Bedivere is best known as one of King Arthur's most devoted knights—arguably *the* most devoted, given that he stuck by her side longer than nearly anyone else. He eventually rose to become one of her Imperial Guards, a position that let him stay close to her, though he's admitted his real motivation was simpler than duty: he just wanted to be near her and catch glimpses of who she really was beneath the crown.
It's one of those tragic details fans often bring up: despite spending more time around Arturia than practically any other knight, Bedivere never once saw her smile. He also never figured out she was a woman, which speaks to how carefully she guarded herself. That distance between them—even at their closest—seems to have haunted him.
When it came time for her to die, Bedivere was there. Arthur had ordered him to return Excalibur to the Lady of the Lake, a task meant to mark the official end of her reign. But he couldn't do it. Twice he tried, and twice he backed away from the water's edge. It's a striking moment of defiance from someone who believed disobeying orders was the ultimate betrayal of knighthood. He couldn't accept that returning the sword meant accepting her death—that she'd worked herself to exhaustion and still wouldn't get the peace she deserved. But in the end, knowing he couldn't change what was coming, he made the final journey and let the sword go.
What gets people about his story is the ending: watching Arturia finally rest, truly sleep, in a way she never could have managed in life. For Bedivere, that peace seemed worth the grief.
Content compiled by AnimeList.moe from publicly available sources.
