Guinevere of Camelot

Guinevere of Camelot has been portrayed over the centuries as a slut, who betrayed her husband Arthur more than once.

She is also presented to us as a damsel in distress, thus a young woman in need for a man's help.

All this machination is intended to glorify patriarchy, condemn women for their sexual behavior and imply that women without masculine guidance are in nothing but trouble. Theseus, the Athenian hero, married several women from whom he was separating each one to marry the next, and for that and much more he is considered a hero. Aeneas and Ulysses wandered the Mediterranean breaking hearts and abandoning their women after seducing them and swearing eternal love - in the end they are heroes. In short, a man who has several women is a hero and a woman who has several men is a whore.

To realize the evolution of things, there is a difference in interpretation between Geoffrey Monmouth's Guinevere in his History of the Kings of Britain with the basics of the traditional Arthurian legend, and the later versions by Chretien de Toyes and Marie de France who were the first writers to focus on the character of Guinevere. The two of them were poets active in the late 11th to early 12th century and both associated with Eleanor of Aquitaine and her daughter Marie de Champagne.

In Chretien’s work Guinevere is kidnapped by Lord Maleagent, and needing rescue, King Arthur’s knights were dispatched and among them was Lancelot who became her lover.

In both Chretien’s and France’s works, Guinevere is disloyal to her husband. The contrast is that in France’s work, she doesn’t love Arthur and is bored, while in Chretien’s tale, she loves her husband but loves Lancelot more. Despite this difference, her actual characterization, especially her confidence and arrogance, is similar in both works, and it is likely she is partly based on the writers’ patrons, Eleanor of Aquitaine and her daughter Marie de Champagne, these women largely responsible for the rise in popularity of the courtly love genre during this era, a poetic medium that focused on strong women with defined characters.

So, what we had was a woman sure of herself and her femininity, a descendant of the Roman nobility, who slept here and there with some knights, and because of that she was nicknamed a whore, disloyal and unruly, especially after the fall of courtly love with the extermination of the Cathars and the hegemony of Roman Catholicism.

This is Denis de Rougemont version, a Swiss writer who postulates Guinevere closely linked to the Cathar religious sect. In this context, Guinevere's character was detailed for the first time, in France's and Chretien’s works , as allegorical representations of the Cathars, who thrived in France during the 11th and early 12th centuries.

The Cathars were a Christian sect that vehemently opposed the Catholic Church and everything they believed it stood for. The Cathars believed that the church was corrupt and that it was Satan who wrote the Bible. To them, the clergy were selfish and driven only by the desire for wealth and power rather than serving humankind.

The Cathars worshiped the goddess of wisdom Sophia. Along this line of reasoning, the strong female characters who were central to courtly love poetry were representations of Sophia. When a female character is kidnapped, her kidnapper represents the Catholic Church, enemy of the Cathars and of Sophia.

In this interpretation, the noble knights represent the loyal Cathars. This means that Guinevere represents Sophia, Mordred the Catholic Church, Arthur is the defender of the Church, and Lancelot represents another loyal Cathar, protecting Sophia from the Catholic Church.

My dear reader, you can believe what you want but what you cannot accept is the macho version of damsel in distress betraying her husband.