Top Ten Favorite Fictional Characters,#2: Sir Lancelot, The Once and Future King
The Once and Future King is one of those books that gives me something new in every phase of my life. Through it all, I have adored the Ill-Made Knight, the one who loathes himself and tries so hard to rise above it, who has impulses toward cruelty and swears never to let himself descend to it, who became the best knight and was cursed to uphold it, who did just two things wrong, and one made a son better than him and the other unmade his world. White makes him feel so real in his fractured beauty.
As the book notes, a dishonorable man might have just gone away with Gwenever, cut the knot that led to their ruin. Over time I’ve come to regard the Arthurian love triangle as a little bit tawdry, ignoble. But I understand, through the book, why it happened, and why he only ever loved three people (I allow for God) and together they ruined everything.