Astolat
Arthurian place in Le Morte d'Arthur, home of the Fair Maiden whose doomed love for Launcelot is a defining episode.
Astolat is a place in the British Arthurian tradition, attested across four chapters of Le Morte d'Arthur. It is best known as the home of the Fair Maiden of Astolat, whose doomed love for Sir Launcelot forms one of the most poignant episodes in Malory's narrative. The maiden first appears when Launcelot rides to Astolat and receives a sleeve to wear upon his helm at her request (Le Morte d'Arthur, Book XVIII, Chapter IX). Her devotion endures through Launcelot's wounding and recovery, as she declares him "the man in the world that I first loved, and truly he shall be last that ever I shall love" (Le Morte d'Arthur, Book XVIII, Chapter XIII).
The story reaches its conclusion when the maiden's corpse arrives before King Arthur, bearing a letter in which she identifies herself: "I was your lover, that men called the Fair Maiden of Astolat; therefore unto all ladies I make my moan, yet pray for my soul and bury me at least, and offer ye my mass-penny: this is my last request" (Le Morte d'Arthur, Book XVIII, Chapter XX).
All four attestations come from Le Morte d'Arthur, Book XVIII, tracing the arc of the Maiden's story. The narrative moves from Launcelot's arrival at Astolat, through Sir Gawaine's lodging with the lord of Astolat and his discovery that it was Launcelot who bore the red sleeve (Le Morte d'Arthur, Book XVIII, Chapter XIV), to the maiden's death and the arrival of her body at court. Malory uses Astolat as a fixed point of ordinary domestic life against which Launcelot's restless chivalric existence is measured -- the maiden's constancy set against the knight's inability to return her devotion.
Appears in: Places, Entities in Le Morte d'Arthur, British Tradition