Queen Guinevere

pencil on card

Gordon Napier, 2006

Arthur's queen consort. Her secret affair with Sir Lancelot, when exposed by Mordred, ruptured the fellowship of the Round Table, and brought about the downfall of lustrous Camelot. Guinevere, the White Fay, belonged to ageless British myth. She made her first literary appearance in the medieval work of Chretien de Troyes, who, elsewhere, was also the first romancer to write of the Grail. The adultery between the queen and the knight became the archetype for fatal attraction. Different writers assigned Guinevere with different characteristics and motives, contributing to her enigmatic persona. She always seemed an ambivalent personality to my mind, and I tried to show that in this image. She watches- who-knows-what?, thinking- who-knows what?