The beautiful water found in this well is the fulfillment of Arthur's chivalric ideals — throughout The Ill-Made Knight, Lancelot will come close to quenching is thirst for holiness, but (because of his own sins) will be forbidden to drink (an idea made apparent when Lancelot is allowed to see — but not approach — the Holy Grail). White repeatedly stresses Lancelot's physical unattractiveness (a new spin on the legend) in order to stress the knight's contradictory nature: He is the greatest in terms of heroics and tilting, but "ill-made" in terms of morality. His face reveals his soul. After he is knighted, the fact that Lancelot begins embarking on quests in order to avoid Guenever suggests that such adventures "were his struggles to save his honor, not establish it." As he becomes a knight to avoid the "ugliness" he fears lies within him, he uses chivalry to avoid committing a terrible (yet inevitable) sin. For his momentary victory over himself, God rewards him by letting him perform a miracle, as he always wanted, and Lancelot saves Elaine from the cauldron of boiling water. At this point, the greatest knight is very close to God and glories in his deep love of chivalry; White describes the miracle as "the turning point of his life."
However, the impact of this "turning point" fades over time, and, as everyone familiar with the legend knows, Lancelot betrays both Arthur and Arthur's ideals by sleeping with Guenever. Lancelot's moral compass becomes skewed; he sacrifices all for which he has worked and proven for the sake of worldly (rather than divine) love. However, Guenever's and Lancelot's love is never portrayed by White as unseemly or lustful (as is the seduction of Arthur by Morgause in The Queen of Air and Darkness). Instead, White implies that their love is as fated as that of Merlyn and Nimue: the tragedy of Camelot lies in this idea. Motivated by his having been tricked by Elaine into sleeping with her, Lancelot justifies his racing toward Guenever with the logic that "He was a lie now, in God's eyes as he saw them, so he felt that he might as well be a lie in earnest." He knows, as he approaches the Queen's bedchamber, that he will no longer be "the best knight in the world," have the power "to work miracles against magic," or have some "compensation for ugliness and emptiness in his soul." Her earthly love is too strong for him to resist and Lancelot finds the inevitability of his own fall quite painful: He tells the Queen, "I have given you my hopes, Jenny, as a present from my love." Fully aware of his betrayal of Arthur and of God, whose ideals are embodied by the King, Lancelot accepts the "ill-made" nature of his soul. "He believed as firmly as Arthur did, as firmly as the benighted Christian, that there is such a thing as Right." Because of this unshakable belief, Lancelot "loved Arthur" (who embodies Godliness) "and he loved Guenever" (who embodies human desire) "and he hated himself" (whom he views as a man unable to live up to the demands of his own ideals and conscience).
