Taking the young knight and his lady to the verge of matrimony, the “Tale of Sir Gareth of Orkney” explores how licit love proceeds in Malorian society. King Arthur and Queen Guenevere's story explores the onset and perils of matrimony itself, in this case leading to the ramifications of marital breakdown and the queen's illicit relationship with Launcelot. In his plans for marriage, the king takes into account private and public needs: He chooses a bride whom he loves and whose dowry serves his political ends, making possible the chivalric body, the Round Table. Eventually, however, King Arthur finds himself married to a queen who fails to produce an heir and who transgresses their marriage bed. Despite the optimistic start to Arthur and Guenevere's marriage, personal, political and dynastic tragedy reside in the queen's body, in the twinned problems of barrenness and adultery. Guenevere is thus bodily represented at four pivotal moments in the history of the Round Table: at its institution; at the induction of its greatest knight; at its fall; and at its close, when she repents and retreats to the convent. This chapter will examine these four stages in Guenevere's Arthurian career, relating them to the marriage customs of dowry, legalities concerning adultery, and ideas about procreation, motherhood, and widowhood. These cultural norms supply the perspectives from which a fifteenth-century audience would have seen Malory's queen.

Malory tends to evaluate both Arthur and Guenevere's marriage and Guenevere and Launcelot's adultery in terms of public consequences.