Guanhumara

Guinevere
Matter of Britain character
Guinevere by Henry Justice Ford (c.1910)
First appearance	Historia Regum Britanniae
Created by	Geoffrey of Monmouth
Information
Occupation	Princess, queen
Family	Leodegrance, Gwenhwyfach
Spouse(s)	Arthur
Significant other(s)	Lancelot, Mordred

Guinevere (/ˈɡwɪnɪvɪər/; Welsh: Gwenhwyfar; Breton: Gwenivar), often written as Guenevere or Gwenevere, is, in Arthurian legend, the wife of King Arthur. She first appears as Guanhumara (with many spelling variants in the manuscript tradition) in Geoffrey of Monmouth's pseudo-historical chronicle of British history, the Historia Regum Britanniae, written circa 1136. She is also found in medieval Welsh prose, in the mid-late 12th-century tale Culhwch and Olwen, as Arthur's wife Gwenhwyfar.

In medieval romances, one of the most prominent story arcs is Queen Guinevere's tragic love affair with her husband's chief knight, Lancelot. This story first appeared in Chrétien de Troyes's Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart and became a motif in Arthurian literature, starting with the Lancelot-Grail of the early 13th century and carrying through the Post-Vulgate Cycle and Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur. Guinevere and Lancelot's betrayal of Arthur preceded his eventual defeat at the Battle of Camlann by Mordred.