Disclaimer: I own my words and ideas, not those that started in the movie.
A/N: Because this movie had massive Arthur/Lancelot subtext, and I refuse to believe that the whole A/G relationship worked out. Nothing Arthur does except sleep with Guinevere says in any way that he loves her, and everything else he does says he has feelings for Lancelot. SO I fixed it.
To Be Envied, Indeed
Her husband was in love with ashes on the wind, a wind that had already traveled far beyond the shores of Britain.
The ladies of Arthur's court congratulated her on her marriage, envied her her power and husband.
They didn't have to live with a broken king.
And Arthur truly was broken on the inside. He'd shattered into a million pieces with one strike of an arrow. She wasn't capable of filling the hole Lancelot had left behind, and she realized now that she'd always been little more than a substitute.
She'd done her best to keep him together in those first few days. The aftermath of battle had helped some, but whenever he wasn't actively helping with the clean up of the fort Arthur could be found sitting in his room, shutters pulled, staring at the crossed swords on his table. He was mourning the lover he'd never had a chance to have, the friend who had stood by him when he had every reason for hatred, the pagan with the answers he couldn't find in his own religion. How could she compete with that?
She'd known Lancelot had loved Arthur. She'd seen it when he'd tried to free him from his perceived obligation to Britain, from his ties to a land that had done little for him once it had given him life. And when that had failed, when Arthur had been moved enough to reach out to Lancelot and touch him to make him understand, Lancelot had understood. He'd understood that Arthur had set his course and would not be moved from it, understood that Arthur's conviction was the only reason he'd allowed himself to touch Lancelot, and thereby come so close to the temptation his religion forced him to resist.
And so Lancelot had chosen suicide for another. Or rather, he'd chosen another's suicide for himself. He'd believed so strongly in his captain, loved him so deeply, that he'd taken Arthur's death for his own and, in doing so, saved the life of the woman he thought Arthur loved.
Guinevere knew that Arthur now regarded that life as irreversibly tainted, purchased by a life infinitely more dear to him than her own.
Oh, but for Arthur's faith and his God! She had an inherent distrust of the Christian God, born in her time in prison, but even she would admit that Arthur's beliefs ran deep and led him into nothing but good. His views were not twisted by self-righteousness. So how, she often wondered, could he stand to let them keep him from Lancelot?
It seemed to her, from what she'd been taught of his God and his Church (by Arthur, not by the sanctimonious murderers who had kept her locked away), that God was merciful. Surely, he'd have forgiven a love as deep as the one that existed between this young captain and his knight?
She was living with a man who'd died with his second-in-command, married to a man who was without half of himself.
Oh yes, she was to be envied indeed.