Balin and Balan's Fatal Duel turns a failure of recognition into a catastrophe between brothers. Each mistakes the other for an enemy because Balin has exchanged his familiar shield; by the time they learn the truth, both are dying. Their shared tomb preserves the fact of their kinship and mutual destruction, while Merlin’s account connects Balin’s death to the sword’s later history and to a prophecy concerning Sir Launcelot, Galahad, and Sir Gawaine.

Background and the fatal misrecognition

Balin arrives at the island already committed to accepting whatever adventure awaits him, despite being warned that the unfamiliar shield he has taken places him in danger. The shield matters because it conceals the identity by which others might know him. A knight in red, riding out from a castle, recognizes Balin’s two swords and suspects that he is facing his brother, but the unknown shield persuades him otherwise. The same disguise that prevents recognition by the other knight thus also prevents the brothers from recognizing one another.

The encounter is not a planned family quarrel. The brothers charge one another with their spears, and the force of their meeting knocks both horse and rider down. Balin is additionally weakened by travel and the fall of his horse; Balan rises first and attacks. Once Balin gets up, each fights the other as an apparent opponent, with neither understanding that the man before him is his brother.

The duel and recognition

The fight continues through repeated pauses and renewed attacks. The narrative emphasizes the brothers’ persistence and the escalating cost of their mistaken contest: each receives seven great wounds, and they continue until their strength fails. Balin sees the castle towers filled with ladies, but the spectacle does not interrupt the struggle or disclose the truth. At last Balan withdraws and lies down, and Balin asks what knight has matched him so completely.

Balan answers that he is Balan, brother to the good knight Balin. Recognition arrives only after the duel has become fatal. Balin collapses in a swoon; when he wakes, he identifies Balan as the brother who has killed him, and Balan understands that he too has killed Balin. Balan explains that he had noticed the two swords but judged the unfamiliar shield proof that the opponent was someone else. Balin blames the knight who induced him to leave his own shield, calling the act an unhappy one and connecting it to the brothers’ destruction.

Their exchange also reveals that the island has already held Balan against his will. He says that he killed the knight who kept the island and had since been unable to leave; Balin, he believes, would likewise have been unable to depart had he survived the encounter. The island’s customs and the shield’s deception together leave the brothers trapped in a contest they did not understand until it was too late.

The brothers’ last request and burial

The lady of the tower arrives with four knights, six ladies, and six yeomen, and hears the brothers lament their discovery. Balan asks that they be buried together where the battle took place. Their wish gives the ending its defining image: those born of one womb will lie in one grave. The lady agrees to arrange a rich burial, and Balan asks for a priest so that they may receive the sacrament. She sends for one, and the brothers receive the rites.

Balan dies first. Balin survives until midnight, and they are buried together. The lady arranges an inscription for Balan, but does not know Balin’s name. The incompleteness of this first memorial is corrected the next morning, when Merlin comes and has Balin’s name written in gold on the tomb, identifying him as Balin le Savage, the knight of the two swords and the one who struck the Dolorous Stroke. The joined burial therefore records both the brothers’ shared fate and Balin’s distinct place in the larger history.

Merlin’s account and the sword’s afterlife

Merlin makes the duel more than a closed tragedy by attaching future significance to Balin’s sword. He changes its pommel and tests whether a nearby knight can handle it; the knight cannot. Merlin explains that only the world’s best knight will be able to handle the sword: either Sir Launcelot or his son Galahad. He further foretells that Sir Launcelot will use it to kill the man he loves best, Sir Gawaine. Merlin has this prediction written on the pommel, preserving the weapon’s connection to the brothers’ deaths as a warning of a later conflict.

Merlin also orders an iron-and-steel bridge made to the island, so narrow that only a truly good knight, without treachery or villainy, can cross it. He leaves the scabbard on the near side for Galahad to find. Through Merlin’s arrangements, the sword is set in an upright marble stone, which floats on the water and eventually drifts downstream to Camelot, identified in the narrative as Winchester. On Whitsunday, Galahad arrives with King Arthur, brings the scabbard, and draws the sword from the stone, as recounted in the book of the Sangreal.

When Merlin later tells King Arthur about the Dolorous Stroke inflicted on King Pellam, the brothers’ extraordinary battle, and their burial in one tomb, Arthur calls their fate the greatest pity he has heard of and says he knows no two knights their equal. The duel thus closes the tale of Balin and Balan while sending its consequences forward: a mistaken shield ends two lives, a shared grave makes their kinship memorable, and the surviving sword carries the story into the later history of the Round Table.