So, I’m a bit of a fan of the King Arthur mythos. My mother was, and I loved sharing that with her. I’ve read Mallory, Mary Stewart, White, Marion Zimmer Bradley, and more. I have a freaking quilt with Arthurian shields, advice for which my mother and I wrote away to the Queen’s Herald in London.
So, you can imagine my joy when I found Sapphic books with Arthurian ties. Fortunately, some of them are pretty good! None of them are purely romances, they all have much ado about the Arthurian plots: the doomed love triangle, the Grail, or the whatever the hell is going over in the crystal cave. So at best the wlw relationships in the books are prominent, but not central. You should come for the Arthuriana, and stay for the wlw rep.
I’ve included a breakout list from my Sapphic Reads database below, of the Arthurian books, but here are some capsule reviews of a few of them.
Spear, by Nicola Griffith
Easily my favorite, and a book I own. It’s short, and is a Sapphic retelling of the story of Percival. Griffith is a historian (she’s more famous for her book, Hild, than for this), and it shows in the careful historical details she uses to ground the story amidst all the magic and ill-fated lives. So very worth it, imho.
Once & Future, and Sword in the Stars, by A.R. Capetta and Cory McCarthy
These two books, a science fiction duology, take a space/future setting and slap it into a world where the Arthurian myths are real, giving us yet another reincarnation tale where you’re not quite sure at first who is Arthur, who is Gwen, who is Lancelot, etc. But they do it so well, and it is so very queer, and delightfully so. The first book was good (especially if you’re a fan of the genre), but the second book was better. The stakes are higher, you love the characters more, and the writing just can of disappears behind the story. The acknowledgments made me cry.
Gwen & Art Are Not In Love, by Lex Croucher
A new entry (2023), this is very much the most romcom of the books in the genre. It cleverly sidesteps the fated doom of the central characters by imagining a post-Arthurian world where they did once exist, and England is held together by a reverence for those old historical figures, children are named Arthur and Gwenivere, and there’s no magic. It is humorous, and Lancelot is, of course, a girl who Gwen falls for (thankfully neither have any interest in Art), and there is some derring-do but it’s in service of romcom tropes (specifically there’s some fake dating involved). It’s not a great book, but if you’re going for a romantic/comedic take, this is the one to read.
Camelot Rising (series), by Kiersten White
These are a series of three books where I loved the first one, then liked the second, then was upset by the third. I have to admit this is because I am very, completely, extremely biased towards the wlw relationships (Lancelot, in this book, is a woman), and White hewed more closely to the love triangle than I wanted. But I did love the first book, and you may not be as biased as I am, so you may like all three.
Mobile caveat: To see the table below best, use a desktop or tablet browser, or tell your phone browser to request the desktop version of the site (e.g., via the aA button in Safari on an iPhone). Sorry the mobile version sucks.
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