Moral Values In Sir Lancelot

Within Sir Orfeo and Sir Launcelot and Queen Gwenyvere many of the characters personal interests entwined with their social duties. Malory writes Sir Launcelot lets his love for Queen Gwenyvere come between his loyalties to both the King and the Knights of the Round Table. In contrast King Arthur is sworn by his ‘duty as king is to uphold the laws and the welfare of his realm before all other considerations’, which prevent him from defending his wife when she is accused of treason and adultery. Sir Orfeo’s actions, like Sir Launcelot’s, conflict greatly with his social responsibilities and his actions put his kingdom at risk. The huge conflict between social forces and personal interests of these characters in these texts shows the power of love and how they can change even the noblest character.
Within Malory’s Sir Launcelot and Queen Gwenyvere many characters let their personal lives impact their social lives as their emotions get in the way and taint their heroic personalities with indiscretions. Davies writes that ‘romantic adultery is predominant in his presentation of love’, which is untypical of medieval love affairs but is certainly the case of Gwenyvere and Sir Launcelot. Their affair can be argued to be the cause of Lancelot’s combat failures, as the more morally wrong he becomes the worse his combat becomes. He is first injured whilst defending Gwenyvere as ‘Sir Madore was a strong knyght and myghtyly proved in many strange batayles’ (596, L34-35), and if his loyalties were not
Despite the loyalty that is meant to lie between the knights, he let his personal agenda impact his social one. Acts like this that appear in the texts on this course shape how the text will unfold. In this case we see the kingship’s loyalties