Nimue, chief Lady of the Lake

Nimue, chief Lady of the Lake, appears in the book’s final account as both a protector of Sir Pelleas and one of the women who carried the wounded King Arthur away from the shore. Her place in these closing passages links her earlier protection of Pelleas to the unresolved departure of Arthur: she is among the company at the water, but the narrative does not claim to know what became of the king.

Identity and Relationships

The closing catalogue identifies Nimue as the chief Lady of the Lake and says she had married Sir Pelleas, described there as a good knight. Their marriage is presented through its consequence for Pelleas: Nimue would not allow him to be anywhere he might be in danger, and he therefore lived out his days with her in great rest. The account makes her care a sustained protection, not merely a single intervention.

The same passage names Nimue among the women associated with Arthur’s departure. She is not described as one of the three queens in the boat: those are Morgan le Fay, the queen of Northgalis, and the queen of the Waste Lands. Nimue is separately identified as the chief Lady of the Lake and as Pelleas’s wife, clarifying both her position in the company and the relationship that defines her other appearance in this conclusion.

Protection of Pelleas

The narrative offers no sequence of individual rescues or further explanation of how Nimue kept Pelleas from peril. Instead, it gives a concise account of the result: she would not suffer him to be in a place where his life was in danger, and he reached the end of his days in peace with her. This understated summary makes protective care the defining action attached to her marriage in the closing retrospect.

Arthur’s Departure

After Sir Bedivere sees the sword received by an arm rising from the water, he carries the wounded Arthur to a barge where several ladies are waiting. Three queens receive the king, and he tells Bedivere that he will go to the vale of Avilion to seek healing. Nimue’s presence in the wider company is established only by the later retrospective account, which names her among the women who carried Arthur away; the scene itself does not single her out as one of the three queens who speaks to him.

The ending deliberately withholds certainty. The narrator says no further authorized account of Arthur has been found and reports that the women brought him to burial, while also noting that the hermit could not establish that the body was truly Arthur’s. The tale, the narrator adds, was written down by Sir Bedivere. Within that qualified ending, Nimue is securely part of Arthur’s final departure, but neither her role beyond that nor Arthur’s fate is confirmed.