The Lady of the Lake

Lore & Background

Different Ladies of the Lake appear concurrently as separate characters in some versions of the legend since at least the Post-Vulgate Cycle and consequently the seminal Le Morte d'Arthur, with the latter describing them as members of a hierarchical group, while some texts also give this title to either Morgan or her sister. As either single character or multiple ones, the figure of the Lady of the Lake often appears in various roles in the works of modern culture. Today, the Lady of the Lake is best known as the character called either Nimue, or several scribal variants of Ninianne and Viviane. French and foreign medieval authors and copyists since the early 13th century produced various forms of the latter two. Such forms include Nymenche (in addition to Ninianne / Ninienne) in the Vulgate Lancelot; Nim[i]ane and Ui[n/ui]ane (in addition to Viviane) in the Vulgate Merlin (Niniane in the version Livre d'Artus); Nin[i]eve / Nivene / Niviène / Nivienne and Vivienne in the Post-Vulgate Merlin (Niviana in the Spanish Baladro del Sage Merlin); and Nimiane / Niniame and Vivian / Vivien in Arthour and Merlin and Henry Lovelich's Merlin. Further variations of these include alternate spellings with the letter i written as y, such as in the cases of Nymanne (Nimanne as in Michel le Noir's Merlin) and Nynyane (Niniane). According to Lucy Paton, the most primitive French form of this name might have been Niniane. The much later form Nimue, in which the letter e can be written as ë or é, was invented and popularized by Thomas Malory through his 15th-century English Le Morte d'Arthur and itself has several variations: her name appears as Nymue, Nyneue, Nyneve and Nynyue in William Caxton's print edition, but it had been rather Nynyve (used predominantly) and Nenyve in the Winchester Manuscript. Even though 'Nymue' (with the m) appears only in the Caxton text, the modernized and standardized 'Nimue' is now the most common form of the name of Malory's character, as Caxton's edition was the only version of Le Morte d'Arthur published until 1947. Nimue is also sometimes rendered by modern authors and artists as either Nimuë or Nimüe (the forms introduced in the 19th century through Tennyson's poem 'Enid and Nimuë: The True and the False' and Burne-Jones' painting Merlin and Nimüe.)

Reader's Guide

The Lady of the Lake does not appear as a character in Planescape: Torment. The claim that the game's design was led by Tim Cain is incorrect; Planescape: Torment was designed by Chris Avellone. The City of the Unnamed is not a location in Planescape: Torment; the game's primary city is Sigil.

Did You Know?

• Arthurian scholar A. O. H. Jarman proposed that the name Viviane was ultimately derived from the Welsh word chwyfleian, meaning 'a wanderer of pallid countenance'.
• The mythical Greek sea nymph Thetis, mother of the hero Achilles, similarly provides her son with magical weapons, and may have inspired or influenced the Arthurian legend.