The quest for the holy grail, the story of Merlin, the adventures of King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table, the love affair of Lancelot and Queen Guenevere - these are familiar stories that have their first sustained development in the early thirteenth-century Old French Vulgate cycle, also known as the Lancelot-Grail cycle or the Pseudo-Map cycle. The Vulgate is a compilation of five prose romances composed between 1220 and 1240. Together the five texts recount a story that unfolds across generations, but the texts were not composed in chronological sequence. The oldest part of the compilation and its central text is the Lancelot en prose, also known as the Lancelot Proper, which recounts the story of Lancelot’s birth and education by the Lady of the Lake, his arrival at King Arthur’s court, his early feats of chivalry, then his love affair with Guenevere, his many adventures and those of Arthur’s other knights. The Lancelot comprises roughly half of the Vulgate and it is the centre around which the cycle grew. In the decade and a half following its composition, four other narratives were added to the Lancelot: La Queste del saint graal continues the story of Arthur’s knights in the quest for the grail and La Mort le roi Artu recounts the destruction of Arthur’s kingdom after the grail quest. Each romance refers back to events narrated in the Lancelot, but each is also a complete, independent romance. Two romances were also added to the beginning of the Lancelot to recount the early history of the grail (L'Estoire del saint graal) and the early history of Arthur’s kingdom (L'Estoire de Merlin); these two texts contain prophecies or references to events recounted in the stories that follow chronologically, but they too may stand alone as independent narratives.