Fighting over the Girls

There is so much going on in Erec and Enide's story, and we're only halfway done! I'm beginning to get whiplash.

Almost immediately (page 2) we're thrown into King Arthur's desire to hold a hunt for a white stag. Cool, dude, but apparently this is going to cause problems. You have hundreds of women in your court, and you're going to use this hunt as a competition to kiss the most beautiful of them. I guess if you're the king you can do that kind of thing. But when one of your buddies tells you it's not a good idea because fights will break out, you just say, "yeah but we're gonna do it anyway!" Let all the men fight each other over who has the most beautiful woman by his side. Great idea, your majesty.

Then we move into this strange scene with Erec, Guinevere, her maid, and the group that we're soon going to view as our enemies. It's a commonality it literature: the hero's enemy is ours, and this knight (Yder) pissed Erec off. We're off to get revenge! Yder and his dwarf are in our targets, and we hope that Erec can 1) find them, and 2) retrieve his stolen dignity. But we'll have to hit the pause button for a moment because we have to meet the most beautiful woman in the world.

Erec finds a place to stay, and good for him because it's an event that will change the rest of his life. We meet the man who hosts our hero, a father who is happy to share his home with this random (albeit handsome, as we're told) man who just rode up on his horse. Erec has no problem with handing over his horse and allowing himself to be vulnerable in this guy's house. This seems to be a theme in the medieval time period; people, specifically traveling knights, are incredibly trusting of others and their families. I keep wondering if that confidence is universal during this time period or if it's only because they have a position in Arthur's court.

On to this maiden we just met. She's put away our hero's horse and returned to her father and Erec. 

Then her father orders her to have sex with Erec.

That was my interpretation of "my dear daughter, take this lord by the hand and show him the highest honor" (7). Why is this a thing? Is this a custom that allows knights to trust strangers, engaging in 'the highest honor,' or does the ordinary person hand over anything and everything they can to impress the knights? It's all about the Magic Hoo-Hah*, I guess.

Back to Erec's quest for revenge. As we know he participates in the sparrowhawk fight. Side note: why do these men insist on fighting each other to prove who has the most beautiful woman in their possession? 

We finally meet Yder, who seems to be angry and maybe a bit arrogant before their challenge unfolds. But we also know that he's a knight, so on some level, I want to believe he's a good guy. Okay, decent, good might be stretching it. Good guys don't let dwarfs whip everyone just for the hell of it. Erec seems to be on the same wavelength because he's gonna win this fight over the sparrowhawk. But is he, though? I think at this point he's already fallen in love with the nameless (who woman we know to be Edine now). So yeah sure, I'll pretend to believe he's fighting for his revenge against the dwarf's whipping incident. The passion he puts into this battle says he has another reason for being out there. He wants to win that sparrowhawk for his lady.

Here's my biggest problem with the first half of "Erec and Edine": Yder went to the castle to surrender to Queen Guinevere. I get that he's a knight and he has to live by the rule and expectations, and by doing so, he proves himself to be honorable. But this is the question that is leaving me confused: why? What would have happened if he caught the Royals on a day when they weren't feeling so generous? He wouldn't have received Guinevere's acceptance of his presence and Arthur's decision to add him to the court. He could have easily just said

and taken his dwarf (who has proved himself to be wickedly defensive) and the lady he had to some other distant land. They could have started a new life and been the main characters of their own fictional romance story. Bonus: they would avoid the possibility of Guinevere's imprisonment.

*Thank you for the new term, Amy.