by Garry Hamlin
| Honor in battle | Honor in private duels | Reverence for one's lord | Honor before gold | Role-playing implications |
| Some bad examples | End notes | Dragon #125 | Classes | Dragon magazine |
But the 2 knights had a problem.
Each
had sworn before the battle to be the last
man to retreat, and each had refused to let
the other have all the glory. Since neither
was willing to yield on this point of honor,
they were unable to find a solution to
their predicament. Instead of retreating,
they shrugged and began wading back
toward shore, where the enemy now
stood in anxious bewilderment. Escape
had been only a few feet away, but rather
than risk the least suggestion of dishonor
the 2 knights had quietly chosen to face
the opposing army together -- and fight to
the death!
A preposterous conclusion? No doubt.
But this is roughly the situation described
in Tirant the White, a 15th-century manuscript
intended to portray the epitome of
chivalry.1 The story of the lejendary
Tirant and his comrade Richard the Venturesome
would have been considerably
shorter if the knights hadn't found a way
out of their impasse. As it turned out,
Richard eventually agreed to retreat up
the ladder into the awaiting galley if
Tirant would only put his foot on the
ladder first. Even this didn't totally resolve
the problem, since once aboard the ship
the pair got into an angry brawl over
which of them was the more worthy
knight. When Tirant refused to fight a
duel to the death over the matter, Richard
became a fierce enemy and refused to be
reconciled until Tirant saved his life
in
battle.
Characters with extreme views or personalities
can represent a gold mine for
role-playing, and Tirant and Richard certainly
represent an idealized chivalric
extreme. Would the average historical
knight have acted this way? Probably not.
But Tirant and Richard certainly embodied
how these knights felt they ought to
behave.
Heroic legends are the stuff from which
fantasy role-playing is fashioned. Yet a
player running a cavalier or paladin character
in an AD&D® game may have
difficulty
understanding the heavy emphasis
these classes place on adherence to a
chivalric code. Our society's way of thinking
is very different from theirs. While no
one would deny that a modern soldier
who behaved like Tirant and Richard was
very brave, many of us would also consider
him very stupid. But chivalry was
not a code of self-preservation or common
sense. It was a code of honor -- and honor,
to its adherents, was more important than
life itself.
Honor in battle
Consider, for instance, The Song of
Roland, in which the chivalric ideal
becomes almost self-destructive. The rearguard
of Charlemagne's forces, led by
Count Roland, was attacked by a force of
Saracens many times its size. Despite the
urgings of his friends, Roland refused to
use his horn to sound an alarm that would
have summoned the main force of Charlemagne's army to his force's aid.
To Roland's way of thinking, calling for
help would have been dishonorable --
after all, their enemies were only Saracens!
Not until his forces were clearly
about to be massacred did Roland consider
sounding the alarm. By this time, there
was no hope that Charlemagne's forces
would arrive in time for a rescue. Rather,
Roland sounded the horn in hope that the
returning troops would avenge their
deaths.
What follows is the kind of epic battle
that modern-day readers are familiar with
primarily through parodies by Monty
Python and others. With one heave of his
great sword Durendal, Roland downed a
mounted, armored opponent -- the force
of the blow being so great that it chopped
through the rider's saddle and killed his
horse as well. Others of Roland?s company
struck similarly mighty blows.
Even at the battle?s bleakest, Roland?s
forces fought on. The Archbishop Turpin
of Rheims -- a fighting man of God if ever
there was one, and one of Roland?s primary
counselors -- found himself
unhorsed and with 4 lance heads
embedded in his breast. Still, he rose from
the battlefield, drew his sword Almace,
and downed 400 of the enemy before his
heart stopped beating from exhaustion.
When Roland found Turpin's body, the
brain and bowels were clearly exposed to
view. Considering the kind of damage
these legendary figures absorbed while
still managing to continue in the fray, it's
no wonder that members of the <knight>
class are allowed to operate in the negative
HP range.
Of course, the kind of strokes described
in Roland's battle are all but impossible.
Modern day writer Poul Anderson,
considering
this sort of thing, notes that primary
sources aren't always to be trusted. Every
now and then, he notes, you find references
to "somebody cutting a head or limb
off somebody else with a single stroke. Try
this yourself on a pork roast, suspended
without a chopping block, and see how far
you get." This could be done, Anderson
notes, "with the best of the classic
Japanese
swords, which are marvels of metallurgy.
" 2 However, these are unlikely
to
have been available to Roland and his
company.
Today, a soldier failing to sound an alarm
in battle would most likely get a courtmartial
for insubordination. To the mind
of the medieval warrior, however, Roland's
being too proud to call for help represented
a ?tragic flaw? in an essentially
noble character. But even in the Middle
Ages, is seems safe to assume that Roland's
example was more admired by the medieval
warrior than followed in practice.
Knights with more savvy -- even lejendary
ones like Tirant -- did not hesitate to
use delaying tactics in battle when faced
with overwhelming odds. In one campaign,
Tirant found his army faced with a
force of Saracens many times its size, both
armies being camped along a river near
separate bridges. When the enemy would
mass its forces on one bank of the river,
Tirant would send his forces to the opposite
bank to avoid combat with the superior
force.
Both armies spent several days forming
and reforming until the frustrated Saracens
decided to force a battle by dividing
their forces, leaving some on each bank of
the river. Tirant then had the bridge connecting
the 2 Saracen armies burned
and finished each force off at his leisure.
When the Saracen King of Egypt sent
Tirant a letter rebuking him for winning
by treachery rather than valor, Tirant
responded simply that he had won by
skill, not treachery, and that no one would
blame him for his actions.
Unfortunately, real-life knights did
not
always see things so clearly, and they
tended at times to confuse valor in battle
with competence. French tactics at the
Battle of Agincourt in 1415 provide a good
illustration of this. The French, facing a
smaller force of exhausted and ill English
invaders, launched a courageous charge
through a narrow neck of muddy land,
straight into the line of English long-bow
fire. The French were apparently expecting
their heavier armor, a recent innovation,
to protect them from English arrows.
Instead, French horses and men slipped in
the mud under missile fire, and their
heavier armor, perhaps intended as a
"secret weapon," made the knights so
clumsy they were unable to get back up.
The bulk of the English troops, being
largely unarmored and therefore fully
mobile, swarmed over the fallen knights
like a tribe of ants on a host of fallen beetles.
Although French forces had outmatched
the English by 3 to 1, the
French suffered 10 times the losses of
their English opponents and were left with
a devastating defeat.3
Perhaps we can only begin to understand
how protective lejendary knights
were of their honor when we realize what
happened to ?dishonored? knights. In a
legendary English tournament, Thomas of
Muntalba fought on fiercely although
wounded in the groin and almost managed
to defeat Tirant until he collapsed of blood
loss. Accepting dishonor rather than
death, Thomas surrendered to Tirant ?
and was expelled from his knightly order
for this craven act.
In Tirant's world, the ceremony for
expulsion was mercilessly explicit. First,
the dishonored knight was placed on a
scaffold as a public spectacle. There, his
armor was stripped from him piece by
piece, the dishonored steel being hurled in
the dust. Finally, a bowl of hot water was
thrown in his face, and he was given a
new name and denied the right ever to
use his old one again. The ceremony being
completed, the knight was summarily
hurled from the scaffold.
And you think you?ve had humiliating
experiences! Tirant?s legend records that
one dishonored knight suffered such
outrage over the infamy being heaped on
him that his gall bladder burst and he
choked to death on his own bile. As for
poor Thomas of Muntalba, he quietly
entered a monastery upon his recovery
and disappeared from history.
Honor in private duels
Nor was the battlefield or tournament
the only arena in which a knight's
honor
must be strictly defended. Although sometimes
illegal, private duels were apparently
all too common, some of them being
fought under horrifying conditions and
for reasons we would probably regard
today as trivial. One episode from Tirant?s
legend illustrates this perfectly.
In this instance, Tirant asked for and
was given a brooch from a beautiful maiden
?s bodice to wear in a tournament as a
sign of his service to her. This raised the
ire of the girl?s long-time suitor, Sir Barrentowns,
who promptly challenged Tirant to
surrender the token or fight him to the
death.
Tirant was not in love with the girl, nor
was he competing with Sir Barrentowns
for her hand. Yet rather than surrender
the honor the girl had done him in giving
him the brooch, Tirant submitted to a
ghastly duel. The opponents faced each
other wielding 1½"-long, double-edged
Genoese knives "with well-sharpened
points.? The two knights were ?armored?
only in French linen shirts and garlands of
flowers. For added protection, a shield
made out of a single sheet of paper was
divided between them!
With so little protection, it?s needless to
say that the melee between Tirant and Sir
Barrentowns was rapidly resolved. The
close of combat found both knights unconscious
and bleeding on the ground. Tirant
had suffered eleven wounds, any four of
which could have been mortal, and Sir
Barrentowns suffered as many as five
mortal wounds. Tirant ?won? this battle
simply by virtue of having survived. But,
more important to him than victory, his
?honor? survived intact. As for Sir Barrentowns,
he was buried with considerable
ceremony as a knight who never betrayed
his calling. No one seemed to think it scandalous
that he wasted seven years of his
life courting the maiden, who admired his
courage but refused to marry him because
he wasn?t as rich as her parents.
Reverence for one's lord
For a profession so notoriously touchy
about its honor, it's amazing how much
abuse a knight was expected to take
from
his rightful lord without even token
defense. In The Song of The Cid, Ruy Diaz,
the Cid, is unrighteously exiled from his
homeland by King Alfonso of Leon
and <Alfonso VI of Leon and Castile>, cf. <Alfonso VI of Portugal>
Castile. To add insult to injury, the king
gives Diaz only 9 days to leave the
country. Worse still, he orders his subjects
on pain of death not to sell or supply Diaz
with anything on his way into exile.
Yet Diaz leaves his family in the hands of
strangers without a single reproach
against his liege. Wandering homeless in
Spain with only those willing to follow him
into misfortune, Diaz achieves a number
of stunning military victories against the
Saracens and carves out a nation for himself
within that hostile culture. Despite
King Alfonso's despicable treatment of
him, Diaz sends gifts to the king out of the
spoils of each major battle. Even though
the king has stripped him of his lands
without so much as a hearing, Diaz continues
to honor Alfonso as his rightful
lord. Seeing the Cid's service in the face of
such abuse, Alfonso's subjects can't help
but murmur, "Were his lord but worthy --
God, how fine a vassal!" But the Cid himself
utters no complaint against his king.
The chivalric code of obedience to one's
liege is explained early on in Tirant's lejend
by William of Warwick, Tirant?s tutor
in the knightly virtues. Says William, ?No
matter how much evil he may do to you,
always obey your natural lord. Though he
may seize your lands, never oppose His
Majesty. . . . Even if he strikes you with his
hand, staff, or sword, your natural lord
can never shame you, though he may
harm your person.? William explains further
to Tirant that once he saw a duke
wrongfully struck by the Emperor himself.
The duke submitted to this treatment
patiently, though he warned the spectators
that any of them who tried to take similar
liberties with him would sorely regret it.
Honor before gold
The item that probably runs most
against the grain for today's role-playing
gamer is the chivalric code's supposed
disdain for (gasp!) treasure itself. We are
all familiar with the incredible intellectual
gyrations of players who argue that they
really can carry the 3,000-lb. platinum
statue of the mud goddess Boopde?ella up
12 flights of orc-infested, slimy stairs
while
wearing full plate armor and carrying an
unconscious maiden under one arm. (?Of
course,? they?ll argue, when brought face
to face with facts, ?I can always come back
for the maiden if it?s really too much.?)
What gain could Roland have hoped for
in his celebrated battle? And what did the
Cid gain from consistently yielding his
fantastic spoils to the needs of his followers?
In Tirant?s legend, William of
Warwick epitomizes this attitude when he
refuses ?30 wagons of jewels? as a reward
for repelling an invasion of England. William
accepts nothing for his efforts but
?glory, danger and wounds.? Similarly,
when Tirant foils a Saracen invasion of
Rhodes, its overjoyed citizens pile their
treasure in the city square and beg Tirant
to take ?all your hands can hold.? Tirant
responds simply that the honor of the
occasion is sufficient for him.
Role-playing implications
The gaming implications of all this
become apparent with only a little bit of
thought. Certainly, many players will be
reluctant to have their characters follow a
code of honor that makes their lives more
difficult. But an adept GM can
insure that the NPCs expect the PCs to
practice what their professions preach.
Imagine the frustration of a band of
players over an NPC <knight>
whom their
characters have managed to persuade to
?help? their party. Let?s say this NPC, Sir
Roderic the Bold, is standing watch for the
party, which is camped by night in a pine
forest. Sir Roderic suddenly hears the
sounds of an approaching band of orcs.
Sleeping around the campfire are the
party?s PCs: Sir Galen, a cavalier; Plahg, a
barbarian; Pinky 4 Fingers, a thief;
and, Elissa Meadowflower, a druidess. Will
Sir Roderic wake them up to join in the
fight, or will he nobly decide that he can
handle the situation by himself (?They?re
only orcs!?), leaving the PCs to be surprised
by the ensuing melee?
If the melee turns against the party, will
Sir Roderic be willing to retreat, or will he
propose that the party make a valiant last
stand? If Sir Roderic chooses ?tactical
withdrawal,? he will certainly want to be
the last member of the party to do so ?
and he will probably jab Sir Galen about
this later if Sir Galen doesn?t challenge him
for the honor. Finally, having withdrawn,
Sir Roderic will want to insure that his
honor hasn?t been tarnished, and he will
probably argue with other party members,
and certainly with Sir Galen, over
who performed the most valiant deeds in
the battle.
Additionally, imagine poor Sir Roderic?s
confusion if a low-life like Pinkie or Plahg
turns out to be the party?s real leader
instead of Sir Galen. From Sir Roderic?s
perspective, commoners like thieves and
barbarians could only be Sir Galen?s servants,
never his peers (let alone his superiors).
Through long experience together,
the players will doubtless have allowed
their characters to slip into a certain
amount of familiarity with each other. And
Sir Roderic, viewing Sir Galen?s egalitarian
treatment of his social inferiors, might
well conclude that Sir Galen has been
?bewitched? by Plahg or Pinkie, or is
unworthy of his status as a knight.
Suppose Sir Roderic concludes that Sir
Galen, by his unchivalrous conduct, has
forfeited his right to lead the party. Doubtless,
Sir Roderic would challenge Sir Galen
to yield this honor or face him in personal
combat. If the party submits to Sir
Roderic's leadership, the players will certainly
be aghast when he waives away
treasure offered to the party by grateful
townsmen in reward for their valiant
exploits. Just as Pinkie and Plahg advance,
hands itching to seize their well-earned
spoils, Sir Roderic ? chest swelling with
knightly pride ? steps forward to
announce to the gathered citizenry that
the glory of their exploits is reward
enough. Before Plahg and Pinkie can take
another step, the crowd cheers Sir
Roderic?s generous offer and removes the
treasure. Plahg?s and Pinkie?s faces are a
study of anguished bewilderment as the
hoard of glittering jewels that almost was
theirs retreats out of reach into the safety
of a nearby vault. Sir Roderic?s reputation
has been enhanced by turning down a
king?s ransom as a reward. But Plahg and
Pinkie are merely older and wiser ? and
arguably poorer for missing a load of
treasure that might have been theirs.
Even if Sir Roderic is not allowed to
assume leadership, the party is certain to
be annoyed by his behavior toward the
druidess. If Elissa Meadowflower has
above average charisma and comeliness,
Sir Roderic may assume she is secretly of
noble birth and ask her for a scarf,
brooch, or even an intimate article of
clothing for him to wear in battle as an
emblem of his devotion. Sir Roderic?s
advances will be all the more inconvenient
if Elissa has taken vows of chastity that
forbid her from responding positively to
such requests. If Sir Galen attempts to
intervene, naturally Sir Roderic will consider
him a rival and challenge him to
personal combat ?to prove which of us is
more worthy to serve this lady!? A female
cavalier in an AD&D game could
turn the
tables and make equally outrageous
demands upon handsome male characters
she sees, seeking to serve one as a champion
at arms.
If the party is lucky, Sir Roderic will
already be committed to another lady,
precluding his advances toward Elissa. But
even then, Sir Roderic is certain to be
wearing some article of woman?s clothing
on his person ? Tirant wore the equivalent
of his lady's slip into battle, in plain
view, over his armor -- and woe to any
poor soul who dared to smile at the sight!
Even if the party manages to divest itself
of Sir Roderic, doubtless there will be
plenty of NPCs who are sick and tired of
snooty cavaliers looking down their noses
at them. These folk might well include
powerful figures such as a town mayor or
a rich businessman. From long experience,
they might reasonably consider knights to
be nothing more than a bunch of arrogant
hypocrites. Influential persons like these
might take malicious delight in pointing
out to Sir Galen, as he passes through
their town, every point at which his
behavior falls short of the chivalric ideal.
They might even go so far as to have
mocking lyrics about him composed, causing
other knights to try to hunt him down
and eliminate this disgrace to their profession.
How Sir Galen responds to these
pressures will define him as a knight.
Some bad examples
Rest assured that whatever response the
PCs make to all this, there's bound to be a
historical precedent. History and literature
abound with knights who make very
poor
examples but also very interesting reading.
In the 1300s, for instance, Sir Eustache
d?Aubrecicourt of the Netherlands was
having problems sustaining himself
because of peace treaties between nations
that interfered with his ability to take
plunder and spoil in France. Sir Eustache?s
solution was to organize a band of ?free
companions? who plundered and
despoiled France anyway. At one point,
Eustache apparently had a thriving industry
going on selling castles back to their
rightful lords at phenomenal costs.4
Similarly, the English knight and brigand
Sir Robert Knollys, probably the most
dangerous man in Europe in his time,
made such a mess of France that his company
left a trail of ravaged towns whose
charred gables were referred to as
?Knollys? miters.? Lejend has it that at one
place French villagers threw themselves
into the river at the mere mention of his
approach. Whether Knollys was legally a
criminal or a privateer at any given point
was mostly a matter of whether France
and England happened to be at war at the
time, or otherwise whether the king of
England found it politically expedient to
pardon Sir Robert?s latest exploits5
If some knights were neither good nor
lawful, neither were all of them brave.
William Shakespeare's play King Henry IV
gives us a beautiful example of the cowardly
knight in his portrayal of Sir John Falstaff,
based on a historical raffish knight
who was ultimately burned at the stake for
heresy. Apparently knighted at a point of
greater youth and valor, Sir John has
degenerated by the time we meet him into
an enormously fat, drunken old sensualist
who can scarcely waddle 20 paces in highway
robbery, let alone conduct himself
suitably in battle. Assigned by the king to
draft villagers to put down a rebellion,
Falstaff takes bribes from men trying to
evade military service, spends the money
on his own vices, then fills the ranks of his
company with outcasts and criminals he
manages to spring from prison.
When forced to enter battle, Falstaff
keels over and plays dead at the first
opportunity, even though he hasn't been
so much as wounded. Yet in order to
appear to have fought valiantly, he rises
during a lull in battle and stabs the dead
body of a fallen enemy leader, then carries
the body to the king to "prove" he has
slain a great rebel knight. If Tirant represents
the chivalric ideal, Falstaff certainly
represents the opposite.
Finally, no summary would be complete
without at least a nod to Miguel de Cervantes
- famous creation, Don Quixote, the
mad knight of LaMancha. Actually an
aging Spanish petty noble living on a tight
income, Cervantes' mock hero has simply
read so much about knights and their
exploits that his brains dry up and he falls
into the delusion that he has become a
knight himself. In this wide-eyed, addled
state, Don Quixote roams the countryside
on a rickety horse looking for wrongs to
right. He jousts with windmills he takes to
be giants magically disguised by sorcerers.
He recovers a barber's basin which he
believes is secretly a great enchanted
artifact, the helmet of Mambrino. His
other ridiculous exploits cannot be briefly
summarized here.
All of these character types would make
interesting NPC encounters, especially for
a PC cavalier who is trying to come to
grips with his own response to the ideals
of chivalry. A particular cavalier may or
may not choose to adhere strictly to a
code of honor -- but the character should
not be permitted to be simply a 20th century
man or woman in plate mail. The
character class can't possibly be portrayed
well if the player and the DM
don't understand the social context in
which the character operates and how
important the concept of honor is going to
be to other cavaliers that, are encountered.
Gaming sessions never grow stale when
players face new challenges for roleplaying.
Emphasis on "honor" presents the
players with a whole new set of problems
to be solved -- and is likely to liven up any
single evening's adventure or flagging
campaign.
End notes
1 Joanot Martorell and Marti Joan de
Galba, Tirant Lo Blanc, translated by
David
H. Rosenthal (New York: Warner Books,
1985). All further references to Tirant
are
from the pages of this work.
2 Poul Anderson, "On Thud and Blunder,"
in Fantasy, edited by Jim Baen (New York:
Pinnacle Books, 1981), page 174.
3 Barbara W. Tuchman, A Distant Mirror:
The Calamitous 14th Century (New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 1978), pages 584-5.
4 Ibid., page 166.
5 Ibid., page 165.