The Iliad and The Odyssey, attributed to Homer, are two of the most ancient and fundamental works of Western literature. They were inscribed in a longer narrative framework, known as the Epic Cycle of which they are the only two extant works. Their popularity can’t be overestimated. Brom from oral tradition, the tales they tell were already common and well known a long time before anyone wrote them down¹.

Thousands of years later, the first written stories of King Arthur appear. Presumably many of the stories that were slowly incorporated into the Arthurian legends over the years also have oral origins. By the 13th century, there was an extensive Arthurian corpus, both in verse and prose, that would go on to shape European literature for hundreds of years. It is sometime in the 1200s that the long epic cycle known as the Arthurian Vulgate first appears. It’s a prose compendium of the entire Arthurian story, starting way before King Arthur is born and ending after his demise and the fall of his kingdom. The section known as the Death of Arthur is the last part of the cycle. While The Odyssey starts, and ends, very much in media res, Death of Arthur has a well rounded, comprehensive ending, but both works are small, specific fragments of much bigger stories.

Today I want to talk about an interesting parallel I found while reading both works: the way in which both Penelope and Guinevere are pursued in the absence of their respective husbands, and how they react to it. Of course, the parallel theme of “conquering” the queen while the king is absent is not a unique feature of neither The Odyssey nor the Vulgate Death of Arthur, although they will be our main points of reference in this article.

Penelope and the suitors, Guinevere and the traitor

It takes a while in The Odyssey for our titular hero, Odysseus, to show up. Before him, we get acquainted with his son Telemachus, and with his wife Penelope. Odysseus is, as you probably know, the king of Ithaca, gone to fight the war in Troy and still, twenty years later, not back home. The situation in Ithaca is quite dire, particularly for Telemachus, who is presented as a mere boy with very little power, suffering at the hands of his mother’s suitors, who are basically lodging in his place for free, eating his food. The consumption of his resources is a particular pain point for young Telemachus, as it will be for Odysseus later on. But what about Penelope? Penelope is shown as someone who doesn't accept the suitors’ advances, but also doesn’t truly reject them. She is in a delicate position. These men, over a hundred in total, are dangerous not just because of their numbers but because they are also from the upper class (with their riches and weapons) and because they are young and strong. However, she is clearly not very happy with the idea of marrying any of them, despite her husband being long presumed dead.

Penelope has been presented, in some discourses, as the paradigm of a patient, loyal wife. The suitors are from Ithaca and nearby lands: the enemy (Odysseus and Telemachus’ can only think of them as such) is coming from within. Before reading The Odyssey, I always found Penelope’s relative passivity surprising. After all, she is not completely alone, her son is with her. Another aspect I found puzzling is the amount of suitors she has, given that she is presumably middle aged now. And these men are closer in age to Telemachus than they are to her own husband. Surely, she is rich and presumed to be a widow, beautiful and clever, but her age makes the possibility of her producing children more unlikely –in a world where producing children was crucial labor. Penelope has an already grown, potentially fastidious, son of her own, which technically should make her a less attractive match. Indeed, throughout The Odyssey the suitors plot to murder Telemachus under a similar reasoning.

One aspect is obvious: Penelope is a good match not just for her riches but because she holds, somehow, the political, and especially, the economic power here, a power she cannot exert but she is the key to. It is somewhat contradictory, then, because there is an expectation for her to leave Odysseus’ household and even Telemachus urges her in this direction, thinking that this way the suitors will stop wasting his resources. As I kept reading, the reasons became more obvious and reasonable. It very much has to do with economic means. Harassing Penelope is very fun for the suitors, who can live off the Ithacan royal family’s resources using the excuse of pursuing the queen instead of spending their own food and sending gifts from home. It will be good while it lasts, and it doesn’t matter who Penelope chooses in the end because the ride was worth it. Under their point of view, Telemachus can be dealt with separately. The problem seems to have grown with time because Telemachus was too young to stand his own ground and his grandfather Laertes was too old and heartbroken. There isn’t really any man in the house, just Penelope. Her boundaries and her family boundaries are repeatedly violated with her as the head of the house. It is a material issue as much as a symbolic one: Odysseus’ once prosperous lands are now being ravaged upon –and soon his wife will be too.

Another aspect I found puzzling for quite some time was exactly why Telemachus can’t gather some allies, and drive out these men himself, why he's so impotent while waiting for his father. Telemachus is consistently treated like a boy, not a man, although he must be around twenty years old now. He isn’t mature enough yet, and has much to learn. Having an absent father figure has probably not helped. The Odyssey is also a coming of age tale for Telemachus. There is also a practical reason for Telemachus’ powerlessness that became apparent to me as I read: most loyal Ithacans left with Odysseus to Troy, and by now they are all dead. Odysseus' absence thus creates a strategic mistake that menaces his very land, crown and power. And given that his fame and property are part of wily Odysseus himself, he is at risk here too. But what about Penelope? Emily Wilson mentions in her Translator’s note to her version of The Odyssey “In the difficult case of Penelope, I have tried to maintain what I see as the most important feature of her characterization, which is opacity”². It's always difficult to know what Penelope is thinking and her motives are rarely obvious.

At first glance, Guinevere couldn’t be more different from Penelope. Where Penelope is in a lot of ways the paradigm of a loyal wife, Guinevere is one of literature’s most renowned adulteresses. In that sense, Guinevere is more akin to Penelope’s contemporary, and cousin, Helen. Guinevere is queen of Logres³ by her marriage to Arthur, but perhaps she is most well-known for her ongoing, tortuous yet passionate long affair with Sir Lancelot, Arthur’s most trusted right hand man and allegedly the best knight in the world. Theirs is, quite literary, a love triangle for the ages.

Like Penelope, Guinevere is a complex woman. On the surface, she is kind, and intelligent. However, her raging jealousy often has terrible consequences. She can be quite irrational. Over the course of just a couple hundred pages in the Death of Arthur, Guinevere goes through a lot. Where Penelope is basically stuck in her narrative at the point of time The Odyssey occurs, with no option but waiting, Guinevere doesn’t stop going through things. First of all, she starts rejecting Lancelot, out of jealousy (it is a far more complicated story, but that’s enough to know for now) and when later on she is unrightfully accused of poisoning a certain knight, she is close to being condemned to death with no one to save her. Lancelot eventually comes to the rescue, defending her in a trial by combat, and they reconcile and rekindle their affair. Then again, shortly after that, Guinevere and Lancelot are ambushed during their lovemaking. By this point many people have been telling Arthur about Lancelot and Guinevere’s affair, including his sister, the antagonistic Morgan, and his nephew Agravain, but he has refused to listen. Now that the lovers are caught, Arthur has a good reason to apprehend and punish them. Lancelot manages to escape arrest, runs away and starts gathering his men while Guinevere is imprisoned. She is about to be burned at the stake for treason when she is rescued, once again, by Lancelot. The rescue is a bloody, bloody thing that sparks a war. However, in the end, the Pope himself orders Arthur to take back Guinevere, as he did not see the treacherous act with his own two eyes. Lancelot returns Guinevere to Arthur, and he is banished from Logres and goes to his own land (located somewhere in modern-day France). However, instigated by his nephew Gawain who wants revenge for the slaughter of his brothers during Guinevere’s rescue, Arthur pursues a war with Lancelot yet again, following him to the continent. This proves to be a fatal mistake that will undo his entire life’s work.

As he goes to continue the war, Arthur leaves Guinevere at home, and Mordred as the administrator of his lands. In a very short time, Mordred takes over the kingdom and, wanting Guinevere for himself, pretends Arthur is dead so the crown and the queen will become his own. This is where Guinevere finally faces her suitor-type situation. Like Penelope, she tries to buy time. Like Penelope, she is presumably middle aged⁴. But unlike Penelope, Guinevere is childless. Mordred is, perhaps if not by age, a junior to Guinevere by position and family ties: she is at the very least his aunt-in-law, and factually, his step mother too⁶. Like Penelope’s suitors, Mordred also wants her for political and financial gain, and like the suitors, Mordred spends the absent king’s fortune for his own interests (in this case, bribing noblemen and warriors to prepare for a coup d’etat and war against Arthur). Like the suitors, his plan necessitates Arthur's death. There is some amount of lust on his part too –after all Guinevere, like Penelope, is described as a beautiful woman.

Same as Penelope, Guinevere is an interesting and appealing asset because she ultimately represents the power of the crown, and the land. She is an extension of her famous husband, which makes her a prized possession. In the case of Guinevere, the metaphor is even more obvious because, arguably, Logres’ downfall doesn’t start until Lancelot takes her with him⁵. Perhaps, if we keep looking at the whole Death storyline through this lens we could even argue that the Pope’s insistence that Arthur take her back is not a mere feature of Medieval marital law, but also a way in which he (and through him, the Church) was trying to keep a prosperous and powerful country from falling apart. I think that in a certain way, Arthur had very little reason to take Guinevere back. His pride, and his image will probably be forever tarnished. And, let’s be frank, everyone knows about Guinevere and Lancelot. He might take her back grudgingly, but she is his legitimate wife, and perhaps also the representation of something still more important.

Guinevere has her own piece of personal power too: people love her. When she cries, people cry with her. When she is sad, joy disappears from the room. After being sentenced to death for her exposed love affair with Lancelot, this scene follows:

“When the queen had left court and the residents of the city saw her coming, then people could be heard crying from all sides, “Oh, lady, you who are more gracious and noble than any other woman, where will poor people ever be able to find pity again? Oh, King Arthur, whose disloyalty has brought about her death, you can still repent, and the traitors responsible for this can die in shame!” That is what the people of the city said as they followed the queen, and they were weeping and wailing as if out of their minds.”⁷.

This alone would make her a political force to reckon with and put into question the previous statement about Arthur's reputation being damaged as a result of her affair. People either don't believe she did anything wrong, or are willing to turn a blind eye for their beloved queen. In that scene it's as if we could see a dichotomy: while Arthur wages war, Guinevere is the graceful queen of compassion.

Walking on the knife’s edge

Seeing that she can’t reject Mordred’s advances, Guinevere runs away and defends herself from the Tower of London, fiercely trying to keep her enemies (who are also Arthur's enemies) at bay. However, this is not a position she can maintain indefinitely. Ultimately, Guinevere finds herself between a rock and a hard place when Arthur and Mordred are about to finally face each other off. One one hand she is relieved that Mordred is forced to stop his siege, though this makes her fear for Arthur's life. On the other hand, she has good reason to be worried: either Modred wins, in which case he’ll kill her for her resistance, or Arthur wins instead and “he’ll never believe that Mordred didn’t sleep with me, considering all the force he used in trying to get to me, and so I know the king will kill me as soon as he gets his hands on me.”⁸. Finally, she decides to become a nun, in an attempt to stay safe and away from trouble. And that’s where she dies, not too long after, stripped of all her goods, having to end her life in solitude and in fear of men who once protected her household.

In the case of Guinevere, it might be more obvious, but Penelope also has good reason to fear for her own safety: not only are the suitors rowdy young men who pose a constant physical threat to her and her household (including her female slaves/servants), but Odysseus, if he returns, is a potential source of harm too. Would Odysseus believe she has been celibate for so long, twenty whole years? And what would he do if he thought the contrary? Odysseus, a warrior, leader and man capable of (and even prone to) violence, poses a possible threat to Penelope’s physical wellbeing.

The notion that Penelope has the power to choose her husband⁹ contrasts with Guinevere’s situation. Mordred asks her to marry him only after he has made sure she can’t really refuse by forging a letter with Arthur’s supposed death and last will. And yet, she does refuse, and she has the agency to resist his advances. The idea that these women have a “choice” (however illusory) and that they have an agency is also what, paradoxically, motivates the men around them to justify exerting violence over them. If Penelope chose a suitor, or proved unfaithful to Odysseus, she might have ended up dead with the rest of her executed maids. Similarly, Guinevere is convinced that Arthur would kill her, not believing she hadn’t slept with Mordred –whether this was a thing she wanted or something she was forced to do wouldn't matter to Arthur in this scenario. Similarly, Odysseus would take it as an affront to his honor if Penelope, forced by circumstance, accepted one of the suitors. It's interesting to remember that in the world of The Odyssey, unfaithful wives pose a real, murderous threat to their returning husbands, as seen in the case of Clytemnestra. While Agamemnon was fighting at Troy, Clytemnestra takes a lover and upon Agamemnon's return, the lovers kill him¹⁰. Guinevere, in some ways, has a lot more agency than Penelope does. After all, she has spent years, perhaps decades, sustaining an affair with a man of her choosing, while also keeping her position as a queen –even if this has put her in a lot of precarious situations.

Notably however, loyalty is expected as one sided. Like Odysseus, Arthur is an unfaithful man. While some of Odysseus’ love affairs during The Odyssey can be seen as pure survival tactics if we are willing to look upon them kindly (particularly the affair with Circe), Arthur hardly has that benefit of doubt. Throughout the Vulgate, he is with various women, and begets some children out of wedlock. Most notably, earlier in the Vulgate he has a very happy affair with a Guinevere look-alike in an episode known as the “false Guinevere” plot. Mordred himself is his illegitimate son. However, Odysseus and Arthur’s affairs never put them in a truly precarious place¹¹, and even if they could enrage their wives, they can actually do very little about it. Guinevere’s unfaithfulness puts her in a position where she might literally lose her life, and I’m sure it would be a very similar situation for Penelope. It is a double standard in which the husband's infidelity is much more acceptable than the wife's. Despite the intrinsic sexism of this ideal, there are some logical reasons behind it, namely the fact that both Homeric and Arthurian societies are patrilineal (that is, inheritance goes from father to son), and of course there are no paternity tests. The only way for the king to ensure his descendants are truly his biological children is by ensuring his wife only has sexual relationships with him. The capacity to produce children is an important part of marriage, though Arthur and Guinevere prove that childless marriages are still required to stay committed to one another (at least in Medieval Europe).

Land and property, absence and menace

The way in which Medieval literature looks upon adultery is rather complex. On one hand, adultery is not acceptable under the eyes of the Church and the law. On the other hand, courtly romance is very much about adultery. I won’t get into the details because it's a very complex topic, but these narratives often feature the topic of infidelity in an ambiguous light – it is not exactly positive, and yet it is often the only way in which romance and love can be enacted. Lancelot and Guinevere’s love is shown as an all consuming passion. While in some narratives (not necessarily the Vulgate) it's the love for his lady that partly ennobles Lancelot, his passion for Guinevre is also his biggest flaw. Their love causes the fall of the kingdom. Other adulterous lovers, like Tristan and Isolde also meet sad endings after torrid love affairs¹². So while Love is praised, adultery can’t really be condoned.

These views on fidelity were necessarily different for the Ancient Greek, but I’m assuming two things for the sake of comparison: first, as mentioned before, infidelity is more acceptable (or less punished) in the man than in the woman. We can see this in the case of Odysseus and Penelope, though there are also some examples to argue against this –mainly, Helen with Menelaus and Clitemnestra with Agamemnon. Helen runs away with Paris and during The Iliad she is very much not happy with that. The Odyssey is more ambiguous about it, but in any case, she returns to Menelaus and they are happily (re)married. However, Helen has some magical abilities, and she is also literally the child of a god (Zeus, no less). So I would definitely think thrice about not taking her back knowing that and having pushed the entire Greece to go to war to get her back. For Helen and Menelaus, being together is perhaps the only thing they can do, though I’d argue Helen’s divinity is what ultimately allows her forgiveness. On the other hand, we have her sister, Clitemnestra. She is also unfaithful, she kills her equally unfaithful husband. Later on, she dies herself. But these two have a long standing tense relationship if we look to other sources –one could argue that Clitemnestra’s bad blood starts with Iphigenia’s sacrifice¹³.

The second assumption I think is safe to make is that infidelity from Penelope or Guinevere is something a lot more profound than simple personal treason. It also goes beyond the need to save face. These women are part of their husband’s property, but they are also very deeply linked to the land. Emily Wilson writes in her introduction to the Odyssey:

“The poem circles around the question of whether an elite woman’s worth depends entirely on sexual fidelity. [...]the poem presents it as a matter of the utmost importance that Penelope must keep her suitors at bay and wait indefinitely for her absent husband. Female fidelity is important for maintaining a husband’s sense of honor and control; it is associated with the preservation of a particular wealthy household and the perpetuation of a particular elite family line. The double standard creates a particular kind of vulnerability for both men and women within the system.”¹⁴

I think this is also mostly true for Guinevere. She is a well known adulteress by the time of Death of Arthur (though notably, she always has the same lover), but it’s important to keep appearances. As long as she appears faithful, as long as Arthur can save face, as long as the situation remains secret, Arthur will be unaffected, and there will be no reason for punishment. Arthur himself seems more than willing to turn a blind eye. Notably he ends up not acting even when Morgan tells him (and more or less shows him proof) of the infidelity¹⁵. It is only when the situation is absolutely inescapable that Arthur yields to do something about it –unfortunately, for Guinevere.

Just as much as Odysseus and Arthur are the beacons of strength, they are also the holders of peace. Odysseus is a war veteran, and so is Arthur. They have infinite potential to exert violence upon others, including those under their own household. In the case of Arthur, he literally holds the power to give life or death to his own wife. But it is this very same capacity for violence, and in the case of Odysseus, cunning, that makes them capable of defending their land, property and country. When they are absent, trouble ensues. This is especially notable in the case of Odysseus. The men are the protectors of the land, though the women are the representation of the land. Odysseus suffers being away from home, separated from his wife and family, and as Wilson points out¹⁴, at least part of this is anxiety over the loss of his goods and property (of which Penelope is a part of).

Similarly, it’s Arthur’s absence that allows the traitor Mordred to sweep in and steal his kingdom –and try to steal his wife as well. Ultimately, Mordred fails at stanching any of the two, but Logres eventually disappears as a kingdom, and Guinevere dies. Arthur and Odysseus make a similar miscalculation, forced by necessity, during a specific point in time: Odysseus takes the most loyal and notable men of Ithaca with him to Troy. Either in battle or on the trip back home, they all die. Meanwhile, Arthur takes the most loyal men of a now notably depleted Round Table with him to fight Lancelot (Lancelot himself takes a good chunk of the Round Table with him, which is why their war is so akin to a civil war despite the fact they all come from different kingdoms). Almost all of them die during the final battle with Mordred at Salisbury Plain. Only two men survived the battle, Griflet and a very heavily wounded Arthur (who is taken to the magical land of Avalon by Morgan). Lancelot and his men pursue the remainder of Mordred’s forces led by his sons and by the very end of the story, only Sir Bleoberis and Sir Bors, Lancelot’s cousins and former Round Table members, survive.

The literal absence of Ithacan men and people loyal to Telemachus as a rightful heir to the throne can be explained, in my opinion, by the fact Odysseus took many of those men with him to begin with. Of all the suitors, only twelve are Ithacan¹⁶. Perhaps, there simply aren't too many grown men, like Odysseus, in Ithaca anymore. Without their husbands at home, and loyal men to protect them, Penelope and Guinevere are vulnerable, potential prey. To be fair, however, Guinevere's protector has never been her husband, but Lancelot. He is the one who has rescued her over and over again, the one who defended her honor and physical integrity when Arthur was supposedly forced by law to have her die (for a crime she didn't commit). But Lancelot isn't here anymore, and this time, he won't come back. In this regard once again she resembles Penelope: with Odysseus presumed dead, who will protect her? Funnily enough, Penelope has living male relatives, but they seem to do very little to help the situation. Her own father, Icarius, wants her to marry one of the suitors. Honestly, one can hardly blame her father. Marrying elsewhere is the practical thing to do right now, though Penelope obviously refuses to comply. Even Telemachus, more surprisingly, seems willing to let his mother go. He is just opposed to the way the suitors are doing it and not so much to his mother marrying. In a way, it would be a relief. For example he says:

“[...] My family / has suffered two disasters. First I lost / my father, who was kind to you as if / you also were his sons. Now, even worse, / my house is being ripped apart; my wealth / will soon be gone! The sons of all the nobles / have shoved inside my house to court my mother, / against her wishes. They should go and ask / Icarius her father to provide / a dowry, and choose who should be her husband. / They are too scared. Instead, they haunt our house / day after day, and kill our cows and pigs [...]”¹⁷.

Resilience

Once again, the two women couldn't be more different in their situation: where Penelope is relatively powerless and holds only the key to kingship, Guinevere eventually finds herself in a position akin to that of a military leader. By resisting Mordred's advances, she becomes her own protector. Notably, she is helped by some loyal men, including her cousin Labor. Her act of rebellion against Mordred is not just the rejection of a man she despises. It may also be read as a profound act of loyalty. As long as Guinevere resists, Logres holds on. The moment she decides resistance is no longer needed on her part, she runs away. Despite her efforts, she will always end up dying at the hands of one man or the other. It is when she has decided her own resistance is futile that she goes to become a nun. The fall of the kingdom is double: the queen is out of the game, the king gone, the aspiring new king dead and all potential heirs buried²⁰. I can't help but wonder, what if Guinevere had stayed around? Would the remaining men fight for her? Would she have exerted power in her own right? People liked Guinevere, they followed her. Perhaps Lancelot would have come back, perhaps there would have been room for happier days. But this is not the story of the Vulgate, because it's essentially a tragedy, and because the adulterous lovers can never really be together. Notably, Guinevere never asks herself the possibility that both Mordred and Arthur die in battle and what she would do in that case. Perhaps she's just tired and wants to retire for good.

Penelope never exerts this kind of power, though she still finds ways to deal with her situation. Her shining moment is another act of resilience, as much as a showcase of her brilliant cunning. To buy herself time, she tells the suitors she will decide on one of them when she is done weaving the funeral shroud for Laertes. She famously works by day and undoes her work by night, until she is found out. Of course, the good wife of Odysseus in The Odyssey uses a ruse to save her skin. By the time this story is told some time has passed and the ruse has been discovered. She herself tells the story to Odysseus (in disguise, whom she may not have recognized), who by then is in Ithaca plotting the death of the hundred men who are hounding her¹⁸. Wilson states an interesting parallel here: just as Odysseus has gone to the battlefield, Penelope's battlefield is her weaving, watched over by Athena. Athena is an expert weaver as much as she is a war deity. Her love for Odysseus, his favorite, extends to his family, including Penelope in this case¹⁴. Penelope's power is in her endurance, her resilience and her wits while Guinevere's power is based on truly commanding the loyalty, affection and strength of men and women around her. Penelope is rather alone, Guinevere (for the better and the worse) never really is.

Finally, a note on other women. Penelope's maids are cruelly killed by the end of The Odyssey, for having had relationships with the suitors (nevermind that they might not have wanted any of that attention, that they might have been forced to offer sexual services, because even if they had sustained willing relationships with those men, they are still Odysseus’ property to command). The possibility of their involvement with the men is a pollution of the house, and in practice potential children of these men are potential threats to Odysseus’ regained power. He already has too many enemies. Penelope’s faithfulness, on the other hand, is difficult to disprove because of another clever trick: Odysseus made their bed out of a living tree, with his own hands. If no one else, as Penelope says in book 23, has seen this bed, it proves she did not invite anyone to her marital bed. But in the end, Penelope's women suffer the consequences of the men's play.

Fearing the rage of men is also a real issue for Guinevere. When she pleads her entry into a convent, at first the nuns reject her for fear that Mordred, or Arthur, might desecrate the place and kill them all just to get Guinevere. However, seeing that she is truly and absolutely desperate, they eventually take her in, arguing that as women of God, they will be protected⁸. Guinevere leaves her earthly belongings and joins them. I am left wondering about what the nuns say in the beginning. Arthur is a God-fearing man (he obeyed the Pope after all), and so is Lancelot, but what about Mordred? Would he have done what the nuns feared, killing them all just to get his hands on Guinevere? He is presented as wicked and cunning, so it might as well be the case.

Queens in kingdoms

Despite the differences in their situations, time, place and personal character, Penelope and Guinevere go to show that there is an intrinsic, necessary connection between them and power over the land they rule: whoever gets the queen, gets the kingdom. The association between the female body and the land/earth is a long standing one. Earth and land fertility gods are often associated with women (for example, Gea and Demeter in the Greek pantheon, or even the common expression of “mother Earth”). Women’s bodies, being both men’s property and part of the land, being presented as beacons that show off the virtue of their culture and compatriots, are a special kind of battle place, which explains why sexual violence (even today) is a common feature of war. The control of women’s bodies and reproductive labor is also a key feature in colonialism[^Colonialism]. In the context of Penelope and Guinevere, their position not only forces them to be paragons of virtue, it also transforms them into true tokens of power. In this way, their choices in who to take as a husband (or who to accept as a lover) are important decisions with lasting political consequences.

Penelope’s situation in choosing a suitor, in particular, presents a somewhat similar dilemma to the one Laudine, another Arthurian woman, faces. In Chrétien de Troyes’ Yvain, the knight of the lion²¹, the titular character Yvain (Arthur’s nephew by his sister Morgan) kills a certain knight. Later on, he falls for the beautiful Laudine, who turns out to be the wife of this knight. Now, Yvain had not killed the man on purpose (technically) but Laudine has all the reason to be appalled at the prospect. Similarly to Penelope, Laudine is the lady of the land, and by marrying her, Yvain becomes its lord. Laudine is torn between loyalty for her late husband and the prospect of a new marriage. As we know, Penelope did right in not remarrying because Odysseus was indeed still alive, unlike Laudine’s husband. Laudine’s decision to marry Yvain is driven by the counsel of her loyal maid Lunette, who argues, among other things, that they need a man in the land for safety reasons, that Yvain is a good match who did not kill the lady’s husband out of ill will, and so on. What’s interesting here for me, in the context of this essay, is that Laudine also holds the power over her land, to be transferred to some extent to her husband.

Women are a symbol of status as much as a key to power. In some narratives, for example, after Paris dies, Helen is not left by herself in Troy. Instead, she marries Deiphobus, another prince of Troy and brother to Paris. Here Helen isn’t explicitly tied to any land, and it is her beauty and divine nature which present the ultimate prize, but I’m guessing if the Trojans had won the war, Helen would have given them some sort of claim over Sparta, her homeland, over which Menelaus’ rules.

Ultimately, both Penelope and Guinevere hold the key to their respective kingdoms, the key that will open all the power and resources of kingship. By trying to get them, the men around them are trying to snatch a fundamental right from the absent kings, and justify their new positions of power by bringing the old queens into their scheme. Some narratives are less kind to Guinevere and Penelope. In some cases, Guinevere plots with Mordred herself, and in some accounts, Penelope is unfaithful and dies for it. They both hold the key to a power they can’t use by themselves, especially in the case of Penelope, being trapped in their own lives, in the title of queens. It is a golden cage: they might be better off than other women, but in the end they have almost as little agency as the other women do. Yet they do have agency. Their varied forms of resistance go to show that they are trying to take control of their own lives, of their own narratives, with the tools that are available to them. Penelope has her wits and her weaving. Guinevre first runs away and resists a siege and later on takes holy orders. Both have beauty, intelligence and courage. Guinevere has explicit public support, and presumably also does Penelope. Her slaves lament the situation of the household, and she is known for her kindness to strangers –I’m sure she’s just as popular as Guinevere is.

Finally, there are notable differences in Penelope and Guinevere's respective marriages. If we take the marital bed as a symbol of Penelope and Odysseus' union, then their marriage is a deeply rooted, fertile and living thing, a clever bit of handcraft. It is a bed that Odysseus made with his own hands, and that Penelope has attended for twenty years, despite his absence. It is an unmovable object (moving it would mean its destruction), and one that will very likely survive them. They are described as being “of the same mind”²². By contrast, Guinevere's marriage to Arthur in the Vulgate is a barren one, heavily marked by deceit, dissatisfaction and treachery. Arthur fails over and over again in his main role as a protector. Guinevere finds love and solace somewhere outside the marital bed. Penelope and Odysseus' marriage is marked by absence, but also by regret and pain over that absence. But in my opinion, Guinevere's relationship to Arthur is marked by another type of absence, a profound one that goes beyond the physical. Similarly, while The Odyssey is, in a way, about the reunion of Odysseus and Penelope in all its complexity, the Death of Arthur can be seen as the final, fatal, dissolution of Arthur and Guinevere's marriage (and their respective relations to Lancelot).

Despite their multiple, obvious differences, both Penelope and Guinevere face a somewhat similar situation, a situation akin to what other women over the years have suffered in many parts of the world. It is their refusal to give up, their push to keep on fighting in different, subtle ways, which makes them formidable enemies for the men they are fighting. They are much more than queens, and the promise of achieving power or legitimacy from them: they are women fighting to take whatever control they have over their own lives, however little that might be. Perhaps their ambiguity and unwillingness to play by the rules is also a way in which they can take control over their own narratives.