<P> Having composed Lanval around 1170 - 1215, Marie wrote near the time of the Third Lateran Council 1179, which prescribed excommunication for those guilty of sodomy . This was following a tradition derived from a misreading of the Bible that the innocent in Sodom and Gomorah were killed as well as the guilty for homosexuality, although it states that God only slew the wicked . Thus, homosexuality became a sin not just against oneself, as with other sexual sin, but an endangerment to everyone near the person . In France Rouen 1214 it was punishable by hanging . The only way to prove sexuality was to have open mistresses, and so abstinence or not condemning the sin led to imagined guilt . Lanval, by saying that he did not want to betray the king implied that the queen was behaving traitorously . By declaring him an homosexual, Guinevere reflected that charge back on him because everyone was endangered by that sin, according to common belief . </P> <P> Lanval's economic situation at the beginning of the Lai also has basis in history . Lanval is depicted as a knight that experiences personal alienation in reflection of the actual alienation of twelfth century lower nobility that primarily consisted of younger, unmarried sons . During the crisis of aristocracy, caused by the reconstitution of monarchy and through the rise of the urban bourgeoisie, the bacheliers or jeunes found themselves in a position of being without land or in the need to sell that which they did own in order to pay off their debts . Lanval is poor not just because of neglect but also because he has spent all that he has inherited . His condition reflects both a class and generation whose dispossession is the result of a matrimonial model that works against the interest of women and younger sons . Under which if the eldest son survived to the age of marriage and reproduction, the younger siblings were left to wander far from home, much like depicted within the opening lines of Lanval . His wandering into the countryside and encounter with the fairy mistress represent the dream of possession . She serves as a foil to reality, while he is exiled, she has left her own country to find him and while he is neglected by Arthur, she holds him above all other knights . Most importantly while Lanval is poor, she is rich beyond measure . Lanval can be read as a sort of parody of the numerous damsel in distress tales in which a valiant knight rescues a maiden . As within Lanval it is the fairy mistress saving the valiant knight from distress instead . She is the literary incarnation of a fantasized solution to class issues which persisted in actual history during the twelfth century for young knights . </P> <P> Lanval, a knight in King Arthur's court, envied for "his valor, his generosity, his beauty, his prowess", is forgotten from being invited to a banquet where the King distributed rewards, and falls into penury . Lanval rode out to a meadow one day and lay down by a stream . Two women appear and direct him to a tent to see their lady, who is in love with him . Lanval is immediately struck by the lady's beauty (who is never mentioned by name) and they become lovers . She blesses him that, "the more richly he spends, the more gold and silver he will have," and that she will come when he wants her, but only on the condition that he does not tell anyone else of her . </P> <P> Lanval goes home and gives gifts, and they continue to meet . After a while he is invited to join the knights by Gawain . The Queen (Guinevere) makes advances to Lanval, which he rebuffs, and the Queen accuses him of homosexuality . He protests by saying he has a mistress, even whose handmaidens more beautiful than the queen, thus breaking his oath of secrecy to the fairy mistress, and defaming the queen at the same time . </P>

The lady whom lanval meets in the meadow warns him that he will never see her again if