the only time within the cyclic prose romances when he shows compassion. When Gawain refuses to listen and beheads Palamedes anyway, Agravain says he is grieved because Palamedes was such a good knight and, more practically, because this deed will be hard to conceal. In the Prose Tristan, after the end of the Grail Quest, Agravain and Mordred, who both hate Dinadan, see him coming wounded outside Camelot and decide it as a good time to take vengeance, as Arthur's court believes that Dinadan is still in Cornwall. Dinadan manages to fight them off, but they return to attack him again within the sight of Camelot. Dinadan is now too weak to stand up to both of them and so Mordred quickly knocks him from his horse and Agravain finishes him off. Lying, they later claim the dying Dinadan was mistaken in blaming them for the attack and it must have been some other knights who murdered him. In Malory's telling, Agravain also insists on fighting Tristan together with Gaheris. In this combat, Tristan severely wounds Agravain and calls the Orkney brothers (sans Gareth) the most notorious murderers of good knights in Arthur's realm. Death In the Vulgate Cycle and in works based on it, Agravain is one of the knights who realises that Lancelot and Queen Guinevere are secret lovers (in the Vulgate, he and his brothers are told of that by their aunt, Morgan). His envy and hatred of Lancelot lead him to believe that they should tell King Arthur about this. When Arthur happens to wander into the argument, he demands to know what it is that he should not be told about. Agravain tells Arthur about Lancelot and Guinevere; a plot is hatched according to which Arthur will go hunting all night without taking Lancelot. Agravain, with Mordred and a group of knights, will keep watch on the king's wife in order to entrap Lancelot when he comes to her and so prove the accusation. This results in Agravain's death, but the details vary depending on the telling. In the English poem Stanzaic Morte Arthur and in Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, the trapped Lancelot attacks the knights who have lain in wait and kills almost all of them, including Agravain. In the Vulgate Mort Artu, however, Lancelot only kills one knight (Tanaguins) and the rest, in fear, refuse to attack Lancelot. Agravain is then among the