Paula Lafferty’s debut novel The Once and Future Queen arrives like a lightning strike to the Arthurian legend canon, illuminating corners of Guinevere’s story that have languished in shadow for centuries. This is not your grandmother’s Camelot, nor is it the tale of a faithless queen destined for scandal. Instead, Lafferty crafts something far more intricate: a timeslip romance that interrogates the very nature of identity, agency, and what we’re willing to sacrifice when history demands everything from us.
The Once and Future Queen opens in contemporary Glastonbury, where twenty-two-year-old Vera exists in a peculiar state of invisibility. She waits tables, mourns her lost relationship with Vincent, and runs up the Tor each morning as though she might outpace her grief. When a mysterious man in Victorian attire appears at her workplace claiming she was once Queen Guinevere—and that her locked memories hold the key to saving both past and present—Vera’s ordinary life shatters into extraordinary possibility. Through a portal in Glastonbury’s historic center, she’s thrust into seventh-century Camelot, where magic is dying, her supposed husband refuses to meet her eyes, and she must somehow remember a life she never consciously lived.
The Architecture of Memory and Loss
Lafferty demonstrates considerable skill in handling the novel’s most challenging element: the mechanics of memory and identity. Vera isn’t simply Guinevere reborn; she’s Guinevere’s essence reset to infancy, raised in the twenty-first century with no recollection of her original life. This complex setup allows Lafferty to explore profound questions about what makes us who we are. When memories are stripped away, when the face of someone you loved dissolves from your mind’s eye, what remains? The novel’s most harrowing scenes involve magical procedures designed to unlock Vera’s memories—procedures that exact a terrible price, erasing her cherished memories of Vincent even as they reach for Guinevere’s buried past.
These sequences reveal both the book’s greatest strength and occasional weakness. Lafferty writes trauma with unflinching honesty, never shying from the psychological toll of Vera’s situation. Yet the magical memory mechanics can feel murky, leaving readers occasionally uncertain about the rules governing what can be remembered, forgotten, or transferred. When Merlin manipulates Vera’s memories without full consent, using potions to manufacture attraction between her and Arthur, the narrative raises uncomfortable questions about agency that it doesn’t always fully explore.
Arthur Pendragon: The King Who Carries Ghosts
The portrayal of Arthur represents one of Lafferty’s most successful subversions of legend. This is not the noble, shining king of folklore, but a man haunted by catastrophic failure. Before Vera, there were two other iterations of Guinevere, both of whom died under his watch. His initial coldness toward Vera stems not from cruelty but from profound guilt and fear—he believes his very presence might destroy her as it did the others. Arthur’s gradual thawing, his quiet acts of care (placing books by her bedside, adjusting the magical lighting while she sleeps, defending her fiercely in council), builds a romance rooted in small, deliberate gestures rather than grand declarations.
The relationship develops with careful authenticity once the initial magical interference fades. Lafferty gives Arthur and Vera space to find genuine connection through shared vulnerability—reading The Hobbit aloud becomes their private language, and Arthur’s recognition that Vera doesn’t need protecting (unlike his assumption) marks a turning point in both the romance and the character dynamics. However, the shadow of the attraction potions lingers uncomfortably throughout, forcing both characters to question whether their feelings are genuine or manufactured by magic. This ambiguity adds complexity but may frustrate readers seeking clear-cut romantic reassurance.
Lancelot Without Scandal: A Friendship Reimagined
Perhaps the novel’s most radical revision involves Lancelot. In Lafferty’s hands, he becomes Vera’s best friend and running partner—a relationship built on early morning jogs, playful banter, and unconditional support. There is no illicit romance, no betrayal, no affair. Instead, Lancelot serves as Vera’s anchor in a bewildering world, someone who sees her clearly and values her presence. Their friendship scenes crackle with natural chemistry and humor, providing necessary lightness amid the novel’s heavier emotional beats.
Yet this reimagining cuts both ways. While refreshing to see Guinevere and Lancelot’s relationship freed from the burden of adultery, some readers may miss the classic tragic triangle. Lancelot’s role, while beautifully rendered, occasionally feels like it’s serving the plot’s need for a confidant rather than emerging from his own fully realized character arc. His protectiveness sometimes borders on possessive, and his own traumas and motivations remain somewhat shadowy by the novel’s end.
The Texture of Time and Place
Lafferty excels at grounding her seventh-century Camelot in sensory detail without overwhelming the narrative. The magical abbey at Glastonbury that history will forget, the torch-lit festivals, the weight of armor during jousting practice—these elements create atmosphere without becoming travelogue. The author’s choice to set the story in the seventh century rather than the traditional medieval period adds freshness, though some purists may quibble with historical accuracy.
The modern-past juxtaposition works particularly well when Vera smuggles contemporary items into the past: her running trainers become both practical footwear and a talisman of her other life, while her sports bras serve as small acts of rebellion against seventh-century undergarments. These details ground the fantastical premise in relatable specificity.
Magic, Mages, and Moral Ambiguity
The novel’s magical system revolves around gifted individuals and a council of mages who have, unknowingly, depleted magic by hoarding powers. This ecological approach to magic—treat it as a finite resource—offers intriguing possibilities, though the mechanics of how gifts work and can be transferred remain somewhat vague. Gawain emerges as an unexpectedly compelling character, a young mage whose clinical precision masks deep loyalty. His evolution from apparent antagonist to ally provides one of the book’s more satisfying arcs.
Merlin, however, proves the most morally complex figure. Lafferty portrays him neither as pure villain nor benevolent mentor but as someone whose love for the kingdom supersedes individual welfare. His willingness to traumatize Vera through memory procedures, to manipulate her emotions with potions, and to essentially sacrifice her for the greater good creates genuine ethical tension. The narrative grapples with whether such choices can ever be justified, even when kingdoms hang in the balance.
Pacing and Structure: Strengths and Stumbles
The Once and Future Queen moves with propulsive energy through its first half, as Vera navigates her bewildering new reality and the reader discovers Camelot alongside her. The middle section occasionally loses momentum during court intrigue and repeated discussions of memory procedures, though Lafferty’s character work prevents these sections from stagnating entirely. The final third accelerates dramatically as revelations about Viviane’s curse, Mordred’s threat, and the true nature of the magical crisis cascade toward a cliffhanger ending that will leave readers anxiously awaiting the trilogy’s second installment.
As a series opener, The Once and Future Queen succeeds in establishing stakes and deepening mysteries, but this also means numerous threads remain frustratingly unresolved. Readers seeking complete closure will need to adjust expectations, though Lafferty provides enough emotional resolution in Arthur and Vera’s relationship to satisfy the romantic arc even as the larger plot questions linger.
The Weight of Choice
At its heart, The Once and Future Queen interrogates what we owe to history, to duty, and to ourselves. Vera repeatedly faces impossible choices: undergo traumatic memory procedures or let a kingdom fall; return to her dying father in the present or fulfill her role in the past; trust her genuine feelings or dismiss them as magical manipulation. Lafferty refuses easy answers, allowing Vera’s struggles to resonate with contemporary questions about bodily autonomy, informed consent, and the pressure to sacrifice personal happiness for greater good.
The feminist underpinnings shine through without becoming didactic. Guinevere is not punished for a affair she never had; instead, she’s revealed as victim of manipulation by the sorceress Viviane. This reframing transforms her from legend’s adulteress to someone whose agency was stripped away—a powerful revision that speaks to how history often misremembers women.
For Readers Who Crave
The Once and Future Queen will particularly appeal to readers who enjoyed:
- The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab (themes of being forgotten, magical bargains)
- The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow (feminist reclamation of legend)
- Outlander by Diana Gabaldon (time travel romance with historical detail)
- Nimona by Noelle Stevenson (fresh takes on Arthurian figures)
- The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon (epic fantasy with LGBTQ+ themes and complex magic)
Final Thoughts: A Kingdom Worth Saving
The Once and Future Queen announces Paula Lafferty as a talent to watch, delivering a debut that balances emotional depth with imaginative worldbuilding. While not without its rough edges—pacing hiccups, occasionally murky magic rules, and the discomfort of the potion plotline—the novel succeeds in its most important mission: making us care deeply about these characters and their seemingly impossible choices. Lafferty writes grief and longing with particular poignancy, and her willingness to let her heroine struggle, fail, and find her own strength creates a protagonist worth following through multiple volumes.
This is Camelot reimagined for an era that questions authority, demands consent, and recognizes that the women history branded as villains often tell more complex stories than legend allows. Whether Vera can save magic, reclaim her memories, and forge her own path remains to be seen, but Lafferty ensures we’ll be eagerly turning pages to find out.