The Once and Future Queen

by Nicole Evelina

  I wasn’t about to erase the tradition, so I followed Marion Zimmer Bradley’s lead and made Guinevere as well as Morgan priestesses, the more acceptable version of a witch. Though it is not common, I’ve never come across anything in tradition that says both women can’t be priestesses with varying gifts of the Sight.

  I needed Guinevere to grow up somewhere she’d have strong women other than her mother as role models, so I chose Avalon, which reminded me of the all-girls high school that was so important to my own formation. When Cooley wrote, “[I]t is important for these authors to write a Guinevere who takes inspiration from the women before and around her because essential to women’s understanding of their status in society is the recognition of all the successes and failures of the women who came first that contributed to the present place,”561 she was referring to Persia Woolley and Sharan Newman, but she could just as well have been talking about me and the way I viewed the importance of Avalon in Guinevere’s life.

  Guinevere lives in Avalon for a formative period of her life, from the age of eleven through fifteen.562 Having her experience that interval in an isolated location with a bunch of other women meant she wasn’t subject to the prevailing thoughts and influences of the time that said men were dominant, Christianity was the only way, etc. In this little cocoon, Guinevere was free to nurture the outspokenness and intelligence that her mother instilled in her563 and it made her a much stronger woman than she might have been had she stayed in Northgallis. I thought of it kind of like going off to an all-girls boarding school, one where she would make lifelong friends and rivals—such as Morgan—just as girls do today.

  As for Guinevere’s paganism, at the time I wasn’t aware that Woolley and Miles had already created a pagan Guinevere, but it made sense to me given that she likely would have lived right in the time of greatest conflict during the decline of the old Celtic pagan beliefs and the rise of the new Christian faith. Scholars suggest that goddess worship may have lasted through around 500 A.D., and we know that even after that, many common people remained pagan. Johnson writes, “By recognizing the existence of a Goddess worshipping society being overcome by Christianity during the time when the legendary King Arthur may have reigned, the authors [Bradley and Miles, but the statement is also true of me] are able to bring a new perspective to the traditional telling of the Arthurian legend.”564 This conflict also powers the political struggles in my trilogy, as seen in the relationships between Arthur and Father Marius, as well as Guinevere and Morgan’s interactions with the Lady of the Lake.

  Like Lavinia Collins, I chose to make my Guinevere a warrior, which is in keeping with the traditions of pre-Roman Celtic Britain, and also with the practices of the historical tribes of southern Scotland, such as the Votadini, from whom Guinevere’s maternal line descends. It also sets her up well to be Arthur’s equal in ruling the kingdom and fighting in war.

  In order to give Guinevere a complete early life and show her as a full person independent of Arthur, she had to be in love with someone before him. Most authors who have given Guinevere a first love have chosen to make it Lancelot, but I wanted to go in a different direction. The more I explored the legend, I realized that in some versions, Mordred isn’t alone in confronting and exposing Lancelot and Guinevere. Sometimes Aggrivane is with him. I started wondering why, which eventually led me to fuse Guinevere’s early love of Aggrivane with his later betrayal. Also, because Lot is Aggrivane’s father and Lot’s kingdom of Lothian is in the Votadini lands, it was helpful for Guinevere to already have a connection to their family through Aggrivane.

  The Dark Side of History

  One of the more distasteful parts of the Arthurian legend (as it relates to Guinevere) occurs in my second book, Camelot’s Queen. It is an incident that was glossed over for a long time, but that more writers are beginning to resurrect. “Recent authors also tend to be less reticent on the subject of Meliagaunt’s carrying off of Guenevere when she went a-Maying, and to turn the episode into a case of rape with rather more graphic detail than is to be found in earlier retellings. Our modern anxieties about rape, perhaps, find indirect expression through these recent fictions.”565

  I knew when I approached this series that I would not shy away from Malegant’s rape of Guinevere. To me, it was integral to the legend. Like other female authors, I was not willing to let such a personal female experience be treated lightly, or gleefully. I wanted to be sure I approached it with respect. Cooley notes that men and women treat rape differently in the legends:

  The theme of ravishment is common in Arthurian legends—usually as a plot device to show the courage and chivalry of knights who rescue damsels from this fate…many of the medieval stories of ravishment that come to contemporary readers show ambiguous portrayals of assault in which the effect of the incident on the woman is passed over in favor of rhetorical fawning over the savior knight. It is only when the stories are told from the perspectives of female characters that we can see the reality of those assaults—not just the details of the incident itself, but the events leading up to the assault, the nature of the assault itself, and the severe physical, emotional and psychological impact of the assault on the woman and those close to her, even long after the incident has taken place.566

  I did my best to ensure the kidnapping and rape were integral to the plot and to show how they affected Guinevere’s life. Therefore, my version of Guinevere suffers both mentally and physically for a lengthy period of time after Malegant’s abuse, nearly losing her mind when it is coupled with Arthur’s betrayal. It is only after time and Avalon’s version of therapy that she can learn to move past her experiences. Plus, rape is an ancient weapon of war, so including this in an incident that also has political ramifications is historically accurate.

  A Woman in a Man’s World

  Usually, the Grail Quest is the purview of the men of Camelot. As Carlos Sanz Mingo writes about books that pre-date Bernard Cornwell’s Warlord Chronicles (2004-2016), “It has to be said that, to the best of our knowledge, no former account included women in the actual search of the cauldron (or Grail) except as a means to achieve it.”567 While I have not read Mr. Cornwell’s books, women play a key role in the search of the Grail in my version of events. As in many other tales, they are its guardians, but in my story, Guinevere at first plans to go with Arthur on the quest. Even when Morgan interferes with those plans, Guinevere, Morgan, and Grainne (another priestess of Avalon) must work together using their different gifts of The Sight to give Arthur and his knights direction as to where to begin looking.

  Rejecting the Convent

  As noted throughout this book, the traditional ending for Guinevere is to live out her remaining life in a convent, usually in reparation for her sins. “Guinevere’s story, like Arthur’s, ends tragically. Perhaps it is this fact that prompts so many women to set all or part of their retellings in Avalon, a place of refuge and escape,” argue Alan and Barbara Lupack.568

  That may have been the case traditionally, but in recent years, more and more authors are choosing another ending for Guinevere, one that keeps her actively in the world. Newman, Woolley, and Miles each show her as a healer and wise woman in her golden years, but I have chosen a different tack, one in keeping with the woman I have created. In my third Guinevere book, Mistress of Legend, Guinevere not only outlives Arthur, but she moves on with her life, seeking refuge in her mother’s homeland and becoming crucial to the Votadini’s survival when they are threatened not only by the civil war that erupts after the battle of Camlann, but also by the Saxons and Angles seeking to expand their foothold in Britain. By keeping Guinevere in an active role, I wanted to emphasize her agency even well into old age, showing that she did not wither and cower once the men in her life were gone, but found strength within to continue influencing the future of her country in a new way.

  Without realizing it, I think I may have been influenced in this regard by seeing so many active older wom
en around me. The average life expectancy of women today is 81.1 years569 and women are routinely holding on to their jobs well beyond retirement age.I didn’t set out to write Guinevere as a role model for aging women, but a busy Guinevere who exercises her mind and body is certainly much better than one like White’s who bemoans her lost youth and mourns the wrinkling of her girlish beauty.

  It was indeed possible for a woman of Guinevere’s time to live to old age. It’s difficult to find age records from the year 530 A.D., but we can reasonably assume it would have been close to what it was in 1000 A.D.—fifty-one years.570 As historian Deborah Harkness notes, if a person lived through 1) childhood, when many deaths occurred, 2) childbirth for women, 3) teen years and work accidents for men and boys, and 4) war for men (and my Guinevere), it wasn’t uncommon for them to live into their sixties or seventies.571

  Hopefully, through my novels I can provide a fully-fleshed out character for women young and old alike to look up to in the generations after me. It’s my hope that as women continue to claim their power in modern society, they will learn from Guinevere’s mistakes, emulate her strengths, and claim her as the heroine and role model she should be. After all, if Arthur gets to be “the once and future king,” who is constantly being resurrected and reinvented by authors and filmmakers, why shouldn’t his wife have the same privilege?

  * * *

  554 Evelina, Nicole, Daughter of Destiny (Maryland Heights, Missouri: Lawson Gartner Publishing, 2016), 1, 2.

  555 I will not, however, subject you to reviews of my own books because I am certainly not an objective third party and attempting to use them as though I am strikes me as wrong. Those who are interested can read them on Amazon, Goodreads or any number of blogs.

  556 Brewer, “The Figure of Guenevere,” 279. I purposefully didn’t read any other Arthurian fiction while I was writing my trilogy. I didn’t read many of the authors mentioned in this book until after my novels were published and I began the research that would lead to this book.

  557 Evelina, Daughter of Destiny, 2.

  558 Gordon-Wise, The Reclamation of a Queen, 58.

  559 Ibid., 61.

  560 Gordon-Wise, The Reclamation of a Queen, 79.

  561 Cooley, "Re-vision from the Mists," 29.

  562 Fourteen was legal marrying age for a girl under Brehon law.

  563 Guinevere’s mother raised her with beliefs rare to post-Roman Britain but more common to her native Votadini tribe in what is now southern Scotland.

  564 Johnson, “Guenevere's Conflict," 15-16.

  565 Brewer, “The Figure of Guenevere,” 286.

  566 Cooley, "Re-vision from the Mists," 64.

  567 Mingo, Carlos Sanz, “In This Tale of Arthur the Women Do Shine,” Acta Universitattis Danubius. Vol. 6, no 2, 79.

  568 Lupak and Lupak, "The Forgotten Tradition," 24.

  569 Welch, Ashley. “Life Expectancy for White Women Falls Slightly in U.S,” CBS News, April 20, 2016.

  570 Woodbury, Sarah, “Life Expectancy in the Middle Ages,” Romance and Fantasy in Medieval Wales, March 27, 2012.

  571 Harkness, Deborah “Worldview.” Master Class lecture, Past Tense: History as Resource and Inspiration from Hedgebrook, Whidbey Island, WA, March 7, 2014.

  CONCLUSION

  Having explored over one thousand years of history and traced Guinevere’s rise from literary sinner to feminist icon, the natural question we are left with is “What next?”

  The obvious answers are: 1) we have no way of knowing, and 2) the sky is the limit. As we’ve seen Guineveres who represent everything from models of rigid morality for women to those who seem to have few sexual inhibitions at all, I think it safe to say anything goes as we look to the future. As Brewer points out, “We no longer censure Guinevere—all is understood, all forgiven. She is set free to become a private person, the image of young loveliness or professional competence, and we do not demand that she should maintain the dignity of ‘England’s Queen.’”572

  Given this new open mindset in regard to the character and how we’ve seen her embody social ideology in the past, I can imagine that future literature will hold Guineveres who are gay,573 persons of color,574 and even single mothers—perhaps Guinevere was left to raise her children alone after the Battle of Camlann made her a widow. Some authors may move the Arthurian legend into modern times and depict Arthur and Guinevere equally sharing household duties and child-rearing. I also have no doubt we will soon see transgender Arthurian legend given how much the issue of gender pervades the consciousness of America as of this writing.

  I, for one, would love to see Guinevere continue to take on a feministic role, fighting for issues important to women in the twenty-first century. I bet many others will follow in the footsteps of Lavinia Collins to provide a counterpoint to the “slut shaming” of Guinevere prevalent in traditional Arthurian legend. Perhaps someone will use Guinevere to tackle body image—she doesn’t have to be the skinny, traditionally beautiful blonde-haired, blue-eyed woman; if changing her appearance worked for T. H. White, it can work for anyone else—or reproductive rights, equal pay, equal representation in government, or something else that’s not even on the radar of the average woman yet. Given the recent controversy surrounding “rape culture,” the backlash against victim-shaming, and emphasis on a woman’s right to say no, I would expect that Guinevere’s kidnapping and subsequent abuse by Malegant will remain fertile ground for authors for years to come as well.

  That is the beautiful thing about the Arthurian legend. Its themes are universal and timeless so it can be adapted to any time period or place. The most important thing is that those of us who contribute to the Arthurian legend continue to show Guinevere as an empowered woman, regardless of the other details of our stories. We owe that to ourselves, to the generations of women who will come after us, and to Guinevere herself. Never again should she be the silent, passive woman of Geoffrey of Monmouth or the guilt-ridden harpy of Tennyson or White. Just as women fought for hundreds of years (and in some parts of the world are still fighting) to be recognized as equal to men and there is no going back, neither will Guinevere step back into Arthur’s shadow.

  What Guinevere needs now is widespread popular exposure. Despite one thousand years of literary history, her story is still relatively unknown in comparison to the men of Camelot. As I was preparing to write this conclusion, I stumbled across a blog post in which the female writer admits to not knowing Guinevere existed until she watched the television show, Merlin. “What? He [Arthur] had a queen? He was married? Who knew!”575 (“Everyone, you ninny,” I wanted to say. Apparently, I was wrong.)

  While I hope this is an extreme case, it makes clear that writers of the Arthurian legend, particularly females, have a lot of work to do toward placing Guinevere firmly in the minds of the general public. Hopefully, someone—whether it is an author mentioned in this book or a new contributor to Arthuriana—will hit it big with a runaway bestseller about a strong Guinevere that makes her as popular and irresistible to Hollywood and big business as Harry Potter. I dream of the days when Guinevere’s name is on everyone’s lips, books and movies about her abound, and little girls are begging to dress up as her for Halloween.

  Until then, we have a wide variety of literature to choose from as we pick books for ourselves and our children, as well as lessons to learn from each retelling. Just as every time period tells us about its people, every version of Guinevere’s story teaches us about where our societies have been and where they have the potential to go in the future. Plus, with the advent of self-publishing, for the first time in history, any person who can write has the ability to be the next Malory, Tennyson, or T. H. White, shaping the next incarnation of Guinevere. In the words of Roberta Davidson, “Reflecting upon our literary ‘foremothers’ in a time wh
en women have found their voices as a party of the literary mainstream and have the power to tell old stories in new way is our latest contribution to the Matter of Arthur. Where we will take it next, only time can tell.”576 I personally can’t wait to find out.

  * * *

  572 Brewer, “The Figure of Guenevere,” 288.

  573 These likely already exist, but have not yet hit the literary mainstream.

  574 This wouldn’t be out of the realm of historical possibility, as there have been ethnically diverse people in England since at least Roman times. Fans of the television show Merlin will note its Guinevere was a person of color, but that doesn’t count for the purposes of my argument because it is television, not literature.

  575 Legendary Women, “A Woman of Legend: The Once and Future Queen Guinevere,” Medium.com, accessed August 15, 2017 (December 18, 2014), https://medium.com/legendary-women/a-woman-of-legend-the-once-and-future-queen-guinevere-e9783938d134

  576 Davidson, "When King Arthur is PG 13," 15.