LAUNCELOT. Lancelot, son of King Ban of Benoic or Brittany, was brought up by the Lady of the Lake, and thus called Lancelot du Lac. In Chrétien's Erec et Enide (late 1150s), 1694, Lancelot is third in the hierarchy of knights, Gawain the first and Erec the second. He appears as Queen Guenevere's lover in Le Chevalier de la charrette (c. 1172), and in the prose romance Le Livre de Lancelot du Lac (1215-1222) he is called la flor des cheualiers del monde, "the flower of the world's knights." He plays a very important role in Malory's Le Morte Darthur (c. 1468-1470). Francesca da Rimini tells Dante that he and Paolo were reading the story of Lancelot's adulterous affair with Guenevere when they fell in love, Inf V.127-137. Because of his love for the queen, Lancelot fails in the Grail quest, and Arthur's kingdom is destroyed.
No one could describe the dances and the subtle looks at Cambyuskan's feast but Launcelot, and he is dead, SqT 283-287. The Nun's Priest says that his story is as true as the book of Launcelot de Lake, NPT 3210-3214. [Arthour]