A disrespectful maiden becomes your only friend after you kill the man who kidnapped the other man who killed her first boyfriend.
Sir Kay is taunting you.
Your story has broken off, unfinished.
You successfully defend yourself against accusations of having slept with your lord’s wife. You have, but you find a way to protest your innocence without actually lying, so God helps you murder your completely justified accusers, most of whom are Cornish.
No one at court is impressed by the fact that you were considered a very parfait knight back in Wales.
You are polite to the point of idiocy; your brother is boorish to the point of brutality. Your nephew is emasculatingly thin, and probably a murderer.
Your father is from Troy, somehow.
You had a hunting accident in Ireland and now you can’t remember the name of your fiancée.
You can’t just fight someone once and be done with it, you have to lose them in a river or to an enchanted dwarf halfway through your first fight and then meet again a year later in Brittany to really finish things.
Someone you have just met is dying for absolutely no reason.
You have an incredible amount of homoerotic tension with a beautiful Saracen knight, who converted to the True Faith after your father bested him in single combat in the Crusades with an enchanted sword.
If you put a little dirt on your face and hands, or change your carnelian armor for vermilion armor, you will become completely unrecognizable to the people who have raised you and known you for years.
You, the Emperor of Rome, are for some reason a part of a medieval-style Marian cult.
Sir Kay has just been viciously beaten by a stranger for his impertinence, but somehow still manages to insult you from his sickbed.
You have murdered a magical dog for the crime of making you happy.
Your moment of impatience one Good Friday thirteen years ago is the dead weight preventing you from seeing the Holy Grail today.
If your name is just one word (like Iseult or Igraine or Lunete), you have a decent chance of finding love and/or happiness. If your name includes a modifier (like Elaine the Fair or Iseult of the White Hands), you will die miserably after tricking a man who does not love you into marrying you against his will.
Your mother was a fairy, or dead, or had a magic ring, or French, or a lion some of the time, or something.
You avenge your cousin’s humiliating defeat at the hands of an evil wizard, only to fall irreversibly in love with the evil wizard’s wife, whose name is Belocrane or Esclavarant or something equally ridiculous.
You love winning in battle, but you love even more being bested in battle; immediately upon losing, you embrace your opponent and kiss him gently, praising him to the skies and vowing eternal fidelity. You have a lot of friends.
You are also, somehow, renowned for your prowess in battle. You never bleed; the only time you did, the three drops of blood that fell from your wound arranged themselves in the shape of your wife’s face.
The porter is churlish.
Tags: books, chivalry, Chrétien de Troyes, how to tell what novel you’re in
Belocrane sounds like she might know kung fu
Speaking of ridiculous names, I’m reading The Goblin King, and every name is more ridiculous than the last. And they are excellent.
Oh man, Goblin King names and titles and place names. They would be wonderful if only I could decide on a reliable way to pronounce them all.
I wish the name explanation in the back of that book came first, it makes a lot more sense if you know there is a convention and what that convention is.
Holy Moly, I didn’t know there was an appendix! (I’m reading it on Kindle). THANK YOU
Yeah I read it on Kindle too, got that that part, and went “awww”
Help! I’ve never heard of this book before today. I’ve tried to find it on line, but there appear to be several books with the same title. Who is the author?
Goblin Emperor by Katharine Addison
Thanks!
someone give me examples of this genre
Literally any medieval Authrurian romance. Start with Chrétien de Troyes’ Lancelot.
Chrétien wrote five novels and they are all exactly like this.
Yvain, the Knight of the Lion! Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart! Perceval and the Grail!
After reading Yvain and Perceval, read the Welsh versions, Owein and Peredur, for a comparative laff riot.
“Owein” isn’t really a “laff riot”. It’s a seriously impressive Welsh romance that seems to derive from the same source as Crestien’s “Yvain”, without being a translation from the French. “Peredur” looks bonkers to most modern readers, but varies between scenes of obscure suggestive power (Who was the knight who “distributed the apples”? What can that possibly mean?) and the merely absurd (It was *me* in disguise all the time!). Even so, it’s not so bankrupt an adaptation as the Middle English “Sir Perceval de Galles”, where the author, having (probably correctly) identified the Grail theme as distinctly un-English, jettisons it completely, and throws in a battle with a “sowdane” instead. No wonder Chaucer hated it.
oh my god
Yes, but give Wagner’s Parsifal a miss, because nobody’s life is long enough for that.
A big Dresden Amen to that, with bells on.
Yvain was the best! But I have to say I preferred Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival.
The Medieval Romances in Bulfinch’s Mythology. The Mabinogion has three romances. And of course the works of Chrétien de Troyes.
‘You love winning in battle, but you love even more being bested in battle; immediately upon losing, you embrace your opponent and kiss him gently, praising him to the skies and vowing eternal fidelity. You have a lot of friends.’
The homoeroticism was always the best part of these stories for me, even when i was too young/’sheltered’ to realize what it was.
Your lover walks over a bridge made out of swords without wearing shoes. Upon spying his bleeding feet, you immediately deliver the only sensible response: “Who asked YOU to rescue me? I’M FINE, MY ABDUCTOR IS A GENTLEMAN. unlike some presumptuous knights I know.”
Your mother was a fairy, or dead, or had a magic ring, or French, or a lion some of the time, or something.
well, damn, my cover’s blown now.
You are seduced by a fairy, who is tricking you into a bad deal. Every, every time.
Nobody is allowed to “rest at her fountain” without paying for it one way or another, her husband will be home soon or possibly is home now, there are tests and trials awaiting you in the morning. MAYBE JUST DON’T SLEEP WITH HER, WILL YOU NEVER LEARN?
But he or she is so hot you do not care!
I fully believe in Sir Kay’s ability to insult me across hundreds of years and the atlantic ocean. He’s just that committed to his jackassery.
Goddamnit, Kay, you’re why we can’t have nice things. You and that moment of Good Friday impatience.
The porter is always churlish. It comes with the job. An unchurlish porter doesn’t bear thinking about.
As far as I’m aware, Crestien hasn’t bequeathed us a Tristan: you seem to be alluding to Beroul (or his imitators). Perhaps a better title would be something like “How to Tell if You’re in an Old French Arthurian Romance”?
Apologies for the carping tone. I am immensely fond of The Toast. “Texts from Hieronymous Bosch” is a constant source of joy and comfort to me.
SORT OF BUT NOT REALLY, there’s a bit in the Knight of the Cart that is remarkably similar to a scene in Beroul’s T&I, where Guinevere swears she didn’t sleep with Sir Kay and Lancelot is able to swear on her behalf that she definitely didn’t (because she slept with HIM last night), so that one only SEEMS Beroulish and is in fact Troyen!
I draw your attention to the words “most of whom are Cornish”. Also, murdering your accusers (and loving it!) is 100% Beroul & 0% Crestien.
Cornish people are suspect in ALL of these tales, not just Beroul; you will not win me over, Andrew
However, I can but try. I acknowledge that the Cornish are dodgy propositions in Arthurian romance generally. But the only accuser in The Knight of the Cart is Meleagant, most – nay, all – of whom is not Cornish (Gorre is essentially Somerset in disguise). Meleagant does not accuse Lancelot, nor is his accusation “completely justified” as he leaps to false conclusions on the basis of the evidence of the blood. Nor does Lancelot murder him, but kills him in fair fight. There is a general resemblance between the two stories, but in points of detail your account matches Beroul, not Crestien.
On the other hand, though we don’t have it, we know from the opening of Cliges that Crestien did write something “Del roi Marc et d’Iseut la blonde” – “about King Mark and Iseut the fair” – and there is no evidence that this did not contain everything that was later to appear in Beroul’s poem. Not that I believe this.
Thank you for your patience.
You go mad and wander the forest for awhile.
… until you meet a lady who is prodigal with her ointment.
Bloody Sir Kay. Git.
Inexplicably, a monk appears.
(This might be less de Troyes and just Arthurian mythology in general.)
The monk explains for several pages how everything you’ve experienced in the last 24 hours is a complex allegory of something you’ve known since you were six years old (this is more Vulgate “Queste” than Crestien). For some reason, you refrain from killing the monk.
Monksplaining!
One monk or two?
Am now waiting for Two Monks Explain King Arthur. Pretty please with sprinkles on top.
YES! This would be pure awesomeness.
I perceive by many tokens that Sir Kay is not my friend.
Sir Kay has no friends. But it is a personal choice on his part. It isn’t because no one likes him.
Oh, he is! But he’s that friend. You know the one.
If as a woman, you said yes to any of these, but you enjoy sex without self-recrimination, successfully escape your horrible old-as-your-grandpa husband on your own steam or have your own agenda, you are NOT in a chivalric romance by Chretien de Troyes. You’re in one by Marie de France.
You could be in Crestien’s “Cliges” (though I admit that it’s far from typical).
YES! (I love Marie de France. The Toast needs some Marie de France love.)
I was coming down here to mention good ol’ Marie!
Or you are the Countess of Dia
It’s better not to rescue your lady at all than it is to rescue her while riding a cart.
You are the son of a king, if not a king in your own right. About 1 out of every 5 people you meet is a king, and there are approximately sixty independent kingdoms lying within a day’s walk of your own realm. They’re like frozen yogurt shops.
this has always been my favorite part (in many favorite parts) of chivalric romance. especially because this is pre-motor vehicle. pre-steam. we’re not necessarily traveling the longest distances, i mean
Right? I mean, there’s a considerable amount of farmland necessary to support a king and his castle.
I hope that somewhere, my former Medieval French Literature professor (now retired) is reading this and chuckling. She would totally get a kick out of this.
You could send it to her if you have her email address!
There are not words for how much I love this! I’ve studied Chrétien de Troyes in English and in French. (I can actually read Old French surprisingly well because of this.) I still laugh uncontrollably at parts of ‘Le chevalier de la charrette’. This makes my day.
I am enjoying the fact that a person named Mallory wrote an article on Arthurian Literature.
…and yes, I know Sir Thomas’ name is spelled Malory. Just go with it, folks.
So, Knight of the Cart. Chretien didn’t seem all that enthusiastic about writing it based on how I read his intro, and Lancelot’s trials seem satirically written. Chretien goes out of his way to mention that it was commissioned by his patroness Marie, daughter of Eleanor of Aquitaine (they both being proponents of the concept of Courtly Love). This was the first exploration into the famous Arthur-Guinevere-Lancelot love triangle that would become such an important part of later Arthurian tales. I wonder if Chretien had any idea of the effect it would have…
for a second, thought you’d written they were proponents of the concept of Courtney Love, and spent far too many microseconds trying to figure out a connection
When the “Live Through This” album dropped, it was a major hit at the Plantagenet court…or something. 😉
You have to ride with a angry dwarf in his wagon because you spent 3 horses to death.
The deal is it all began in EOA’s court, but she got thrown in the slammer for 16 years, so went to work stories in her daughter’s court. He didn’t have the heart to finish the Lancelot tome, and he didn’t.
Mark, I just checked out your page and it seems you are quite the expert on Eleanor of Aquitaine, so thanks for posting here!
Anyone familiar with Eleanor would also be very knowledgeable about the Plantagenet court. I was, and still am, fascinated by the great knight William Marshal from that court and era. I can’t prove it, but in my imagination, Chretien had to be familiar with the Marshal and would have had him in mind when writing tales of knighthood.
Anyway, I find all of the persons from that court interesting, and will read more about Eleanor.
Wandering idiots keep watering That Goddamn Fountain to bring storms on your castle. why do you even have that fountain.
You could fight your own battles, but why bother when you have a pet murder-lion that’s also a metaphor?
(Between the shenanigans in Knight of the Lion and those ravens in Dream of Rhonabwy, I consider Yvain a sort of Arthurian Pokemon trainer)
You see some wild goose blood on a field of snow, so you instantly murder a whole army that was passing through.
Has everyone here read the novel-length Les Miserables fanfic where everyone argues about Chretien de Troyes and Romantic literature and makes terrible bilingual puns and like 70% fewer people die than in the original text? I feel like it’s up The Toast’s collective alley.
Please, please post a link!
Here you go!
http://archiveofourown.org/works/609865
Has everyone here read the novel-length Les Miserables fanfic where everyone argues about Chretien de Troyes and Romantic literature and makes terrible bilingual puns and like 70% fewer people die than in the original text? I feel like it's up The Toast's collective alley.
Please, please post a link!
Here you go!
http://archiveofourown.org/works/609865
Don Quijote is totally cosplaying you.