Is King Arthurs wife Guinevere innocent or guilty?
Innocent or guilty of what? The tale of Lancelot and Guinevere is an artifact of the era of courtly love, during which time the tales of King Arthur’s Court were being used as exemplars of what the ruling class should do. On the one hand, it probably means it was not true (in the context it was told, and least credible would be Arthur’s reaction to this relationship) on the other, it seems, simply, that Guinevere and Lancelot are trying to behave as adults in this situation when the Court of Love is in full operation: to simply call her innocent or guilty — that is an adultress or not — oversimplifies things. Whether she and Lancelot actually got it on doesn’t matter at all. Most likely they didn’t. Most likely they did take their relationship a little further than they should have especially in the context of a feudal situation where Lancelot and Arthur had a relationship which was important to them both. Hence after his death they both retired to religious establishments. This is t
