The
maiden who dies of
unrequited love for
Sir Lancelot.
She was the daughter of King Pelles, and managed to deceive Lancelot into sleeping with her. Their son was Sir Galahad.
She is renowned for floating in a barge, lifeless, towards Camelot and the knight she adored with a letter in her limp hands. She appears in Malory and in Tennyson's idyll of "Lancelot and Elaine". The figure of Elaine in the barge became one of the most popular Victorian images. Indeed, when Anne in Anne of Green Gables fell in love with the poem, she tried to re-enact the scene, with dire consequences - Diana's barge sinks and Anne must be rescued by her love-nemesis Gilbert Blythe.