The Book of Guinevere: Legendary Queen of Camelot. Andrea Hopkins.

 Hopkins, Andrea. The Book of Guinevere: Legendary Queen of Camelot. Saraband, 2004.

I can't decide if I enjoyed the book more for the text or for the illustrations. Both were fascinating--at least to someone like me, who's been weirdly into the whole Arthurian story for about as long as I can remember. Thing is, somehow I've mostly read modern re-tellings, and I definitely missed some of the "classic" medieval content, which is what Hopkins covers in this book. 

Basically, Hopkins goes through selected bits of medieval writings about Guinevere (also Gwynnever, Gwenever, Gwenhwyvar, Guenhumara, and on and on) to build a sense of her character as presented in those writings. Some view her more favorably, some view her less favorably, and different texts highlight different aspects of her personality.

Each chapter of Hopkins' book focuses on some aspect of Guinevere or some experience she's reported to have gone through: Guinevere the Victim of Abduction, Guinevere the Lover, Guinevere the Jealous Harpy, Guinevere Noble in Adversity, etc. Each includes translations from one or more ancient texts that flesh out that element of her story/persona.

In Guinevere the Falsely Accused, for example, Hopkins opens with reference to a segment of Chrétien's "Lancelot" (12th century) in which Guinevere is wrongly accused of committing adultery with Sir Kay, then compares it to a section from the prose Lancelot (13th century) that describes how the wicked knight Berthelai and his damsel claim that Guinevere is an impostor and nearly get her burned at the stake. (I found this section fascinating because of the way the prose Lancelot dealt with Guinevere being falsely accused; in it, King Arthur rather immediately believes the accusations and is tricked into hating and attempting to execute Guinevere, but Arthur's knights are completely on Guinevere's side and vow to defend her: "'Lady,' said Galehot, 'be sure that I shall protect you with all my might and I shall be on  your side against all men, even if I must do harm to King Arthur, whose man I am.'")

Guinevere the Falsely Accused ends with one more instance of false accusation, which is interesting largely because of how much it differs from the prose Lancelot: in Malory's translation of Le Morte d'Arthur (15th century), Guinevere is accused of attempting to poison Sir Gawain, and none of the knights believe her... except that of course Lancelot leaps in to defend her at the last possible moment, not caring whether she's guilty or not.

Each chapter performs similar compare/contrast operations on the different facets of Guinevere on which each focuses. If you aren't already familiar with this, there's a lot of good information; and if you ARE already familiar, well, the whole thing is pretty enough to make a good coffee-table book, too.