This chapter demonstrates the importance of comparative analysis of the choice, placing and treatment of illustrations in the text. Here I list the eight surviving sets of the Lancelot-Grail made in the same cultural contexts. I analyse a pair of copies of the Estoire del saint Graal attributable to Metz in the late thirteenth/early fourteenth century, comparing them with MS Royal 14 E.III, the most fully illustrated surviving copy. Both Metz manuscripts show special interest in the end of the story and the tomb of King Lancelot, ancestor of Lancelot du Lac, and one of them shows particular interest in depictions of the Grail.  Perhaps it was commissioned by a member of the clergy or by a devout lay person. In this period we have few names of patrons or makers and conclusions must be based on what is in each manuscript and the pictorial choices made there.

Lancelot is the sole Arthurian romance by Chrétien de Troyes not to have been directly adapted in German. However, the integration of elements of Lancelot material bears witness to an indirect reaction on the part of German Arthurian romance to the provocative and virulent narrative tradition surrounding the Knight of the Cart. From reminiscences of the abduction of the queen in the early narratives, this chapter turns to the radical reinvention of Lancelot as a serial monogamist who works to uphold social order and consolidate Arthurian rule in Ulrich von Zatzikhoven’s Lanzelet. It further discusses the remodelling of the fairy upbringing motif in Lanzelet and the anonymous Wigamur. Finally, the remarkable treatment of Guinevere’s abduction in Heinrich von dem Türlin’s Diu Crône is considered in connection with the problematic relationship of the German Arthurian tradition with the otherworld.

Tracing back to the uncertain origins of the Tristan legend, this chapter deals first with the earliest written forms of the story of Tristan and Isolde. It then describes the spread of the story throughout Europe, its gradual Arthurianisation, and discusses the place it may have occupied in courtly literature. The Prose Tristan concludes the rivalry between Tristan and Lancelot initiated by Chrétien de Troyes. At the same time, it completes Tristan’s integration into the canon of the Arthurian cycle. In later romances, Tristan is then regarded as equal to Lancelot on the battlefield, and the greatest of the knight-poets.

The emergence of vernacular French prose at the dawn of the thirteenth century gave rise to a new form of Arthurian romance. Prose allowed the development of lengthy cycles of interconnected romances that functioned autonomously while also forming an overarching story. The most popular of these cycles, the Vulgate or Lancelot-Grail Cycle, became the canonical version of the Arthurian narrative for the rest of the medieval period, influencing subsequent texts in the French-speaking world (Guiron le Courtois, the Prose Tristan, etc.) and beyond (the Middle Dutch Lancelot Compilation, Thomas Malory’s Morte Darthur, etc.). This chapter details the circumstances that made the Vulgate Cycle possible, its inner workings and dynamics, popularity, audience and legacy. It ends with a survey of the Post-Vulgate texts that were composed shortly after the initial cycle and examines the hypothesis of a ‘Post-Vulgate Cycle’ that may have connected them.

This chapter discusses ways in which the Arthurian legend was transformed between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries by French and English romance writers, focusing on the introduction of new characters, changes to the roles of traditionally central characters, and conflicting loyalties and values. Arthur is often displaced from the central role in the plot and can seem passive and ineffective. Gawain is the Top Knight in the English tradition, but Lancelot (a French addition) becomes increasingly important, not least because of his long affair with the queen, which is a contributing factor to the final collapse of Camelot. Family matters increasingly lead to conflicts of loyalties: Morgan le Fay is hostile to her brother, Arthur, and his Orkney nephews grow in number, some loyal but some treacherous. Mordred is not only Arthur’s nephew but sometimes also his son by incest, destined to kill his father. The Grail quest features first Perceval and then Galahad (Lancelot’s illegitimate son); its spiritual values challenge the ethos of secular chivalry and ennobling love. Does this quest bring glory to Arthur’s Round Table, or is it a critique of a fatally flawed society? Important variations in medieval approaches to the legend appear through this period.

Focusing on the so-called “romances of adventure” (romans d’aventure) which made up the largest and most popular category of romances, this chapter provides representative glimpses of how complicated, and fluid, the presentation of gender is in romance. It primarily examines romances written in French because they were the earliest to be written and served as the model for most of those we find in other western European languages, as it explores how binaries such as passive/active and male/female were complicated by deliberate strategies on the part of authors (and patrons).