Justice In T. H. White's The Once And Future King

During the first two books of T.H. White’s “The Once and Future King”, the lives of Arthur, Lancelot, and Guenever are drawn out for the audience, everything in order and the friendship between them strong and faithful. By the fourth book, the relationship between these three characters has become severely broken, the Author vividly illustrating their lives of sin, adultery, and hypocrisy that none of them can recover from, the Kingdom’s downfall set into motion. As Lancelot and Guenever continue to do wrong, Arthur must make the difficult decision of going against the two people he loves most. Honoring his new set of laws and expelling justice is the only route he can take. Arthur continuously struggles to deal with harming his friends when they have been proven guilty, being bound by

Arthur’s response to their plan, saying that “ the only hope I now have left is that Lancelot will kill you both and all the witnesses—a feat which, I am proud to say, has never been beyond my Lancelot's power” (p.427), gives him hope that Lancelot and Guenever will escape his societal law so he doesn’t have to punish them and fall into Mordred’s trap. Part of Arthur wants to warn Guenever and Lancelot that Agravaine and Mordred are plotting their destruction, but he must go against his feelings because if he helps them in any way, he would be going against the new justice system he created for the Kingdom and would be aiding their way out of prosecution. The laws he made were created by the idea of might versus right he created a stance on during his talks with Merlyn, and following his feelings to help his friends would be going against himself and everything he stands for. Arthur, to keep his morals and laws, must let go of the people he holds most dear to him, no matter how much it