Galahad in the context of "Lancelot"

Idylls of the King, published between 1859 and 1885, is a cycle of twelve narrative poems by the English poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892; Poet Laureate from 1850) which retells the legend of King Arthur, his knights, his love for Guinevere and her tragic betrayal of him, and the rise and fall of Arthur's kingdom.

The whole work recounts Arthur's attempt and failure to lift up mankind and create a perfect kingdom, from his coming to power to his death at the hands of the traitor Mordred. Individual poems detail the deeds of various knights, including Lancelot, Geraint, Galahad, and Balin and Balan, and also Merlin and the Lady of the Lake. There is little transition between idylls, but the central figure of Arthur links all the stories. The poems were dedicated to the late Albert, Prince Consort.

The Knights of the Round Table (French: Chevaliers de la Table Ronde) are the legendary knights of the fellowship of King Arthur that first appeared in the French-language Matter of Britain literature in the mid-12th century. The Knights are a chivalric order dedicated to ensuring the peace of Arthur's kingdom following an early warring period, entrusted in later years to undergo a mystical quest for the Holy Grail. The Round Table at which they meet is a symbol of the equality of its members, who range from sovereign royals to minor nobles.

The various Round Table stories present an assortment of knights from all over Great Britain and abroad, some of whom are even from outside of Europe. Their ranks often include Arthur's close and distant relatives, such as Agravain, Gaheris and Yvain, as well as his reconciled former enemies, like Galehaut, Pellinore and Lot. Several of the most notable Knights of the Round Table, among them Bedivere, Gawain and Kay, are based on older characters from a host of great warriors associated with Arthur in the early Welsh tales. Some, such as Lancelot, Perceval and Tristan, feature in the roles of a protagonist or eponymous hero in various works of chivalric romance. Other well-known members of the Round Table include the holy knight Galahad, replacing Perceval as the main Grail Knight in the later stories, and Arthur's traitorous son and nemesis Mordred.

Galehaut (or Galaha[l/u]t, Galeho[l/u]t, Gallehau[l]t, Galhault, Galeotto, et al.) is a half-giant knight and sovereign prince in the Arthurian legend. He is most prominent within the Lancelot-Grail prose cycle where he is a noble enemy turned an ally of King Arthur as well as an inseparable friend (and possible lover, according to some interpretations) of Arthur's champion Lancelot. He should not be mistaken with Lancelot's son, Galahad (which is also Lancelot's own birth name), and some other similarly named characters.

Perceval (/ˈpɜːrsɪvəl/, also written Percival, Parzival, Parsifal), alternatively called Peredur (Welsh pronunciation: [pɛˈrɛdɨr]), is a figure in the legend of King Arthur, often appearing as one of the Knights of the Round Table. First mentioned by the French author Chrétien de Troyes in the late 12th century tale Perceval, the Story of the Grail, he is best known for being the original hero in the quest for the Grail before being replaced in later literature by Galahad, first introduced in the early 13th century.

Diu Crône (English: The Crown) is a Middle High German poem of about 30,000 lines treating of King Arthur and the Matter of Britain, dating from around the 1220s and attributed to the epic poet Heinrich von dem Türlin. Little is known of the author though it has been suggested that he was from the town of Sankt Veit an der Glan, then the residence of the Sponheim dukes of Carinthia.

Diu Crône also tells of the Knights of the Round Table's quest for the Grail but differs from the better-known "Percival" and "Galahad" versions of the narrative in that it is here Gawain who acquires the sacred object; it is the only work in the Arthurian corpus in which he does so. The 'crown' of the title is, in fact, the poem itself: Heinrich likens his work to a gem-set diadem - the 'gems' being the various Arthurian tales or episodes that he has 'set' in the gold of his verse; his avowed object in this endeavor being the delectation of ladies everywhere - the which accords well with the reputation of his chosen hero, Gawain as a ladies' man.

The Lancelot-Grail Cycle, also known as the Vulgate Cycle or the Pseudo-Map Cycle, is an influential 13th-century French Arthurian literary cycle of unknown authorship written in Old French. Consisting of a series of interconnected prose episodes, it is a lengthy faux chronicle-style chivalric romance that retells the legend of King Arthur while focusing on the character of Merlin, the love affair between Lancelot and Guinevere, and the religious quest for the Holy Grail. Expanding on Robert de Boron's "Little Grail Cycle" and the poems of Chrétien de Troyes, the work ties their previously unrelated and disparate stories together into a coherent single tale and supplements them with new material, such as additional details, original characters, and side stories. It also features an ending inspired by the Arthurian chronicle tradition by Geoffrey of Monmouth.

There is no unity of time and place within the plot, but most of the episodes take place in Arthur's British kingdom of Logres. One of the main characters is Arthur, around whom gravitates many other heroes, including the Knights of the Round Table. The chief of them is Lancelot, whose chivalric tale is centered around his illicit romance with Arthur's wife, Queen Guinevere. However, the cycle also tells of adventures of a more spiritual type, featuring the Round Table's search for the Holy Grail (the vessel that contained the blood of Christ), until Lancelot's son Galahad ultimately retrieves it. Other major plot-lines include the accounts of the life of Merlin and of the rise and fall of Arthur.