The Arthurian legend ends in catastrophe. The fellowship of the Round Table, shattered by the Grail quest and by the love of Lancelot and Guinevere, finally destroys itself in a civil war. On a plain by the sea, King Arthur faces his nephew and son Mordred in the Battle of Camlann, and almost every knight on both sides is killed. Arthur kills Mordred but receives a mortal wound. His last surviving knight, Sir Bedivere, throws Excalibur back into the lake, and a mysterious barge carries the dying king away to the Isle of Avalon.
The story is told in many versions, but the most famous is the final book of Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur (1485), which drew on the French Mort Artu (c. 1230) and the English Stanzaic Morte Arthur (fourteenth century). Malory’s account, in plain, powerful prose, is one of the great tragic endings in English literature.
The Road to Camlann
The fall of Camelot began when Agravain and Mordred, two of Arthur’s nephews, exposed the love affair between Queen Guinevere and Sir Lancelot. Lancelot, caught in the queen’s chamber, fought his way out and killed Agravain. Guinevere was condemned to be burned at the stake. Lancelot rescued her from the fire — and in the confusion, killed Gareth and Gaheris, the unarmed brothers of Sir Gawain, who loved Lancelot dearly.
Gawain, maddened by grief, demanded vengeance, and Arthur was drawn into war against Lancelot. The Pope intervened to force the return of Guinevere to Arthur, and Lancelot went into exile in his lands in France. But Gawain would not let the matter rest. Arthur crossed the sea with his army to besiege Lancelot, leaving the kingdom — and his queen — in the care of Mordred.
Mordred’s Treachery
Mordred forged letters announcing that Arthur had been killed in France. He had himself crowned king at Canterbury and announced that he would marry Guinevere. The queen escaped to the Tower of London and held it against him.
When Arthur learned the news, he returned to Britain. Mordred met him at Dover, and in the fighting on the beach, Gawain was mortally wounded, struck on the old wound Lancelot had given him. Before he died, Gawain wrote to Lancelot, forgiving him and begging him to come to Arthur’s aid.
A second battle followed at Barham Down, and Mordred retreated west.
Gawain’s Warning
On the night before the final battle, Arthur dreamed. First he saw himself sitting on a wheel above a pit full of serpents and beasts; the wheel turned, and he fell among them. Then Gawain’s ghost came to him, surrounded by the ladies he had championed in his life. Gawain warned him: if he fought Mordred the next day, he would die. He must make a truce for a month, until Lancelot arrived with his knights.
The Adder
In the morning, Arthur sent envoys to Mordred and agreed a truce. The two leaders were to meet between their armies, each with fourteen men, to make terms. But neither trusted the other. Arthur told his men that if they saw any sword drawn, they should attack. Mordred gave his men the same order.
As they parleyed, an adder slithered out of a heath bush and bit one of the knights on the foot. Without thinking, he drew his sword to kill the snake.
When the two armies saw the flash of the blade, they blew their trumpets and charged. The battle began, and no one could stop it.
The Battle
Malory describes it as the most terrible battle ever fought in a Christian land. It lasted all day. Knights rode and struck, cried out, and died. By evening, of a hundred thousand men, all lay dead on the field except Arthur, two of his knights — Sir Lucan and his brother Sir Bedivere, both badly wounded — and Mordred, standing among a heap of dead men, leaning on his sword.
Arthur, seeing him, called for his spear. Lucan begged him to let Mordred go: Gawain’s warning had come true, and if Arthur survived the day, he would be revenged another time. But Arthur said: “Now tide me death, tide me life, now I see him yonder alone, he shall never escape my hands.”
Arthur ran at Mordred with his spear and drove it through his body. Mordred, knowing he was dying, thrust himself up the spear to its guard and struck Arthur on the side of the head with his sword, piercing his helmet and skull. Then Mordred fell dead. Arthur fell into a swoon.
Excalibur Returned
Bedivere and Lucan carried the king to a small chapel near the sea. Lucan, trying to lift him, burst his own wounds and died. Arthur, dying, gave Bedivere a last command: take Excalibur to the lake nearby and throw it into the water, and come back to tell him what he saw.
Bedivere went to the lake. But when he looked at the sword, with its jewelled hilt, he could not bear to throw it away. He hid it under a tree and went back to the king. Arthur asked what he had seen. “Nothing but the waves and the wind,” said Bedivere. Arthur knew he was lying and sent him back.
The second time, Bedivere again hid the sword, and again told the king he had seen only water and wind. Arthur rebuked him bitterly: “Ah, traitor untrue… thou art he that is named a noble knight, and would betray me for the richness of the sword.”
The third time, Bedivere took the sword and threw it as far as he could into the water. An arm and a hand rose out of the lake, caught Excalibur by the hilt, shook it and brandished it three times, and drew it down into the water. Bedivere returned and told the king what he had seen. See The Lady of the Lake.
The Barge to Avalon
Arthur asked Bedivere to carry him down to the water’s edge. There a small barge was waiting, full of fair ladies in black hoods, among them three queens. Malory names them: Morgan le Fay, Arthur’s half-sister; the Queen of Northgales; and the Queen of the Waste Lands. With them was Nimue, the chief Lady of the Lake. They wept and shrieked when they saw the king.
They laid Arthur in the barge, and Morgan took his head in her lap and said: “Ah, dear brother, why have ye tarried so long from me? Alas, this wound on your head hath caught over-much cold.”
Bedivere cried out: “Ah, my lord Arthur, what shall become of me, now ye go from me and leave me here alone among mine enemies?”
Arthur answered: “Comfort thyself, and do as well as thou mayest, for in me is no trust for to trust in. For I will into the vale of Avilion to heal me of my grievous wound: and if thou hear never more of me, pray for my soul.”
The barge rowed away across the water, and Bedivere wept and went into the forest.
Death or Return?
What happened to Arthur? Malory leaves it deliberately uncertain.
The next morning, Bedivere came to a hermitage, where he found the former Archbishop of Canterbury beside a new grave. The hermit said that at midnight a number of ladies had brought a corpse and asked him to bury it. Bedivere believed it was Arthur, and stayed at the hermitage for the rest of his life.
But Malory adds: “Some men yet say in many parts of England that King Arthur is not dead, but had by the will of our Lord Jesu into another place; and men say that he shall come again… I will not say that it shall be so, but rather I will say: here in this world he changed his life.” And he records the epitaph: Hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam, rexque futurus — “Here lies Arthur, the once and future king.”
The Last of the Round Table
Lancelot arrived in Britain too late. He found Guinevere had become a nun at Amesbury. She refused to see him again, blaming their love for the destruction of the kingdom. Lancelot became a hermit and a priest. When Guinevere died, he buried her beside Arthur at Glastonbury, and soon after died himself. His brother Sir Ector de Maris spoke the famous lament over his body: “Thou were the courteoust knight that ever bare shield… and thou were the sternest knight to thy mortal foe that ever put spear in the rest.”
Where Was Camlann?
The earliest record of Camlann is the tenth-century Annales Cambriae, which dates it to around 537 CE: “The strife of Camlann, in which Arthur and Medraut fell.” Its location is unknown. Candidates include Camboglanna, a Roman fort on Hadrian’s Wall (modern Castlesteads); the River Camel in Cornwall, near Slaughterbridge, where a sixth-century inscribed stone lies by the river; and Cwm Llanfach in Wales. Welsh tradition called Camlann one of the “Three Futile Battles of Britain,” caused by a trivial quarrel between Guinevere and her sister.
The Legacy
The death of Arthur has been retold by Tennyson in The Passing of Arthur, painted by the Pre-Raphaelites, and filmed in Excalibur (1981). Its images — the adder, the sword thrown into the lake, the arm rising from the water, the black barge with the weeping queens — have become some of the most enduring in English literature.
Last reviewed: September 2026.