Female

No matter how many versions of the Arthurian legend I encounter, I cannot make myself like Guinevere. “Camelot” (the musical), “Excalibur”, “King Arthur”, “Camelot” (the TV series that died after one season) – in every one of them, the Queen bugs the hell out of me. She’s either simpering or smug, and while Arthur himself was best portrayed by Clive Owen, even the King can be difficult to respect because he’s more in love with his round table knights than he is with his wife. I watched “Camelot” (the musical) on the weekend and much as I love the music and the scenery and the costumes and even the story … augh. I wanted to smack the Queen, punch out Lancelot, and shake the King until his pearly whites rattled. Was it the writing or the acting? The characters are the stuff of legend, so how could it be them?

Except that, in “Excalibur”, “King Arthur”, and “Camelot” (the TV series that died after one season), I generally feel the same – about Guinevere, at least. I like my knights on the tarnished side so Lancelot does nothing for me, hence I don’t see why she falls for him when Arthur is much more interesting … if you can get him to stop talking to Merlin’s ghost and being so darned idealistic all the time. Richard Harris didn’t have much to work with in the musical, truth be told. Clive Owen put way more grit and savvy into his King Arthur – and Ioan Gruffud’s Lancelot had an appealing ragged edge as well. But Guinevere? She was no mooning milksop when Keira Knightley played her, and I still disliked her.

So. Do I expect more from female characters than I do from male? Tough one. I can’t tell if it’s the way I was raised, the culture in which I was raised, my hardwired chromosomal response to other women, or me seeing in them what I dislike in myself, but I seem to be way less forgiving with females than I am with males. I take more care when I’m writing them, especially in the first person. I like them to be smart and a little sassy, but there’s fine line between confident and pushy. They must stand up to their men without hysteria or henpecking, and they must also know how to stand down without caving. I myself am a smartmouth, so I have to watch that my girls don’t overdo the sass because it gets annoying and I do not want to annoy the audience. Children can get away with it to a point, but even then, Lucius’s daughter Aurelia, who began as an opinionated eight-year-old, is now, at twelve, being schooled in the finer points of diplomacy and artful conduct … though she still blurts her mind in safe company. Despite being more natural for me, writing women is hard work. My guys can be rat bastards and still be appealing, but my girls … yeah, just like in the real world, more is expected of them. They don’t always oblige – I have one or two real peaches in the orchard – but I do worry more about them being likeable than I do their male counterparts. I don’t think it’s a reflection on me; I think they themselves want to be accepted and are therefore more aware of their behaviour. A few of them don’t care. A few others are completely unaware. Many are truly caught between duty and devotion. Most of them are just trying to survive. Gee, they sound like real women!

But I still don’t get Guinevere.