Sir Helius

Sir Helius is a knight raised by King Hermance who turns against his benefactor and helps murder him. His betrayal brings Sir Palamides to the Red City in pursuit of revenge; after a prolonged fight, Palamides kills Helius and restores the city’s hope, though he refuses its offer to remain as ruler or protector.

Place in Hermance’s Court

Sir Helius and his brother, Sir Helake, were brought up by King Hermance, a generous ruler who favored them and trusted their counsel. Their influence helped distance Hermance from his own kin: the lords of the king’s blood, seeing that they had no place in his affairs, withdrew to their own lands. The story presents the brothers’ rise not as loyal service but as a breach of trust that leaves the king isolated from his family and more dependent on the men who will betray him.

The narrator’s account explicitly sets their social standing against their conduct. Helius and Helake are described as poorly born yet capable knights, while their treachery makes their apparent service to the king a danger to the wider court. The episode’s warning is political as well as personal: a ruler’s misplaced confidence in favored advisers can weaken the bonds that might otherwise protect him.

Murder of King Hermance

Hermance rode into the nearby forest to hunt red deer, armed as a knight. When exertion made him thirsty, he dismounted at a well. Acting with his brother’s assent, Helius suddenly attacked the king with a spear and left him mortally wounded. The assault is the decisive betrayal in Helius’s story: the king’s trusted upbringing of the brothers and reliance on them culminate in violence against him.

Sir Ebel found Hermance at the well after the brothers had departed. He helped carry the wounded king to the water’s edge and placed him aboard a vessel while he was still alive. Hermance then asked Ebel to write a letter, preserving the circumstances of the attack. The account links Helius’s crime to a broader failure of rule: Hermance had allowed the brothers to exclude his relatives from influence, and the king’s death leaves the Red City in grief and without its benefactor.

Palamides’s Vengeance

Hermance’s brother, Sir Hermind, tells Sir Palamides that Helius and Helake killed the king. Palamides agrees to avenge Hermance, and word of his arrival reaches the city, where the people welcome the prospect of justice. When the brothers learn that their opponent is Palamides, they boast that he will not leave the lists alive. Helius and Helake come to meet him with forty knights, presenting themselves as a force sufficient to intimidate the city as well as defeat its champion.

Before the contest, Palamides directly identifies the brothers as the men who killed their lord. They acknowledge that they are the same knights, and Helius threatens him. The fight is therefore not a dispute whose cause remains uncertain: the story makes the accusation and the brothers’ admission part of the confrontation, framing the combat as vengeance for Hermance’s murder.

The Combat and Its Outcome

The brothers face Palamides together. Palamides first strikes Helake and brings him down; Helius, who had held back his own spear, attacks once his brother is on the ground and knocks Palamides from his saddle. The contest then continues on foot. The two exchange blows and grapple, and for two hours neither rests. Helius gains the advantage, while the people of the city weep at the apparent prospect of Palamides’s death.

Their grief changes the course of the scene. Seeing the people’s sorrow, Palamides raises his shield and renews his attack. He strikes Helius repeatedly, brings him down, and kills him. The reversal turns the city’s fear into celebration: its inhabitants escort Palamides to his lodging with honor, and the people become his followers. Helius’s death thus answers the immediate call for vengeance, while the defeat of the brothers ends their hold over the city.

Aftermath and Narrative Significance

Palamides asks the people to protect the lordship of the dead King Hermance, but he cannot stay. He must keep a prior promise to join King Arthur at Lonazep. Although the city offers him a third of its goods if he will remain, he refuses and departs. Helius’s defeat therefore restores the prospect of local order without making Palamides the new ruler: vengeance and the protection of Hermance’s inheritance are distinct from taking possession of it.

Helius’s brief but consequential role connects private betrayal to public disorder. His crime begins in the intimate trust between a king and the men he raised, but its consequences spread to Hermance’s relatives, the people of the Red City, and the wider network of King Arthur’s knights. The episode contrasts Helius’s treacherous use of his position with Palamides’s willingness to risk himself for a murdered lord, even as Palamides’s departure leaves the city’s continued protection to its own people.