The ambush at the chamber door
Agravaine says out loud what the court has agreed not to know, and there is no way back.
What ends Camelot is not the affair. The affair has been going on for twenty-four years and everybody, in some sense, knows.
What ends Camelot is somebody saying it in public.
Agravaine announces to his brothers that he will no longer conceal that Lancelot lies daily and nightly by the queen, and that he will tell the king. Gawain tells him plainly not to: that Lancelot has saved the king and the queen many times, that if he is provoked he is stronger than all of them, and that no good will come of it. Gaheris and Gareth refuse to have anything to do with it and leave. Mordred stays.
So Agravaine goes to Arthur — and Arthur's response is the most revealing thing in the chapter. He does not deny it. He says he would be loth to begin such a thing unless it could be proved, because Lancelot has done so much for him and the queen, and I am loth to think any such thing on him. He is not being fooled. He is being asked to stop not knowing, and he does not want to.
Agravaine offers proof, and once proof is offered the king cannot refuse it without admitting what he is doing.
That night twelve knights come to the chamber door. Lancelot is inside, unarmed. They shout treason loud enough for the whole castle to hear — which is the point, because once it is shouted there can be no quiet arrangement.
He lets one man in, kills him, takes his armour, opens the door and kills the rest. Agravaine dies there. Mordred escapes wounded.
By morning the queen is condemned to burn and the fellowship is split, and none of it needed to happen. The affair could have gone on for another twenty years. What could not survive was being said aloud.
A kingdom, for the sake of a fact everybody already had. The court could survive the affair; it could not survive being told about it.
In the sources
- MaloryEnglish · c. 1415–1471
the thing that could not be said
Arthur is not deceived; he is protected by everybody's silence, and Agravaine removes the silence. That, not the adultery, is the fatal act.
“Right so fareth love nowadays, soon hot soon cold: this is no stability. But the old love was not so; men and women could love together seven years”
Le Morte d'Arthur, XVIII.xxv · read in place - The VulgateFrench romance · c. 1215–1235
the doom in the architecture
The cycle laid this down from the beginning: the love is load-bearing, so the moment it is public the structure has to come down.
“the White Knight loved the queen and was fairly sure that the queen loved him as well”
Lancelot-Grail (the Vulgate Cycle), [12] - GeoffreyChronicle · c. 1100–1155
a coup, with no affair at all
In Geoffrey the queen is taken by Mordred during a usurpation while Arthur is at war abroad. There is no Lancelot and nothing to conceal.
“the renowned King Arthur himself was wounded deadly, and was borne thence unto the island of Avalon for the healing of his wounds”
The History of the Kings of Britain, Bk XI, ch. II - TennysonReception · 1809–1892
guilt made explicit
Tennyson resolves Malory's ambiguity by condemning the lovers at length, and puts most of the weight on the queen.
No validated quotationReception rather than medieval witness.