The reader approaching the end of the Queste del saint Graal learns that only Bors, Perceval, and Galahad are able, though to differing degrees, to achieve visions of the Holy Grail. We read of the death of Galahad, after which the Grail is taken up into heaven. Soon Perceval dies as well, leaving only Bors to tell the full story of the quest. He returns to Camelot, where the adventures he recounts are recorded in writing. And with that, we are told, ‘si se test a tant li contes, que plus n’en dist des Aventures del Seint Graal’ [the story falls silent and has nothing more to say about the adventures of the Holy Grail]. No conclusion could be more decisive.

But that is the conclusion to the Queste, not to the Lancelot-Grail Cycle. An entire, if comparatively brief, romance remains. The Mort le Roi Artu, rather than the Queste, is the Cycle's ultimate conclusion, but its author's task is complicated by the apparent finality of the Grail quest. The Mort Artu is in effect a second conclusion and thus, almost by definition, an anti-climax, recounting events that follow the tribulations, triumphs, and tragedies of the Grail quest. It is in fact, as Pauphilet suggests, the Cycle's epilogue.

The fundamental promise of the Cycle, a promise made repeatedly in its early romances, has been kept: the Grail knight has come and has accomplished his quest. But the Arthurian court survives the quest, if only as a pale reflection of its formerly glorious presence. Many of the best knights are dead. Two of the greatest – Lancelot and Gawain – have survived, but their mutual antagonism will be one of the pivots on which the remaining story will turn and one of the principal keys to the terrible catastrophe that is to befall Arthur and his realm.

The text of this romance and, indeed, that of the preceding one offer abundant portents of that catastrophe. At the beginning of the Queste, Gawain and then all the other knights vow that they will set out in search of the Grail and will continue the quest ‘un an et un jor et encor plus se mestiers est’ (16) [a year and a day and even longer if need be].