The legendary figure of King Arthur, the once and future king, began his rise to literary prominence through Geoffrey of Monmouth and his work, The history of the kings of Great Britain. Monmouth presented readers with a heroic and noble king who defeated the Saxons and reconquered Britain, creating a period that set the stage for the Arthurian era and the glories of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. Over time other authors added their voices to the tale of Arthurian legend; adding events and characters, ultimately changing the story forever. Perhaps the most notable of these additions came in the form of Sir Lancelot. The creation of Lancelot, a knight introduced by Chrétien de Troyes in The Knight of the Chariot, produced a pointless background battle for top score between Arthur and his best knight. The inclusion of Sir Lancelot in works such as The Vulgate Cycle and Le Morte d'Arthur shows further evidence that once the character of Lancelot was created, King Arthur was no longer needed to save Camelot and restore it to peace. Between Lancelot's courtly love for King Arthur's wife, Guinevere, and his reputation for being "sought after by all men and loved by all women more than any other knight" (Vulgate 102), he can be seen as King Arthur had no chance against such a chivalrous man. , leaving him almost helpless to watch Camelot and its Round Table collapse as Lancelot's importance rose. Before Lancelot's inclusion in Arthurian legend, Arthur was originally "depicted first as a powerful warlord in Welsh and Latin traditions", but after Lancelot became part of folklore, "he becomes a passive and often weak character in the romances of Chrétien, abandoning the thrill of the battlefield in favor of his...... middle of paper......2002): 7- 30. MLA international bibliography. Network. 20 April 2012.Geoffrey of Monmouth. The history of the kings of England. The Romance of Arthur: an anthology of medieval texts in translation. Ed. James J. Wilhelm. New York: Garland Pub., 1994. 63-93.Ingram, Amy L. “Psychology of a King: Arthur in the Lancelot-Grail Cycle.” Philological Quarterly 82.4 (2003): 349-365. MLA international bibliography. Network. 21 April 2012.Lacy, Norris J. The Lancelot-Grail Reader: Selections from the Medieval French Arthurian Cycle. New York: Garland Pub., 2000. Print.Malory, Thomas, and Dorsey Armstrong. Morte Darthur by Sir Thomas Malory: a new modern English translation based on the Winchester manuscript. West Lafayette, IN: Parlor, 2009. Print.Painter, Sidney. French Chivalry: Chivalric Ideas and Practices in Medieval France. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins P, 1940.