Too bad that he's French.
Lancelot does have roots in the oral traditions, true, but the modern version originated in France. The whole King Arthur concept was born in the fifth and sixth centuries as sort of a Briton equivalent to Jason and the Argonauts, but it wasn't until the early 1100's that the modern vision of King Arthur began to appear, with Merlin, Gawain, Excalibur, and so on and so forth. By the end of the twelfth century, French authors had made even more changes. King Arthur went from a ferocious warrior to a man who is bland at best and weak at worst. He was shunted aside to make way for entirely new characters, foreign to the original Arthurian tale, and by new characters, I mean Lancelot.
The addition of Lancelot didn't help many established characters. Sir Gawain was no longer the greatest knight of the Round Table and Sir Kay was reduced to a bumbling moron (Do you remember Arthur's older brother Kay in The Sword in the Stone? That is supposed to be the same Kay who was worth a hundred men and could only be slain by God. Blame Lancelot). This in and of itself isn't so bad; after all all myths have been reinterpreted on a generational basis. However, the fact that a foreign culture was able to drastically alter what is Britain's greatest myth without the British saying anything is nothing short of mind boggling.
There is some justification to this; following the Anglo-Saxon invasion, a good number of people fled across the channel, leading to inevitable cultural exchange. All the same, the British have been saddled with Lancelot, a latecomer of French origin, as a primary hero of their cultural epic. The only clear answer to this issue is for them to take Lancelot back and make him theirs in the only way they know how.
Oh wait.
Monty Python saves the day again. John Cleese's Lancelot will always be the definitive version for me. Cleese should be knighted, he clearly has what it takes*.
Perhaps not.
*But seriously though. If a kilt-clad separatist like Sean Connery can be a knight, anybody can.
