Arthur knows that laws should not be invented simply to crush one's enemies, for in that way tyranny lies, and tyrants need no excuse for killing their enemies in the first place. Such thinking is why, when Lancelot advises Arthur to cut off Mordred's head "and be done with him," the king instantly refuses. The only way that Arthur can "keep clear of force is by justice," and the hard fact of justice is that, "Far from being willing to execute his enemies, a real king must be willing to execute his friends . . . And his wife." The function of law is to implement right without the presence of Force Majeure; for this to be done, those who wish to defer to law must be willing to have it applied without any consideration for their own individual passions. Thus, Lancelot and Guenever must become the test case of Arthur's civil law, else its entire premise is undermined. Any exceptions made for the king's friend and wife will make the law a joke and its inventor a tyrant, like Mordred, who has no use for justice and calls it something that Arthur "does to people" simply "to amuse himself."
Naturally, Arthur despairs of his predicament. As Lancelot in The Ill-Made Knight finds himself torn between two equally powerful forces (Guenever and God), Arthur here finds himself pulled by both his desire for justice and his love for his friend and wife. After being forced, by his own logic, to allow Mordred and Agravaine to catch Lancelot with Guenever, Arthur has no choice, as a monarch, but to try and convict them. As a husband and friend, however, he constantly betrays his partisan hopes, like a judge who will pass down a guilty verdict if he is forced but who also hopes that he will be prevented from doing so. To his credit, Arthur never gives in to his own heart: He knows that Gawaine will follow the banished Lancelot and eventually kill him, and Arthur sits by his window to view Guenever's execution, because if he does not do so, the punishment will not be "legal." Caught in the ironies of his own creation, Arthur loses hope of reconciling his heart with his law — until the king watches Lancelot rescue Guenever from the stake and betrays his delight in his banished friend's actions: "My Lancelot! I knew he would! . . . Look, he is coming up to the Queen. . . . We shall win, Gawaine — we shall win!"
