What is "agravain"

Sir Agravain (sometimes spelled Agravaine) is a Knight of the Round Table in Arthurian Legend. In Chrétien de Troyes, the Vulgate, Post-Vulgate cycles and Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, he is the second eldest son of King Lot of Orkney with Anna/Morgause (Arthur's sister), thus nephew of King Arthur, and brother to Sir Gawain, Gaheris, and Gareth, and half-brother to Mordred.

He is generally portrayed as handsome, and a capable fighter, and participates in a number of adventures early in the Vulgate Cycle, sometimes even doing heroic deeds. In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, where he is called "Agravain of the Hard Hand", he is named in a list of respectable knights; this, combined with his unobjectionable depiction in Chrétien de Troyes' Perceval, suggests his reputation might not have been very negative prior to the Vulgate.

Unlike his heroic brothers Gawain and Gareth, however, Agravain is also known for malice and villainy. In the prose Lancelot of the Vulgate cycle, he is described as taller than Gawain, with a "somewhat misshapen" body, "a fine knight" but "arrogant and full of evil words". In the Post-Vulgate tradition, Agravain participates in the slaying of Sir Lamorak and Sir Dinadan, and in most cyclical Arthurian literature he plays an important role by exposing his aunt Guinevere's affair with Sir Lancelot. Though Gawain, Gareth and Gaheris try to stop them, he and Mordred conspire to catch the adulterers together. In some versions he is killed by the escaping Lancelot, in others he dies defending Guinevere's execution from Lancelot's forces along with Gaheris and Gareth; in either case, it is not his death but those of Gaheris' and Gareth's that inspires Gawain's wrath toward Lancelot, as Gawain had warned Agravain not to spy on Lancelot.