Character · ◇ Light

The Lady of the Lake

Nimue · Viviane

minorattestedLegendaryArthurian legend

The water-spirit who gives Arthur the sword Excalibur, raises Lancelot beneath her lake, and receives the sword again at the end when a dying king commands it thrown back into the water. The threshold between Britain and the otherworld, wearing a woman’s shape: what the age of iron borrows its magic from, and must return.

Light77

Wisdom65

Grace61

Influence62

✦Signature powerThe UnknownA power not yet set down in the record.

◈ Open relationship graph →

Voices & connections

Figures bound to The Lady of the Lake, family and rivals within the myth, and the thinkers and writers who shaped how we know them.

Lancelotteacher of Excaliburassociated with

Relics & objects

Sacred and cursed things that belong to the world of The Lady of the Lake.

ExcaliburSacred

Read the story

Illustrated chapters where The Lady of the Lake appears. Start reading in a click.

Illustrated storyThe Matter of BritainA boy pulls a sword from a stone and becomes the king who builds, for one shining generation, an order of justice out of an age of blood. But the flaw is set at the beginning — a son begotten in ignorance, a love that lands in the wrong heart — and the Round Table that quests for the Grail is undone by the very virtues that raised it. The rise and fall of Camelot, and the king who is not dead but waiting.Begin reading →