The Lancelot-Grail, also known as the Vulgate Cycle or the Pseudo-Map Cycle, is an early 13th-century French Arthurian literary cycle consisting of interconnected prose episodes of chivalric romance in Old French. The cycle of unknown authorship, presenting itself as a chronicle of actual events, retells the legend of King Arthur by focusing on the love affair between Lancelot and Guinevere as well as the religious quest for the Holy Grail, expanding on the works of Robert de Boron and Chrétien de Troyes. There is no unity of place, but most of the episodes take place in Arthur's kingdom of Logres. One of the main characters is Arthur himself, around whom gravitates a host of other heroes, many of whom are Knights of the Round Table. Among them is the famed Lancelot, whose chivalric tale is centered around his illicit romance with Arthur's wife, Queen Guinevere. However, the cycle also tells of adventures of a more spiritual type; those involve the Holy Grail, the vessel that contained the blood of Christ, for which many of the members of the Round Table are searching, with Lancelot's son Galahad ultimately emerging as the winner of this sacred contest. Other major narratives include the life of Merlin and the stories of rise and fall of Arthur. After its completion around 1230–1235, the Lancelot–Grail was soon followed by its major rewrite known as the Post-Vulgate Cycle. Together, the two cycles, with their multiple variants and abundance of characters, represent a major source of the Arthurian legend as they constituted a highly influential and most widespread form of Arthurian romance literature during their time and also contributed the most to the later English compilation Le Morte d'Arthur that formed the basis for Arthuriana's modern canon. Composition and authorship The Vulgate Cycle emphasizes Christian themes in the legend of King Arthur, in particular in the story of the Holy Grail. Like Robert de Boron's original poem Merlin (c. 1195–1210), the cycle states that its first parts are derived from the Livre du Graal ("The Book of the Grail"), described as a text dictated by Merlin himself to his confessor in the early years of Arthur's reign. Next, following the demise of Merlin, the supposed original (fictitious) authors of the later parts of the cycle are named (in one of several spelling variants) as Arodiens de Cologne (Arodian of Cologne), Tantalides de Vergeaus (Tantalides of Vercelli), Thumas de