as someone who doesn't go here, I'm really interested in all this arthuriana stuff, lol. So far what I know is that good pal Lancelot there is really head over heels for the very misunderstood red haired queen, Arthur is a questionable human and that Sir Gawain (and all his 150 other names) is a knight icon.
Oh, I'm not the right kind of Blogger to explain all these sorts of things. I tend to ramble and it becomes a kind of essay and I have to insert screenshots of specific texts. Not to mention the hassle of producing links to a source.
But yes, there's a lot of nuance that a casual read wouldn't really get if, say, you only read Le Morte D'Arthur and nothing else. Or worse, read up on only Modern works, like Idylls of the King or Once and Future King. The last two are Modern Stories to the core, often neglect important medieval contexts when it comes to the treatment of the legend. It would take an entire posts detailing the nitpicks I have towards them.
So to keep things short, here's a bullet point summary, that lacks a bit nuance itself but gets to the point and keeps it brief:
These characters have been written about for centuries. They've had different contradictory portrayals - sometimes even in the same story - depending on the cultural trends and motives of the storytellers. Arthuriana is a massive tradition with huge influence and to euclidate it all would be virtually impossible.
For instance, Sir Lancelot, as a character, is fundamentally the "Fantasy Boyfriend" archetype - he exists to be an idealized love interest wish-fulfillment for a female audience to fawn over (through Guinevere). Everything he does as warrior is done in the name of Love and is glorified for it. The sad thing about Lancelot is that he became outdated, with the cultural trend that created him - Courtly Love = having puttered out a long time ago. And as a result, he tends to get misconstrued by later interpretations.
Likewise, Queen Guinevere as has had many characterizations over centuries, from villain to heroine and everything in-between. She's misunderstood in the sense that most people don't know or acknowledge that the narratives surrounding Guinevere has changed, evolved and, more importantly, has accrued different and confusing plot points and themes - stuff that for their time made sense but aged poorly in retrospect. And that a lot of writers work from a limited pool of references (sticking to only 1 or 2 classics with all the strengths and flaws of those few stories) and insert contemporary biases in their retellings.
Also, Guinevere is not necessarily a Redhead. She is Blonde in Knight of the Cart.
King Arthur is... a Dark Ages Warlord. He would not exactly the nice man that gets hyped as an ideal leader, like Alfred Tennyson and T.H. White would have you believe. He has, throughout the evolution of the legend, character traits that don't exactly jive to the modern image of the character and has ambitions that would be tyrannical in our minds (Like his Campaign to conquer Europe or his Sexual Escapades)
Sir Gawain is the go-to action hero of the Romances. He can be said to be both an everyman and a stock character archetype - Gawain can be shoved in any story and in any role (heroic or villainous) and it would still make sense. The guy is versatile.
Even this Bulleted List doesn't cover everything I wanted to say. There's just simply so much to parse through and I'm not very good at organizing my thoughts in the spur of the moment.
I'll finish this post by saying keep digging and look up articles on medieval culture and history to give a little bit of context. From time-to-time, I also post about IRL Medieval Culture facts (like Law Codes).
There's so much more to learn about this (and possibly get disappointed in so many modern stories about the Arthurian Legend)
