Lancelot Du Lac
472 - Lancelot Du Lac is born in France to King Ban of the fallen kingdom of Benoic. He is taken in by Fae, and raised as a foundling.
482 - 10-year-old Lancelot Du Lac adventures into the land of the Dark Fae to save the young Lady Guinevere. He pledges his life to her service as they are bonded through fae magic.
488 - 16-year-old Lancelot Du Lac begins competing in the joust, becoming the greatest tournament champion in history.
501 - 29-year-old Lancelot Du Lac wins the grand tournament of Camelot. He befriends Arthur Pendragon and join his royal court & the Round Table. He meets Guinevere, immediately recognizing her as the girl he once saved and was bonded to through fae magic.
508 - 36-year-old Lancelot Du Lac and Guinevere are accused of adultery by Sir Kay. Arthur Pendragon is furious that he cannot defend the Queen's honor. The duel is a draw, oweing to their innocence but for the lust in their hearts. Lancelot no longer attends court, performing greats acts of bravery and chivalry all over England.
514 - 42-year-old Lancelot Du Lac saves Guinevere from Mordred's forces by fleeing into farie. They confess their love for each other and are married by fae law.
517 - 45-year-old Lancelot Du Lac's affair with Guinevere is revealed to Arthur Pendragon. Lost in despair, he is unable to repell the forces of Mordred. Camelot falls, but Mordred & Morgaine Le Fay are stopped when Merlin forges the 2nd Shadowpact. While escaping, Guinevere & Lancelot find an injured & dying Arthur, who forgives them before being borne to Avalon by the Lady of the Lake. They retreat to Lancelot's home in France together.
538 - 66-year-old Lancelot du Lac holds Guinevere as she dies of consumption in their home in France. He takes his own life shortly thereafter.
While modern readers are all wildly familiar with the character Lancelot and his role in the story of Camelot, his introduction into this legend is actually a whole school of academic persuit of it's own. I've read that he's supposedly originally from a 12th century French poem, which already included his romance of Queen Guinevere, but I've also read that this romance was developed from the 13th century celtic stories of Tristan and Iseult. A lot of the heroic tradition of the character, depicting him as one of the greatest heroes of the Round Table, are actually something that developed in later tellings of the story as the romance became the focus of the tale, often taking over heroic tales originally focusing on Sir Galahad.
Honestly, you could spend a lifetime learning about the history of the Arthurian Legends. That's half of the reason we wanted to make our own spin on the story here.
Honestly, you could spend a lifetime learning about the history of the Arthurian Legends. That's half of the reason we wanted to make our own spin on the story here.
Lancelot's StoryWith most of the Arthurian characters, we get to play with all the ways that DCs versions of these characters have popped into regular continuity to build our own version, but that's actually less of an issue with Lancelot. He's made a few small appearances in older stories of characters like the Shining Knight or the Silent Knight, but in every case he's a pretty minor inclusion meant to get out of the way for the hero in question. A larger appearances happened in the Grant Morrison Seven Soldiers series, which created a very unique spin on the Knights of the Round Table with a cool new black metal look.
Of course, one DC story that you absolutely have to recognize when talking about the characters of Camelot, as always, is Mike W Barr & Brian Bollands Camelot 3000. This is a non-canon story and a lot of the visuals at play are in a notably 80s futuristic style, but it's hard to argue with just how perfect their version of Lancelot is. What this means, then, is that we get to get a little creative with our version of the character. Lancelot's origin as a orphaned son of King Ban who was raised by fae has been part of his story forever, but we are drawing heavily from the book Lancelot Du Lethe by J Robert King, which I REALLY recommend you try! |