If swords and words are alike, then William Morris surely armed Guinevere for her trial with his poem The Defence of Guenevere, giving her a voice - here embodied by the blade held on her heart- painted after the one Morris designed for the Oxford Union murals. She’s surrounded by a mille-fleurs, reminiscent of the famous Unicorn in Captivity tapestry said to represent the beloved tamed willingly by love under a pomegranate tree. The lost unicorn is also an allusion to the etymology of Gwenhwyfar (white or fair in Welch), whereas the depiction of the nimbus plays on the iconography of saints as an oxymoron to the adulterous woman she is often hastily cast as. In this painting, the halo is here to shine a more nuanced light on the character Malory defined as "a true lover".