The Arthurian legends consist of a body of medieval Welsh, Celtic, English, and French romances about King Arthur, the chivalrous, upright ruler of Camelot who defends his lands against Saxon invaders. The earliest recorded reference to Arthur is from Welsh sources, such as the 12th-century Welsh romance Culhwch and Olwen. In this story, the legendary King Arthur aids his cousin Culhwch in performing the perilous tasks that will win him the hand of the giant’s daughter, Olwen. Medieval writers such as Geoffrey of Monmouth and Chrétien De Troyes add elements like the Holy Grail, and they also tell of a young Arthur pulling the divine sword Excalibur from a stone to prove his worthiness to rule Britain. Since then, Arthurian lore has continued to grow and evolve, with retellings continuing into the 21st century.

While traditional Arthurian tales (such as those codified in Sir Thomas Malory’s 15th-century work Le Morte d’Arthur) predominantly focus on male heroes like Arthur and his knights, The Once and Future Queen joins a modern literary movement of feminist retellings that challenge patriarchal narratives by centering the perspectives of female characters. Paula Lafferty subverts accounts in which Queen Guinevere is a beautiful but fallible queen whose adulterous affair with Lancelot precipitates the downfall of Camelot. Just as Madeline Miller’s Circe (2018) reframes a mythological sorceress as a complex protagonist, Lafferty reimagines Guinevere as a modern woman grappling with grief, identity, and purpose. The novel directly confronts the traditional legend when Merlin dismisses the established stories, telling Vera, “Guinevere, you’ll be shocked to learn how wrong this time has gotten things” (34). By transporting Vera, an ordinary young woman, into the role of the legendary queen, Lafferty subverts the mythos, shifting the focus of the Arthurian narrative from a king’s destiny to a woman’s journey of self-discovery. Lafferty further grounds this reimagining in the real world by setting Vera’s modern life in Glastonbury, the town historically identified as the mystical Isle of Avalon and the legendary burial site of Arthur and Guinevere, creating a powerful link between the mythical past and the contemporary present.