Does anyone know where Lancelot's home is?

Question

If any one out there knows where the most likely location for Lancelot's ancestral home is please email me. Hint, it's probobly somewhere in France, near a lake.

Answer 1

he lived on giants hill in france, he won it bye killing the giant who kidnapped king arthur's wife. the that's where the affair happened with lancelot and king arthur's wife.

Answer 2

The knight of the round table, Lancelot?  I thought he was English.

Answer 3

According to the legend, he was born in Avalon to Vivian of the Lake.  I believe Ban of Less Briton was his father.

Answer 4

In  some  grave  grotto  in  GreatBritan...

Answer 5

None of those who have answered before me show any knowledge of medieval Arthurian legend. (Note: Marion Zimmer Bradley’s novel has little genuine Arthurian tradition in it. It’s largely New Age fluff. The island of Anglesey is reasonably identified with the kingdom of Surluse in Arthurian legend. Surluse is there described as a large land bordering on North Wales (Norgales) in the direction of the setting sun, but separated from North Wales by a wide sea channel. Lancelot and Guinevere lived there for about three years according to the Prose Lancelot, when the true Guinevere was banished by Arthur in the episode of the false Guinevere. But it was not Lancelot’s homeland.)

Arthurian geography tends to be fantastic and garbled, in part because the French who told most of the tales that have come down to us knew almost nothing about English geography, especially when it came to them though Breton minstrels who would have often used Celtic names instead of English names.

However, some authors use the form of fantastic geography but indicate that they are identifying their own Arthurian geography with real places.

So Benoic, the kingdom of King Ban, Lancelot's father in the Prose Lancelot, can be clearly identified. It borders on King Claudas’ kingdom, laTerre Deserte. whose capital is Bourges. Bourges is a genuine French city, the capital city of Berry, and “berri” is a French word meaning “desert land”. (Actually in this name it is a corruption of Bituroges, the aboriginal people of the area, but let that be.)

According to the Prose Lancelot, the river Loire flows through or alongside Benoic. Benoic is also said to contain the castle of Issoudun, another historic place. Accordingly Benoic must correspond approximately to the historic Anjou/Tourraine which borders on Berry, north of the Loire, and contains the castle of Issoudun.

When King Ban dies of a stroke, overlooking his burning castle of Trebes, and the infant Lancelot is kidnapped by the Lady of the Lake, Ban’s wife Elaine founds a nunnery by the side of the Lake where she lives as a nun. This is apparently supposed to be the origin of the historical abbey of Fontrevault where King Henry II, Queen Eleanor, and their son King Richard were buried. Queen Eleanor served as abbess of Fontrevault in her final years. But the lake beside Fontrevault has long been drained away.

The order of nuns who served at Fontrevault were the same order who served at Amesbury in England where Guinevere eventually became a nun, as first told in the French “Death of Arthur”, a sequel to the French Prose Lancelot. Earlier accounts place Guinevere’s nunary in Caerleon, not in Amesbury.

This leads to speculation that some member of this order or some people involved with it were important in the traditions behind the Prose Lancelot and the “Death of Arthur”.

In early Arthurian tales Kay the Seneschal is said to be made Count of Caen or Count of Chinon  in Anjou by Arthur. This is harmonized with the Prose Lancelot in a work called “Le Livre d’Arturs” by its editor Oskar Sommer. In this work, when King Ban returns to France from Britain after aiding King Arthur in his wars, he takes with him Antor (whom Malory names Ector), the father of Kay which places Antor in the region of Chinon. We are then explicitly told that Antor goes to Tourraine, part of Ban’s domain. When King Claudas invades Benoic, Antor battles against King Claudas’ forces in Tourraine.

The Prose Lancelot also mentions various castles within Benoic that cannot be easily identified, at least today. Some of them may be entirely fantasy. But Haut-mur is probably to be identified with Saumur and le Tor is probably to be identified with Tours. The river Arsie may be connected with the castle of Arçay.

My source for most of this is modern editions and translations the medieval texts and “A Study of the Pseudo-Map Cycle of Arthurian Romance” by J. Neale Carman. His work is generally accepted. You can find the book at http://www.amazon.com/Pseudo-Map-Investi... . See also http://www.jstor.org/pss/2854272 .

Malory claims:  Ã¢Â€ÂœAnd so they shipped at Cardiff, and sailed unto Benwick: some men call it Bayonne, and some men call it Beaune, where the wine of Beaune is.”

But Malory never shows any awareness of the early parts of the Prose Lancelot where Benoic is most prominent and is probably only guessing here. Neither Beaune nor Bayonne  are on the Loire.

Note that we have no way of knowing how far back the tradition that Benoic corresponds to Anjou/Tourraine goes. Ulrich von Zatzikoven’s “Lanzelet” gives no indications at all where its hero’s original land is. And the Scottish “Sir Lancelot of the Laik” places Benoic in Scotland.

Geoffrey of Monmouth makes Sir Kay to be Count of Anjou. Wolfram von Eschenbach makes his Parzival (Perceval) a son of the King of Anjou. The Prose Lancelot makes Lancelot a son of a King of Anjou. These are conflicting attempts to connect Arthurian legend with the historic Angevin dynasty.

Answer 6

Well, he was Lancelot of the Lake, from across the sea. Some say this places his home in France while others say its the isle of Anglesey.