#nyneve

Character, book, and author names under the cut

lady of the lake

Surprisingly, critics have been slow to acknowledge her innocence unambiguously, perhaps because in so many other tales—although certainly not all—the entrapment is evil. Maureen Fries acknowledges that Nyneve does tend to help Arthur’s court, but she does not hesitate to call the intombment of Merlin the act of a “counter-hero.” Geraldine Heng recognizes that the text does “approve and confirm” Nyneve’s right to defend herself, but later she calls the imprisonment “surely an act as destructive as any of Morgan’s.” Even Sue Ellen Holbrook hedges in her landmark article on Nyneve, saying that, although her treatment of Merlin is “deceptive” and “regrettable,” she “has more to excuse than to blame her.”

In Malory there are few hints of condemnation or destructive con- sequences. Nyneve seems quite capable of preserving Arthur and his court from obvious magical threats. Neither the narrator nor Arthur condemn her; indeed, the narrator says that she “was allwayes fryndely to kynge Arthure” (2:490; IX.16), a surprising assertion if her imprisonment of Merlin is to be judged evil. Moreover, Nyneve’s treatment of Merlin demonstrates two important points of the new code: that the loyalty to ideals is real, so that even friends of the king are not exempt from justice; and that women, if they are strong enough, can act according to the new standards of chivalry. Her métier is magic, not arms, and thus she is a worthy opponent for Merlin. Her entombment of him is obviously justified as simple self-defense, but it goes further. She acts as champion of a principle, that power (magical or physical) is not to be used to oppress the weak. As such, she is the first champion of the principles laid out in Arthur’s Round Table oath, and is fitting that she is the one who provides him with Excalibur for the third time.