Lanval and his Fairy Love

Unlike a lot of Marie de France's work, Lanval ended up having a quite nice and happy ending. Even though he was, wrongly and rightly, accused of trying to convince the queen to cheat (wrongly) and bragging about his supposed lover (rightly), Lanval eventually found his lover and rode off to Avalon with her. Most of Marie de France's works have some sort of life defying or life endangering twist to it, but other than Lanval having to wait around, for his trial to start, without the love of his fairy there was no real threat or trouble being caused. Queen Guinevere obviously caused a problem, and a betrayal, by wrongly accusing him simply because he did not want to have sex with her and lying to her husband. The queen was quite devious in all her plans from the beginning, but in the end she did not win. King Arthur trusted his knights over his own queen.

Lanval was in this unfortunate situation to begin with because he bragged of his lover, and lost her, but he knew those were the consequences and took them in stride. He did not raise a fit or go off and lose his mind. He was very knightly within the situation and it is very clear that, even with King Arthur in the story, that Lanval is supposed to be the most noble person to be found within the court (maybe other than Gwaine).

The supernatural element, that Marie likes to hide within coincidence a bunch of the time, was much more evident within Lanval. It is clear from the beginning that Lanval's lady lover is not simply human or a random lady traveling from kingdom to kingdom. There is something very unexpected and surreal about his entire experience with leads the readers to believe that there is more to it than meets the eye. At the end it is told "With her he's gone to Avalon" which is the biggest indicator that his lover is truly a supernatural creature, most likely a fairy from the enchanted city of Avalon; where King Arthur's sword was forged.

In general, Lanval very lightly follows Marie de France's lai style. It's not what she would usually do by twisting stories to make them more realistic, but it still has most of the medieval romance characteristics that must be present.

#Lanval #reading #medievalmarriages #literature #MariedeFrance #writing #Arthurian #medieval