Most good stories start with a fundamental list of ingredients: the initial situation, conflict, complication, climax, suspense, denouement, and conclusion. Great writers sometimes shake up the recipe and add some spice.
Initial Situation
Arthur's Awesome Rise
Arthur has driven the pagans out of Britain, united the petty warring kingdoms, and formed a fellowship of knights bound to him by oath. Now he marries Guinevere, daughter of the powerful King Cameliard of Leodogran.
It certainly seems like things start out pretty well for Arthur, what with all his war victories and a seriously status-enhancing marriage to a beautiful lady everybody loves. But there’s also a lot of potential instability. His land has only recently been purged of its enemies and there are some northern kings just looking for an excuse to make trouble. And Arthur seems to have an awful lot riding on his marriage to Guinevere; he says it’s the only thing that will enable him to work his will.
Conflict
Beasts of the Round Table
Many of Arthur’s knights struggle against their bestial natures. They’re having a hard time reconciling this side of themselves with their desire to keep their oath to Arthur. But the strength of Arthur’s kingdom depends on his being the moral compass of his knights. If they revere their king as their conscience, so Arthur’s thinking goes, everything will turn out all right. Unfortunately, knights like Balin, Gawain, and Tristram struggle to align their wills with Arthur’s. They are too tempted by their bodily desires and the bad example of Lancelot and the queen.
Complication
An Affair to Remember
Lancelot and Guinevere are having an affair. And since so many of Arthur’s knights depend upon their faith in Guinevere’s purity to inspire their chivalric behavior, the rumors of her infidelity with Lancelot have devastating consequences for Arthur’s fellowship, prompting the downward spiral of men like Tristram, Pelleas, and Balin.
Climax
Here Comes Mordred
Mordred catches Lancelot with Guinevere alone in her tower, and the public exposure of the lovers is also the confirmation of the rumors that have been swirling around them since the beginning of the Idylls. This physical manifestation of Guinevere’s lack of “oneness” with Arthur leads to the dissolution of his “oneness” with his knights, as they take sides in the ensuing fight between Lancelot and Arthur and then Arthur and Mordred.
Suspense
Get Gwen to a Nunnery
Guinevere isolates herself at Almesbury Abbey with only a young novice for company. There, she waits out the outcome of the battle between Lancelot and Arthur, and the reader waits with her.
Denouement
Artie and Gwen Reconcile… Sort Of
As the story nears its end, Arthur tells Guinevere how the battle between him and Lancelot ended. He forgives Guinevere. Arthur’s battle with Lancelot did not end well, with a faction of rebel knights who held with Mordred forming a continued threat to Arthur’s power.
It’s clear now that Guinevere and Lancelot’s affair has brought about the downfall of the whole kingdom. Arthur’s forgiveness of Guinevere and his hope that they will be together in the afterlife shifts the focus out of this world and into the next.
Conclusion
Come Sail Away
Although Arthur tells Bedivere that he’s going to the island of Avilion for healing, that barge looks pretty funereal to us. Arthur doesn’t return in Bedivere’s lifetime, since Bedivere tells this story long after he’s gotten old and grey. So Bedivere’s last glimpse of Arthur marks the end of his existence in this world.