a squire to Gawain, whose fiery temper he helps moderate during their adventures, prior to being knighted himself. Gaheris later marries the haughty damsel Lynette, a sister of his younger brother Gareth's wife Lyonors. The Lancelot and the Mort Artu (Death of Arthur) sections of the Lancelot-Grail cycle differ in their characterisation of Gaheris in relation to Gawain. In the Lancelot, their youngest full brother Gareth is Gawain's most cherished sibling. In the Mort Artu, it is instead Gaheris and his death anguishes Gawain profoundly. In the Post-Vulgate tradition (including Malory's telling), Gaheris takes part in the revenge killing of King Pellinore, the slayer of King Lot. More notorious is his beheading of his own mother Queen Morgause after catching her in flagrante delicto with Lamorak, Pellinore's handsome son and one of the greatest knights of Arthur. Lamorak is allowed to escape but is later hunted down alone by Gaheris with three of the other Orkney brothers (except Gareth), who believe Lamorak was the one who killed their mother. They ambush and fight him together, the act that is deemed cowardly and a blot on their honour, until his young half-brother Mordred stabs him in the back. When Arthur discovers that Gaheris is Morgause's real murderer, he is banished from the high king's court. Gaheris is then about to be beheaded in revenge for their mother's death by Mordred and Agravain, but Gareth convinces Gawain to order them to stop. Following his exile, Gaheris re-appears on the Grail Quest as a companion of Perceval after being rescued by Palamedes from captivity. In the Prose Tristan, Gaheris is a friend of the eponymous protagonist Tristan, supporting him against the evil King Mark and forcing Mark to rescind Tristan's own banishment from Cornwall. The narrative of Tristan has Gaheris as a far better knight than Gawain who here is villainized. Its Belarusian version features him as Arthur's own son (rather than a nephew) by the name Garnot. In Malory's telling, however, Gaheris hates Tristan for being favoured by Arthur and is his sworn enemy. When Gaheris and Agravain meet and attack Tristan, the Cornish knight calls them and Gawain "the greatest destroyers and murderers of good knights" in the realm before fighting them off. His death during Lancelot's rescue of Queen Guinevere from being burned at the stake is related in the Mort Artu, the final volume of the Vulgate and Post-Vulgate