Anglides

Anglides is the wife of Prince Boudwin and mother of Alisander le Orphelin. When King Mark murders Boudwin, she protects their child from the same threat, carries her husband’s bloodstained clothing into exile, and later makes that evidence the centre of her son’s knighthood and family duty.

Boudwin’s Murder and Anglides’s Escape

King Mark’s violence against Boudwin grows from resentment: Boudwin is better loved in the country, and Mark believes his brother has taken honour that should have been his. After summoning Boudwin and Anglides under a friendly pretext, Mark accuses Boudwin of seeking to outshine him and kills him. Anglides witnesses the murder and grieves, but also acts to preserve what can still be saved. She secretly keeps Boudwin’s doublet and shirt, while a warning from La Beale Isoud makes clear that their young son is in danger too.

Mark sends Sir Sadok after Anglides and Alisander. Sadok does not carry out the pursuit as ordered: he proposes that she leave the country and keep her son until he is old enough to avenge his father. Anglides accepts this course and promises that, if Alisander lives to become a knight, she will give him Boudwin’s clothing and instruct him to remember his father’s death. Sadok then deceives Mark, reporting that the child has been drowned, and Anglides rides away with Alisander.

Exile and Protection

Anglides travels day and night, resting little as she makes her way south towards the coast. By chance she reaches Magouns Castle, later called Arundel in Southsex, where the constable welcomes her as its rightful owner. The constable, Bellangere, is related to her through his wife, and the castle gives Anglides both refuge and a claim of inheritance. There she remains for years and winters, until Alisander has grown strong.

Her protection of her son is patient rather than passive. The escape carries the immediate family out of King Mark’s reach; the years at the castle allow Alisander to grow to the age and strength at which the truth can be entrusted to him. The preserved clothes connect his safe upbringing to the violent event that made flight necessary.

The Charge at Alisander’s Knighthood

When Bellangere judges that Alisander is old enough to be made a knight, Anglides agrees to the ceremony and warns that she must give her son a grave charge. On the day he and twenty companions are knighted, she approaches him at the offering of the mass and presents Boudwin’s old, bloodstained doublet and shirt. Alisander recoils and turns pale at the sight. Anglides explains that the garments belonged to his father and that King Mark killed Boudwin before her eyes.

She makes the revelation an obligation tied to Alisander’s new knighthood: she charges him, by her blessing and by the order he has just received, to avenge Boudwin. The demand is both maternal and dynastic, converting a concealed family loss into a declared purpose for the next generation. Anglides swoons after giving the charge; Alisander lifts her, promises that he will take revenge when he can, and invokes both God and his mother in his pledge. The episode ends the feast with the son committed to the vengeance his mother has carried through years of flight and preservation.