so don’t get me wrong because a lot of arthurian stuff is super misogynistic. but it’s never really in the damsel in distress way you expect. like the most helpless damsel is lancelot trapped and crying in a tower, completely useless, until this random girl who made him behead a guy in front of her fifty pages ago rolls up with a pickax and rope and is like “ok I’m minecrafting you out of here.” and this works.
Another direction you’ll see this go is, like… okay, so in Arthurian texts, violence is very much The Province of Men. But women often want violence done for one reason or another, so they’re out there asking knights to fight such-and-such for them & the knights are of course honor-bound to accept under certain conditions, which by genre convention are easy to engineer.
All of this means that one of the standard female roles in Arthurian romance is “quest-giver”. And in some texts, this can drift from “these are damsels in distress and the knights must help them in various ways” to “it kind of seems like the women are the ones who actually know what’s going on & the knights are just being led along to wherever they’re supposed to be”.
It’s still ultimately an example of misogyny and strict gender roles, but it ends up often looking pretty different from the stock “damsel in distress” scenario people expect.
…Is the woman in Arthurian myth who Wants Violence Done but must conscript a man to actually do it the literary ancestress of the modern Femme Fatale? Discuss.
She slipped into my office that night like a demon into the mind of a pious monk, seductive and dripping with heresies. Her gown and headress were of rich silk befitting a maiden, but her eyes were cold and sharp as the executioner’s sword, and her lips as red as the apple that tempted Eve. Her legs, presumably, went all the way up, but the aforementioned gown was floor-length, so it’s hard to say. Also she’d ridden a horse into the building for some reason, which was quite distracting.
“Sir Knight,” she said, dismounting and retrieving something from her saddlebag, “I have a job for you.” She tossed a severed head onto my desk.
I peered at the severed head. It had noble features, and had managed to land exactly on top of one of the stains left by previous severed heads. “How did you find me?” I asked. “I swapped my red shield for a blue one; the disguise should be impenetrable.”
“The hermit told me where you’d be”, she answered in a voice like the bells on a horse’s harness before battle.
That tracks. Those hermits are always poking their noses into my business. “How may I serve you, fair lady?” I asked. “I’d kneel, but my armor’s gone a bit rusty in the legs.”
“The Baron D’Iverjoure has slain my lover,” she said, gesturing at the head, the rings on her fingers clinking like manacles in a wicked king’s dungeon. “I need you to avenge him.”
“I have no quarrel with the Baron D’Iverjoure,” I said, knowing as the words echoed in my helmet that I was saying them just for the form of it and I’d end up taking this quest regardless. “I have heard he is an honorable man.”
“That may be,” said the damsel, in tones as lovely as a reliquary and just as filled with death, “but you took an oath to obey the next lady to ask you a favor, and I’m calling it in.”
I silently cursed my habit of swearing rash vows. They always get me in trouble. But you know how that goes. “Your wish is my command, milady.”
She nodded and remounted her horse with the help of her two servants who I hadn’t bothered to mention before now. “I will listen for news of your success,” she said as she left.
That’s the way it is with damsels; they always know about the oaths. Even the ones you spoke into a dented chalice, empty of wine, after everyone else had left the feast. And now I’ve got another quest I can’t turn down without losing my honor.
#as lovely as a reliquary and just as filled with death is a BANGER OF A LINE
I’m glad you appreciate it. I was wracking my brain trying to come up with enough “beautiful but dangerous” similes to fill this out in the over-the-top way I wanted – the reliquary one was the only case where I stopped and thought “that’s actually not bad; i should remember it.” Probably needs workshopping, but I like it in concept.
amhrancas 