User blog comment:Adelina Le Morte March/Lance-uh-not/@comment-4650675-20130103122740/@comment-5659316-20130104001012

I don't want to bash Lancelot too too bad in my reply here, because he's one of your favorites, but the truth is, even looking from a strictly from a writer's standpoint, he's a poor character.

In fact, based more on the legends themselves than Merlin just to make it easier to get acurate results, I, out of pure curiousity, ran Lancelot's character through a Mary-Sue test and the man scored a cringe-worthy 76! Clue: that's not a good thing for a writer! In fact, modern writers who use the internet for guidence in figuring out if their characters are well-rounded or not are STRONGLY encouraged to completely give up on a character and axe their role in the story if they score over 50, and even scores just under fifty (some say even thirty, but I was feeling generous, since Lancelot has become sort of a classic character over the recent centuries) are frowned upon. I honestly believe that if Lancelot were invented by a writer today, instead of one from the middle-ages or whenever, he would have criques that would rivial (though perhaps not QUITE as bad) those of Edward Cullen and Bella Swan (another reason for me to dislike Lancelot; he just made me referrence TWILIGHT! LOL, JK).

Also I think it's safe to guess that you've only seen the MOVIE The Mists of Avalon? Because it DOES show Lancelet in a little nicer light than the novel. In the novel he was all over Morgaine until he saw Guinevere. And he even tried to sleep with her once or twice afterwards, not because he loved her but because he missed Guinevere and was mad she was with Arthur. He had no problem with the fact that she was his cousin.

Also, the fact that Gwen, in Merlin, never thought of Arthur, ready to run off with Lancelot, in my opinon is proof she is NOT a Mary-sue or being shown as perfect. It was selfish of her, not thinking of him, showing she was human and made mistakes and impulsive choices too, whereas Lancelot was too bent on doing everything right.

''What I don't understand is the reason you hate Lancelot from the legends. Is it that he came later? ''-No, that has very little to do with it. What I dislike is that he was invented to be better in every way than already established knights (there are often several times when there's no logical reason in the plot Lancelot should save the day and yet the story has it be him anyway), including Tristan (in The Once and Future King, Lancelot actually trash-talks Tristan for sleeping with Mark's wife Isolde when he's doing the same thing with Guinevere!) and Arthur himself.