Alice la Beale Pilgrim

Alice la Beale Pilgrim is Duke Ansirus’s daughter and the beloved of Sir Alisander le Orphelin. She enters the story by staking her hand and lands on the outcome of a contest, but then chooses Alisander for herself: their meeting changes the tournament’s prize into a reciprocal commitment, and they ultimately depart together for Benoye.

Identity and Background

Alice is the daughter of Duke Ansirus, a great pilgrim who, the account says, went to Jerusalem every third year. Her name, Alice la Beale Pilgrim, reflects her father’s reputation. She is described as exceptionally fair and as possessing substantial lands and rents, making her both a romantic figure and an heiress of material consequence.

The Challenge at La Beale Regard

After the castle of La Beale Regard has been destroyed, Sir Alisander undertakes to keep the ground on which it stood for a year and a day against any knight who will come. Alice hears the challenge and appears at Arthur’s court. In the hearing of many knights, she declares that whoever overcomes the knight guarding the ground shall have her and all her lands. She then has her own challenge proclaimed in towns and castles and pitches her pavilion beside the contested ground.

Sir Sagramor le Desirous is the first to challenge Alisander. Sagramor’s spear breaks against him, and Alisander knocks him from his saddle. Watching Alisander joust, Alice judges him a worthy knight on horseback. She steps from her pavilion, takes his bridle, and asks him to show his face. He removes his helmet; Alice says she must love him and no other. When he asks to see her face in turn, she unveils it, and he recognizes her as his love and lady. Their attraction is thus presented as mutual recognition, not merely the fulfilment of the prize she had announced.

Mutual Commitment and Kinship

Alisander gives Alice his name and promises to be her knight and no other while he lives. She gives him her name; they defer telling one another their ancestry until they are more at ease. Their exchange joins personal allegiance to the public contest: Alice has offered herself and her inheritance as its reward, while Alisander makes his own pledge directly to her.

Their later conversation supplies the family connections they initially withhold. Alice says she is of the blood of King Ban, father of Sir Launcelot. Alisander says his mother told him that his father was a king’s brother and that he is near cousin to Sir Tristram. Their courtship therefore also places the pair within the wider kinship network of Arthurian nobility. The account gives no further identification of Alisander’s father or of the exact degree of his kinship to Sir Tristram.

Life Beside the Tournament and Ending

Alisander continues to defend the ground and fight challengers after their meeting. He defeats Sir Harsouse le Berbuse and Sir Hewgon, then three more knights—Vains, Harvis de les Marches, and Perin de la Montaine. He also fights knights from Arthur’s court and strangers during the year, sometimes facing several in a day; the narrative says no knight puts him to the worse. Alice remains associated with the challenge and its pavilion while these combats continue.

A brief interruption comes when Sir Mordred sees Alisander absorbed in his lady and leads his horse about, intending to shame him. The maiden who had helped Alisander escape from La Beale Regard arms herself, mounts his horse, and strikes him with a sword; Mordred and the maiden then flee in different directions. Alisander recognizes that the maiden has prevented Mordred from shaming him, and he and Alice laugh over the episode. It does not break their attachment or halt the sequence of combats.

At the end of the year, Alisander leaves with Alice. The maiden who helped him refuses to leave his side, and the three travel to their country of Benoye, where Alice and Alisander live in great joy. The ending completes the movement from a public, conditional offer of marriage and lands to a settled departure together; the account does not describe what becomes of Alice’s inheritance or give further details of their life there.

Narrative Role

Alice’s challenge gives Alisander’s defense of La Beale Regard a personal stake as well as a public one. Her choice of him after witnessing his prowess transforms a contest framed around victory and possession into a declared mutual attachment. Her lineage and lands connect romance to the dynastic and social structures surrounding Arthur’s court, while the ending gives the year-long sequence of combats a clear personal resolution.