In the chronicles the whole position is different: they shall speak for themselves. This is Wace's account:
'Que Mordret fist en Engleterre
La roine sot et oï,
A Evroïc ert à sejor,
En pensé fu et en tristor.
Membra lui de la vilenie
Que por Mordret se fu honie;
Le roi avoit deshonoré
Et son neveu Mordret amé,
Contre loi l'avoit esposée,
S'in estoit honie et dampnée;
Mius vausist morte estre que vive,
Mult en estoit morne et pensive.
A Karlion s'en est fuie,
S'in entra en une abaïe,
Iloc devint none velée;
Tote sa vie i fu celée.
Ne fu oïe, ne véue,
Ne fu trovée, ne séue.
Por la vergogne del mesfait
Et del pécié qu'ele avoit fait.'—Brut, ii. ll. 13607-30.
In the corresponding passage, Geoffrey of Monmouth gives as his authorities 'Breton' tradition and the clerk Walter of Oxford (cf. note to above passage). Layamon in his account is even more severe towards the guilty pair:
'Arður bi-tahte
al þat he ahte.
Moddrade and þere quene
þat heom was iquene.
þat was ufele idon
þat heo iboren weoren.
þis lond heo for-radden
mid ræuðen uniuoƺen.
and a þan ænden heom seolven
þe wurse gon iscenden.
þat heo þer for-leoseden
lif and heore saulen.
and ædder seoððe laðen
nauer ælche londe.
þat nauer na mā nalde.
sel bede beoden for heore saule.'
Brut, Layamon, Madden's ed., ll. 25500-14.[118]
In the passage corresponding to that quoted above from Wace, Layamon adds the detail, that none knew the manner of the queen's death, whether she had drowned herself:
'nuste hit mon to soðe.
whaðer heo weore on deðe
(and ou ƺeo hinne ende)[119]
þa heo seolf weore
isunken in þe watere.'—ll. 28481-85.
From these passages it is abundantly clear that Guinevere was no victim of treachery, but a willing sinner; and that the tradition of her infidelity to her husband existed prior to the formation of the Arthurian romantic cycle.