Lady of the Lake Coloring Pages
The Lady of the Lake lives in the water, not beside it. She's the mysterious enchantress of Arthurian legend who hands Arthur his sword, raises a famous knight as her own, and gets the better of Merlin himself, all without ever quite stepping fully into the story's light.
Who Is the Lady of the Lake?
She's not quite a goddess and not quite human... a Celtic water spirit who rules her own enchanted realm beneath the lake.
In most versions of the story she raises the knight Lancelot after his father's death, which is why he's sometimes called "Lancelot of the Lake." She also traps Merlin, using a bit of his own magic against him, after growing tired of his attention.
Lady of the Lake and Excalibur
When Arthur's first sword breaks in battle, it's the Lady of the Lake who gives him a replacement, an arm rising out of the water holding Excalibur by the blade. Years later, when Arthur is dying, he has the sword thrown back into the lake, and her arm rises once more to catch it...
The Boat to Avalon
The Lady of the Lake didn't only catch the sword at the end. In some versions she was one of the queens in the little boat that came across the water for the wounded king, to carry him to Avalon, the island of apples. Nobody in the story ever sees him come back, which is why some say he's still there, waiting.
Fairy tale castle and house coloring pages
Nimue
You'll see the Lady of the Lake called several different names, Nimue, Viviane, Nyneve, and that's because her legend was written down by many different authors over hundreds of years, each spelling and retelling it their own way. They're all the same character wearing different names, the way a story changes slightly every time it gets passed down.
Nimue is the name storytellers tend to use when they want a sorceress. She learns her magic from Merlin himself, then uses it to seal him away.
Viviane
Viviane is the motherly side of the Lady. She raises young Lancelot beneath the lake after his father dies, then sends him off to Arthur's court once he's grown.
She's also the name she goes by most often in French versions of the legend, where she's sometimes given an entire backstory of her own, including a romance with Merlin that doesn't end well for him.
None of this is set in stone. These are stories, and every teller shapes the Lady a little differently, so you'll find a gentle Nimue and a scheming Viviane out there too.
Nyneve
Nyneve is the spelling Sir Thomas Malory used in Le Morte d'Arthur, one of the most famous retellings of the whole legend, so you'll often see it in English translations.
The Lady's Lake
The medieval writers (Geoffrey of Monmouth, Thomas Malory) who wrote the legend down never actually named it, so it’s just “the lake” in the original stories. Over the centuries people have tried to pin it to a real place and a few sites in Britain claim the title
