Baldwin's Bloodstained Clothes and Shirt

Baldwin's Bloodstained Clothes and Shirt are the surviving garments of Prince Boudwin, murdered by King Mark. Preserved secretly by Boudwin’s wife, Anglides, they become a family relic and a direct charge to their son Alisander: the evidence of his father’s death is placed before him as he enters knighthood, binding remembrance to the prospect of revenge.

The Murder and the Hidden Garments

King Mark summoned Boudwin and Anglides under a show of welcome, then accused his brother of seeking to win honor at his expense. He killed Boudwin before Anglides, and the prince was mourned by Sir Tristram, Sir Dinas, Sir Fergus, and the other knights who valued him. Amid the public grief, Anglides privately obtained her husband’s doublet and shirt and kept them concealed. Their importance begins in this contrast: the court witnesses the loss, but the widow preserves its material trace.

Revealed at Alisander’s Knighthood

When Alisander was made a knight with twenty companions, Anglides approached him during the mass and produced the old, bloodstained doublet and shirt. He recoiled and asked what they meant. She identified them as his father’s clothing from the day he was killed, explained that King Mark had murdered Boudwin, and charged her son, invoking both her blessing and the order of knighthood he was receiving, to avenge the death. She fainted after giving the charge; Alisander raised her and promised that he would seek vengeance when he could.

A Relic Carried into the Plot

The garments do not remain only in the scene of disclosure. When Alisander later set out on his way to London, following Sir Tristram’s counsel to seek Sir Launcelot, he took his father’s bloodstained shirt with him and carried it until his death. The text explicitly presents it as a token that kept Boudwin’s killing in his memory. At a tournament held by King Carados, Alisander won the prize, unhorsed Carados and twenty of his knights, and defeated Sir Safere; after each victory he required the defeated knight to swear not to wear arms for a year and a day. The remembered shirt accompanied him as he gained renown, keeping his rise as a knight linked to the unresolved family wrong.

Memory, Kinship, and Revenge

The doublet and shirt turn private mourning into an obligation handed from mother to son. Anglides’s account supplies Alisander with the identity of his father’s killer and gives his knighthood a personal purpose, while the shirt’s continued presence makes that purpose material rather than merely spoken. Its enduring force is also limited by what the narrative establishes: Alisander promises revenge and carries the shirt, but these passages do not describe him killing King Mark. The relic therefore records both an inherited claim and an outcome left unresolved in the cited account.