Ettard

Ettard is a lady whose pride and rejection of Pelleas turn his steadfast love into a cycle of pursuit, humiliation, and reversal. Her story reaches its decisive turn when Gawaine, having promised to help Pelleas win her, deceives them both: Ettard accepts Gawaine, then discovers Pelleas alive. Nimue’s enchantment changes Ettard’s feelings, but Pelleas no longer wants her; he leaves with Nimue, and Ettard dies of sorrow.

Identity and Introduction

Ettard lives in the country where Pelleas has chosen to follow her. After winning a three-day tournament attended by five hundred knights, Pelleas gives her the gold circlet awarded to the victor and declares her the fairest lady there, offering to prove his judgment against any challenger. He chooses her as his sovereign lady and promises not to love another. Ettard, however, scorns him and says she will never love him, even if he dies for her.

The contrast between Pelleas’s public honor and Ettard’s refusal shapes her place in the episode. Other ladies and gentlewomen, the narrator reports, consider her proud: they believe there are women fairer than Ettard and that many would gladly have returned Pelleas’s love. Her position is therefore not simply that of a beloved lady; her rejection becomes a conspicuous test of how love, reputation, and knightly devotion are treated in the story.

Pelleas’s Devotion and Ettard’s Treatment of Him

Pelleas lodges near Ettard and continues to follow her, though she repeatedly sends knights to fight him. He can defeat them, yet deliberately lets them capture him because he wants a sight of her. Ettard responds not with pity but with further humiliation: her knights sometimes tie him to his horse’s tail or bind him beneath the horse. The narrator makes clear that this treatment is intended to drive Pelleas from the country and make him abandon his love, but it does not succeed.

When Gawaine hears the account, he is moved by what Pelleas endures and promises, on his faith, to do everything in his power to secure Ettard’s love for him. Pelleas explains that he would rather die repeatedly than suffer such shame if he did not love her so intensely, yet continues to hope that she may eventually take pity on him. His willingness to submit to defeat is thus presented as a consequence of his devotion, while Ettard’s repeated scorn deepens the imbalance between them.

Gawaine’s Promise and Betrayal

To approach Ettard, Gawaine exchanges horses and armor with Pelleas and rides to the pavilions outside her castle. When Ettard sees him, she retreats toward the castle. Gawaine tells her he is not Pelleas but another knight who has killed him. Once she sees Gawaine’s face, she welcomes him and asks him to confirm that Pelleas is dead. Gawaine says that he killed him and identifies himself as a knight of Arthur’s court and Arthur’s sister’s son.

Ettard says Pelleas was an excellent knight, though she hated him most because she could never be rid of him. Believing that he is dead, she offers to become Gawaine’s lady and do what pleases him. Gawaine then says that he loves a lady who will not love him, and Ettard calls that lady blameworthy. When he reveals that Ettard herself is the woman he loves, she has promised to help him win, so she agrees to fulfill his desire rather than break her pledged word.

The reversal rests on a false report, not on any change in Ettard’s view of Pelleas: she believes he has been killed and accepts Gawaine on that assumption. Gawaine’s conduct also violates the trust he had pledged to Pelleas. He stays with Ettard in a pavilion for two days and two nights, while Pelleas, who has not slept since Gawaine left, arrives on the third morning looking for the promised return.

Recognition and Reversal

Pelleas searches the pavilions and finds Gawaine and Ettard asleep together. He places his naked sword across their throats but does not kill them. When they awaken, Ettard recognizes the sword as Pelleas’s and realizes that Gawaine had deceived her. She tells Gawaine that he has betrayed both her and Pelleas, and observes that Pelleas could have killed him but did not. She leaves the encounter knowing that the supposed death on which her acceptance of Gawaine depended was a lie.

Gawaine then goes into the forest. Pelleas, overcome by grief, remains in bed and says he will not rise until he is dead. Nimue, the damsel of the lake, hears from one of Pelleas’s knights how he has been betrayed. She promises that he will not die of love and says Ettard will soon suffer a like unhappiness. Finding Pelleas, she uses enchantment to put him to sleep and goes to fetch Ettard, instructing those present not to wake him before she returns.

Ettard’s Enchanted Love and Ending

Nimue brings Ettard to the sleeping Pelleas and rebukes her for having treated such a knight without mercy. She then enchants Ettard so that she falls deeply in love with the man she had hated. When Pelleas wakes and sees her, the change has come too late: he now hates Ettard more than any woman and tells her to stay away. Ettard weeps and grieves, but Pelleas does not resume his former devotion.

Pelleas accepts Nimue’s offer to leave the country and love a lady who will love him in return. He recounts the beginning and end of his pursuit and says that Ettard’s treatment has made him hate her as much as he once loved her. Ettard dies of sorrow. Pelleas and Nimue leave together, and the narrative says they love one another for the rest of their lives. The ending reverses the original arrangement without restoring it: Ettard acquires the love she once refused only after Pelleas has withdrawn his, while his lasting partnership is with Nimue.