The murder of King Hermance of the Red City is presented as both a betrayal within the royal household and a failure of political judgment: two knights whom Hermance had brought up and trusted kill him after isolating him from his own kindred. His dying request, carried in a letter to King Arthur’s court, converts the crime into a public appeal for vengeance. Sir Palamides hears the account and undertakes the mission against the traitors.

Background: a king’s misplaced trust

Sir Ebel explains that Hermance was remembered as a noble, generous ruler who delighted in the company and activities of errant knights. Yet the king’s affection for the two men he had raised came at a political cost. He trusted neither his blood relatives nor others around him as much as he trusted these knights, and allowed them to govern his affairs while preventing his kindred from exercising influence.

The excluded lords of Hermance’s blood eventually withdrew to their own lands. Ebel presents that estrangement as a warning about the choice of advisers: the king’s generosity and the knights’ deceptive conduct left his household vulnerable. The account does not describe a battle between rival armies; it locates the danger inside the king’s circle, where personal trust has displaced kinship and sound counsel.

The killing in the forest

Hermance rode into the nearby forest fully armed, following the advice of the two knights. After riding and hunting, he became thirsty, dismounted, and drank at a well. With the other conspirator’s assent, Helius suddenly attacked him with a spear. The two men then left the king there.

Ebel came upon Hermance by chance at the well and found him mortally wounded. The king’s vulnerability at that moment contrasts with the armed, knightly life he had embraced: he had gone into the forest as a ruler who enjoyed the pursuits of chivalry, but was betrayed by men admitted to his confidence. The narrative makes the well the scene of the crime and the point from which Hermance’s last appeal begins.

The dying king’s letter

Ebel brought Hermance to the water’s edge and placed him alive aboard a vessel. At the king’s request, he wrote a letter addressed to King Arthur and the errant knights of Arthur’s court. Hermance identified himself as a king slain by felony and treason at the hands of two knights of his own upbringing and making. He asked that a worthy knight avenge his death and offered his lands and rents to whoever risked his life against the two traitors in single combat.

Hermance’s request makes the crime a matter of both justice and knightly obligation. He invokes his past goodwill toward Arthur’s court as grounds for its help, and offers his holdings as a reward. The letter does not erase the political failure that preceded the murder; instead, it gives that failure a public consequence, carrying the king’s accusation beyond the household where he had been betrayed.

Palamides takes up the cause

Hermance ordered Ebel to place the letter in his hand after his death and to send the vessel down the Humber toward Logris, where noble knights would be assembled. He hoped that one of them would pity his death and answer the appeal. The letter thus travels from a dying king through his loyal servant and onward to the courtly world in which redress might be obtained.

When Sir Palamides later hears Ebel’s account at the castle, he recognizes the letter and says that he came to avenge Hermance at the command of the knight who had read it to him. He asks where the traitors can be found and says he will have no ease until he confronts them. Ebel directs him toward the Delectable Isle, near the Red City, and asks him also to protect the castle. Palamides accepts the danger of the quest and leaves the castle’s defenders to keep it; he names Sir Tristram and Sir Launcelot as knights who might avenge him should he be killed.

Political and narrative significance

The murder’s central reversal is that Hermance’s trust, intended as a bond of loyalty, helps make him vulnerable: the two knights he raised turn their privileged position into the means of his destruction. Ebel’s account links the killing to the earlier exclusion of Hermance’s relatives, making the crime a consequence of a damaged political household rather than an isolated act of violence.

The episode also shows how justice is pursued in this narrative through personal service and the risk of combat. Hermance cannot prosecute his killers; instead, his letter asks a knight to take up the cause, and Palamides answers through a quest for confrontation. The king’s death therefore continues to act after his own life has ended: his written appeal recruits a champion and sets the revenge narrative in motion.