it is told in the different texts. In the ''Prophéties de Merlin'', for instance, Viviane is especially cruel in the way she disposes of Merlin, making him die a long death inside his tomb while taunting him. There, she is proud of how Merlin had never taken her virginity, unlike what happened with his other female students such as Morgan.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=T6hBCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA195|title=Transforming Tales: Rewriting Metamorphosis in Medieval French Literature|last=Griffin|first=Miranda|date=2015|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0199686988|language=en}}</ref> In any case, as a result of their usually final encounter Merlin always either dies or at very least is never seen again.

Conversely, the ''Livre d'Artus'', a late alternative (and updated) variant of the Prose ''Lancelot'', shows a completely peaceful scene taking place under a blooming hawthorn tree where Merlin is lovingly put to sleep by Viviane, as it is required by his destined fate that she has learned of. He then wakes up inside an impossibly high and indestructible tower, invisible from the outside, where she will come to meet him there almost every day or night—a motif reminiscent of Ganieda's visits of Merlin's house in an earlier version of his life as described by Geoffrey in ''Vita Merlini''.<ref name=":2" />

In the ''Prophéties de Merlin'', she then takes [[Tristan]]'s half-brother Meliadus the Younger, also raised by her along with Lancelot, as her actual lover who then convinces her to access Merlin's tomb to record his prophecies while Merlin is still alive.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Bruce |first=Christopher W. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=XZFbczeMtYcC&pg=PA353 |title=The Arthurian Name Dictionary |date=1999 |publisher=Taylor & Francis |isbn=978-0-8153-2865-0 |language=en}}</ref> The ''Lancelot-Grail'', too, has Viviane take a lover, in this case the evil king Brandin of the Isles, whom she teaches some magic that he then applies to his terrible castle [[Dolorous Gard]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Bruce |first=Christopher W. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=XZFbczeMtYcC&pg=PA79 |title=The Arthurian Name Dictionary |date=August 15, 1999 |publisher=Taylor & Francis |isbn=9780815328650 |via=Google Books}}</ref> In the Vulgate ''Merlin'', an unnamed lady, possibly Viviane, abortively turns King Brandegorre's son Evadeam into the deformed Dwarf Knight for refusing her love.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Harward |first=Vernon J. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FmUNEQAAQBAJ&pg=PA102 |title=The Dwarfs of Arthurian Romance and Celtic Tradition |date=2024-06-11 |publisher=BRILL |isbn=978-90-04-61992-0 |language=en}}</ref>

According to her backstory in the chronologically later (but happening earlier plotwise) Vulgate ''Merlin'', Viviane was a daughter of the knight Dionas (''Dyonas'') and a niece of the Duke of [[Burgundy]]. According to the Post-Vulgate, she was born in Dionas' domain that included the fairy forests of Briosque ([[Brocéliande]]) and Darnantes,<ref>{{cite web|url=https://broceliande.brecilien.org/Broceliande-dans-le-Lancelot-Graal|title=Brocéliande dans le Lancelot-Graal - Encyclopédie de Brocéliande|website=broceliande.brecilien.org}}</ref> and it was an enchantment of her fairy godmother, [[Diana (mythology)|Diana the Huntress Goddess]], that caused Viviane to be so alluring to Merlin when she first met him there as a young teenager.<ref>Bruce, Christopher, ''The Arthurian Name Dictionary'', Routledge, 1999, p. 145.</ref> The narrator informs the reader that, back "in the time of [[Virgil]]", Diana had been a Queen of [[Sicily]] that was considered a goddess by her subjects. The Post-Vulgate ''Suite de Merlin'' describes how Viviane was born and lived in a magnificent castle at the foot of a mountain in [[Brittany]] as a daughter of the King of [[Northumbria]]. Here, she is initially known as the beautiful 15-year-old '''Damsel Huntress''' (''Damoiselle Cacheresse'') in her introductory episode, in which she serves the role of a [[damsel in distress]] in the adventure of the three knights separately sent by Merlin to rescue her from kidnapping; the quest is soon completed by King [[Pellinore]] who tracks down and kills her abductor. 

The Post-Vulgate rewrite also describes how Diana had killed her partner [[Faunus]] to be with a man named Felix, but then she was herself killed by her lover at that lake, which came to be called the Lake of Diana (''Lac Diane''). This is presumably the place where Lancelot of the Lake (''du Lac'') is later raised, at first not knowing his real parentage, by Viviane. Nevertheless, only the narration of the Vulgate Cycle actually makes it clear that its Lady of the Lake (that is Lancelot's adoptive mother) and Viviane are in fact the one and same character in the French romances.<ref name=ladies>Anne Berthelot, "Merlin and the Ladies of the Lake". ''Merlin: A Casebook'' (2004).</ref> Viviane is also only 12 when she meets Merlin in the Forest of Briosque in the Vulgate ''Merlin''.