NIGHTBRINGER | The Arthurian Encyclopedia

Meliagrant’s Castle


Then there was a knight that hight Meliagrance, and he was son unto King Bagdemagus, and this knight had at that time a castle of the gift of King Arthur within seven miles of Westminster.

Guenevere rode a-Maying with ten unarmed knights and ten ladies in the woods and fields around Westminster. Here Meliagrant waylaid them and carried them to his own castle. Later, he trapped Lancelot in his stronghold by causing him to drop “more than ten fathom into a cave full of straw.” Such trapdoors befit the castles of villainous knights.

The Vulgate account of the kidnaping of Guenevere by Meliagrant is substantially different, longer and more involved, and puts Meliagrant’s castle in his father’s kingdom of Gore.


See also
Bagdemagus of Gorre | The Legend of King Arthur
Castle of Four Stones | The Legend of King Arthur
Tower of the Fens | The Legend of King Arthur