We all know of how Camelot fell from grace when Lancelot accepted the queen’s invitation to her bed. Can you ignore such a thing from a queen in the first place? But being the person I am, I stumbled upon Galehaut, a figure in the Arthurian legends while Wiki-hopping one day and haven’t looked back since.

Galehaut first appeared in the 13th century Old French prose Lancelot, written anonymously as part of the Vulgate Cycle, or the Lancelot-Grail Cycle. He was a major character in the work, and his death concludes the story. The Lancelot-Grail Cycle itself suggests a true history of the love affair between Lancelot and Guinevere, the religious quest for the Holy Grail, and the life of Merlin. Prose Lancelot (Lancelot en prose, or Estoire de Lancelot, or Le Livre de Lancelot du Lac), however, is the centrepiece.

So who even was this character we hardly hear of?

Who Was Galehaut?

Galehaut was six inches taller than any man, he was the son of a giantess and a human lord. He was also ambitious and charismatic. How many people have introductions arriving with an army to challenge King Arthur for possession of Arthur’s realm of Logres. He’d already conquered quite a few places but somehow was still unknown to anyone at Arthur’s court.

There was a war between Galehaut and Arthur, and Arthur wasn’t winning. In a twist worthy of any period drama rom-com, Galehaut was super impressed with the battle prowess of Arthur’s best knight, known then as the Black Knight. He surrendered to Arthur for just a chance to spend a night alone with the enigmatic Black Knight.

The knight is, of cause, Lancelot du Lac. And he accepts.

Since the original story, there have been numerous re-tellings of Lancelot’s exploits and the affair with Queen Guinevere. But none of them mention Galehaut, a central figure in the story who never quite manages to achieve this same level of complexity in any story he appears in later. Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur reduces him to a minor frenemy of Lancelot.

Because Galehaut was a manly man. And according to many straight men with megaphones, manly men are never attracted to other men.

So how can we tell Galehaut loved Lancelot?

Galehaut’s Love For Lancelot

The simplest way to tell if someone loves someone is to ask them. Since we’re dealing with fictional characters from Medieval manuscripts, we’ll have to study the texts ourselves. Or at least, read what other people have said about them.

There are two camps when it comes to what went on between Lancelot and Galehaut in the Prose Lancelot. And the pun was unintended, but I’ll take it.

First, we have the route of Thomas Malory. The bond was chivalrous and of deep friendship. It was chivalrous to kiss your best friends. And the Church didn’t like it.

And then we have the queer scholars who see it as homosexuality. Because why else would you surrender your victory to spend the night with a strange man who has a way with the blade?

Just like with Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, we don’t know what the author was intending. Both authors are anonymous, and both have been dead for centuries.

Within the story of Lancelot itself, Galehaut joins the Knights of the Round Table, becoming one of many knights whose name starts with a G. He helps Lancelot in the affair with Guinevere, and he dies longing for Lancelot at the age of 39 while separated from him and hearing of his (false) death.

For God’s sake, when Lancelot did die, they bury him next to Galehaut in the tomb he had built to “consecrate and eternalise their companionship” in his castle.

As Mieszkowski says in her article The Prose ‘Lancelot’s’ Galehot, Malory’s Lavain, and the Queering of Late Medieval Literature:

Galehot’s role in the Prose Lancelot is virtually entirely as a lover. He begins as a conqueror, but his love, ironically, overthrows him. He is extravagantly, desperately, devastatingly in love, so much in love that he acts out the two most extreme claims of the stricken lover: he gives up both his world and his life for love.

Galehaut was known as the “Uncrowned King” and an undefeated warrior of thirty territories when he met Lancelot. And he gave it all up to join Lancelot in Arthur’s court. Like other courtly romances, he falls in love at first sight, abandoning his goals to essentially become Lancelot’s squire. Like the lover throwing himself at his lady’s feet for a token, Galehaut offers his services to Lancelot if only Lancelot spends the night in his tent. He ultimately does, and Galehaut ultimately gives up everything for Lancelot.

The entire Prose Lancelot chronicles Galehaut giving up everything for Lancelot. Even his honour. Even his life.

The Deaths of Galehaut and Lancelot

If we want to understand how someone lived, we sometimes must look at how they died.

We mostly consider this line of thinking with the Ancient Egyptians. Let’s apply it to Galehaut and see if we can understand him a little better.

Galehaut died longing for Lancelot after being told Lancelot went mad and died. When Lancelot eventually did die himself, he was buried next to Galehaut in his castle in the in the tomb that he had built to consecrate and eternalise their companionship.

Now, I don’t know about you, but the only people I know who share tombs are the couples who were in love their entire lives.

Much of the story of Lancelot and Galehaut centres around how Galehaut loves Lancelot like Lancelot loves Guinevere. Galehaut must give up Lancelot because he loves Lancelot, and he dies because of it. In other stories of comrades-in-arms, they smooth the way for each to find his love (a woman) and celebrate when they do. Galehaut swears to do all he can to lift Lancelot’s spirits (he’s a miserable sod) which leads to the meeting between Lancelot and Guinevere, and we all know how that story ends.

Galehaut is a tragic lover, the trope of the gay man who never gets his love. The one who stands by at the end of all the rom-coms as everyone else gets the happy ending (My Best Friend’s Wedding, anyone?). He dies of his love for Lancelot three days after receiving the news that Lancelot is dead.

The storyteller also tells us that Lancelot grieved so much upon hearing the news of Galehaut’s death, it was only Guinevere who managed to comfort him. But it wasn’t Guinevere he was buried with at the end of his own life.

Conclusion

I’m one of those people who see the queer subtext straight people don’t get (well, hello, Top Gun), so I don’t expect a lot of agreeing to go on. But you can’t deny that they’re buried next to each other in the tomb they built to commemorate their companionship. In the original Old French, at least.

I think a lot of this stems from the fear of what a real man should be. There’s no denying Galehaut was a warrior of impressive talents, he won the war against Arthur. But the fact that he died longing for another man, when in the same story there’s a heterosexual love triangle going on, suggests a degree of homophobia stemming from the late Middle Ages. Because what manly man would dare love another manly man as openly as Galehaut?

What makes a man depends on the society you live in and the beliefs you therefore hold. Perhaps if later Medieval writers were less concerned about how gay a popular story came across as, more people would see the knight commonly recalled as an exemplar of greatness.

Links and Resources:

• “Lancelot and the Lord of the Distant Isles; or, The Book of Galehaut Retold” by Patricia Terry and Samuel N. Rosenberg (2007). A book with beautiful wood carvings retelling of the little-known story of Galehaut and Lancelot with emotion, rather than sidelining Galehaut in favour of Lancelot’s love for Guinevere.
• “The Prose ‘Lancelot’s’ Galehot, Malory’s Lavain, and the Queering of Late Medieval Literature” by Gretchen Mieszkowski (1995). An article from the journal Arthuriana, analysing homoeroticism in late medieval literature. A but dry but intriguing, nonetheless.