Yvain the Knight of the Lion by Chretien de Troyes is fundamentally a debate about divided loyalty. Yvain is a knight of the Round Table, sworn to the service of King Arthur, but he is also the husband of Laudine, a semi-magical figure whose kingdom Yvain has pledged to protect. His story takes him into numerous situations where his loyalty is tested and the decisions he makes will define his character as a knight.
King Arthur’s court and Laudine’s domain are the two great contrasts in Yvain’s life, and his entire story is a quest to learn how to integrate the two. The narrative is extremely episodic, consisting of many quite similar adventures in each of which the hero is faced with a dilemma in which he must chose the correct chivalric course of action. To a reader today, Yvain’s adventures may seem quite repetitive, but when one considers that this story was meant to be read or performed aloud, probably in several segments considering its length, it seems clear that each of Yvain’s dilemmas would have been debated among Chretien’s aristocratic audience at court. What is he going to do next, will he do the right thing, what is the right thing in this situation, what would a true knight do, how will he decide? “Chretien’s contemporaries speak of him in ways that make it obvious they took delight in his talents as a storyteller. We can imagine them listening to his works being read aloud.” (225) Chretien designs each of Yvain’s adventures as a test through which the hero proves his valor, redeems his character and gradually attains a higher consciousness of chivalry. The ultimate question is whether he will be able to choose between his loyalty to the Round Table or to Laudine, or whether there is some way for him to have both and still be true to his ideals. Yvain fails miserably in his first major test of loyalty. His first adventure,
