Yvain, or the Knight With the Lion

Heir to Duke Laudunet and recently widowed, Laudine presides over Landuc Castle without a champion to protect its vital resources, especially the magical fountain of the Brocéliande Forest. While mourning the death of her beloved husband Esclados, Laudine finds that her best hope is the very man who killed him, Yvain. Tortured by conflicting emotions, Laudine resolves them by falling deeply in love with Yvain. When he breaks a promise to return within a year from his knightly adventures, her emotions shift from anxiety about him to a burning rage against him. Only when her lady in waiting Lunete forces her to see that Yvain has reformed does Laudine, with great effort, accept him once again.

Lunete, Laudine’s lady in waiting and closest confidante, risks her life to bring Laudine and Yvain together. Along with King Arthur, Lunete is perhaps the wisest person in the poem. Despite dangers and disappointments, her character doesn’t change, and she retains her good qualities: “A charming and most clever brunette, / With wisdom, kindness and courtesy” (82). 

Wise and stately King Arthur leads a band of knights that includes Yvain, Gawain, Calogrenant, and Kay. Arthur sits at the center of a series of tales by De Troyes and others that, over the centuries, have enlarged the myths of Camelot and the Knights of the Round Table. Arthur displays great wisdom and solid good sense; he gets on well with Laudine, with whom he might have contended for control of the fountain; he sees through the elder sister’s lies and decides her case in favor of her younger sibling, doing so in such a way that all leave reasonably satisfied. In the poem’s structure, Arthur’s job is to make a few entrances and a few important decisions—in short, to make a cameo appearance—which helps plant Yvain firmly in the field of Arthurian legends. 

Powerful and much beloved, and always generous, kind, and good-spirited, Sir Gawain, nephew of the king, figures prominently in the Arthurian tales. In the present story, he is the second most-prominent knight: He falls in love with Lunete, talks Yvain into joining him on the jousting circuit, absents himself to search for Arthur’s missing wife, and fights a blistering battle against Yvain as they champion opposite parties in a property dispute, not realizing that his opponent is his dear friend: “If I had known that it was you / I would never have fought with you” (207). Gawain is honorable to a fault and would die for Yvain, as Yvain would do for him. Gawain is the main link between Yvain and Arthur’s court; his purpose in the poem is to draw Yvain unwittingly into a position where the hero can make the terrible mistake that drives the rest of the story. 

Yvain encounters a lion caught in the jaws of a fire-breathing dragon, takes pity on the beast, and kills the dragon to save it. In return, the lion becomes Yvain’s faithful companion, rising always to aid him in battle. The lion is Yvain’s special weapon, the force that helps decide outcomes in Yvain’s favor that might otherwise end badly. Through shared adventures, they grow so close that Yvain declares “we are one, / And each a true companion” (213). The lion symbolizes Yvain’s own fierceness and loyalty.

In the poem, the knight Kay serves as a foil. Though highly accomplished in battle, Kay delights in using his acid wit to ridicule others, especially Yvain. This habit wins him scorn from the queen, who declares “[…] you are so full of spleen / You would burst if you could not / Pour out the venom that is your lot. / You’re a tiresome rascal, that I know, / To scorn all your companions so” (9). Kay gets his comeuppance when King Arthur and his men visit the magic fountain of Brocéliande and Kay takes the first joust against its protector, who soundly defeats him and, to the delight of the other knights, reveals himself to be Yvain. Kay later becomes the queen’s majordomo, but on his watch she betrays Arthur with the knight Lancelot. Kay, then, is less a bad man than an arrogantly incompetent one.