Palamides Avenges King Hermance

Palamides Avenges King Hermance is a revenge action in which Palamides answers a dead king’s appeal, defeats the traitors who killed him, and secures the Red City’s return to its rightful allegiance. The episode tests knightly fidelity in two directions: Palamides undertakes vengeance for a ruler who had honored King Arthur’s court, yet, after victory, declines the city’s wealth and lordship because he has promised to return to King Arthur and his companions.

The king’s appeal and the crime

The account of Hermance’s death reaches Palamides through Sir Ebel, a loyal servant of the king of the Red City. Ebel describes Hermance as generous and devoted to the wandering knights of King Arthur’s court, as well as to jousting, hunting, and other knightly games. His affection for two men he had raised, Helius and Helake, had allowed them to control access to him while his own blood relatives were excluded from influence. After driving those relatives away, the two knights turned against their benefactor. Their rise from dependants to rulers of Hermance’s affairs illustrates how misplaced trust leaves a ruler vulnerable to the very men he has favored.

Hermance was mortally betrayed during a forest hunt. Following the two knights’ advice, he rode out armed, then dismounted to drink at a well when thirst overcame him. Helius struck him with a spear by prior agreement with Helake, and the pair left him there. Ebel found the wounded king and helped him to the water’s edge, where Hermance had a letter written before he died. The setting makes the treachery sharply concrete: a king protected by the trappings of knighthood is brought down at an ordinary stopping place, while the servant who discovers him becomes the means by which his appeal can travel.

The letter and Palamides’s commitment

Hermance’s letter asks King Arthur and his knights to avenge a killing committed by two men whom the king had brought up and made. It invokes Hermance’s longstanding goodwill toward Arthur’s court and offers his lands and revenues to any worthy knight who risks his life against the murderers in single combat. At the king’s instruction, Ebel placed the letter in Hermance’s hand after his death, and the vessel carrying it was sent down the Humber toward Logris, where noble knights were expected to gather. The appeal thus converts a private act of treason into a public claim upon knightly obligation.

Palamides tells Ebel that he has already seen the letter and came at the command of a worthy knight to avenge Hermance. He will not be at ease until he has faced the traitors. When Ebel directs him by ship toward the Delectable Isle, near the Red City, Palamides places the castle’s defenders under instruction to hold it securely whatever happens to him. He anticipates that, if he is killed, a great knight—Sir Tristram or Sir Launcelot—will come to avenge him. His words connect his own undertaking to the same continuing chain of vengeance that brought him there.

The account also places the action within Palamides’s existing religious vows. He is still unchristened, though described as faithful, true to his promises, and believing in the best manner. He has vowed not to receive full baptism until he has achieved the Questing Beast, and also not until he has fought seven battles within the lists. His unbaptized Saracen status does not prevent the Red City’s people from welcoming him or the narrative from presenting his promise-keeping as a mark of character. Instead, the stated vows give his identity a parallel trajectory that remains unresolved by this revenge episode.

The duel with Helius and Helake

At the Red City, Palamides publicly identifies Helius and Helake as the men who murdered their king and declares that he has come to avenge him. The brothers admit that they killed Hermance. They answer Palamides’s accusation by threatening him and invoking his unchristened status; he replies that he hopes to die a better Christian than they are and accepts the risk that one side will be left dead. The exchange makes the encounter more than a contest over strength: the question is whether loyalty and honorable conduct belong to the confessed Christians, or to the outsider who has undertaken a just cause.

The fight begins with the three knights charging on horseback. Palamides drives his spear through Helake’s shield and breast, killing him. Helius initially holds back his own spear, but attacks after seeing his brother fall. He knocks Palamides from his saddle and rides over him; Palamides pulls Helius’s horse down, and the two continue on foot. Their contest then lasts two hours without rest. Palamides grows weary while Helius gains strength and presses him across the field.

The people watching the fight weep as Palamides appears close to defeat, while Helius’s supporters rejoice. Seeing the city’s grief, Palamides rebukes himself for lowering his head, raises his shield, and renews his attack. He strikes Helius repeatedly, knocks him down, removes his helmet, and kills him. The reversal comes not through a new weapon or outside intervention, but through Palamides’s response to the people whose king he has promised to avenge: their distress prompts him to recover his resolve and finish the fight.

Restoration and departure

After Helius’s death, the people of the Red City rejoice and receive Palamides with great ceremony. They become his men, and he asks them to look to the whole lordship of King Hermance. His victory therefore accomplishes the immediate political purpose of the appeal: the king’s people are no longer left under the authority of his murderers, and Palamides directs them to preserve Hermance’s dominion.

The city offers Palamides a third of its goods if he will remain, but he refuses to stay. He says that he must return quickly to King Arthur at the castle of Lonazep, as promised. The refusal distinguishes the reward offered by the rescued community from the obligation that governs his next move. Having avenged Hermance, he does not convert the deed into permanent rule or private enrichment.

Palamides returns to the castle where Ebel is lieutenant and is welcomed by a joyful company. He then proceeds to Lonazep, learns that Sir Tristram is not there, and crosses the Humber to Joyous Gard, where Tristram and La Beale Isoud are staying. Tristram has ordered that any wandering knight arriving in the town be reported to him. On learning the visitor’s signs, Dinadan identifies Palamides; Tristram sends him to meet the knight, and the two greet one another with joy. Sir Tristram and Sir Gareth come to them the following morning. The episode closes not with Palamides’s installation as ruler, but with his return to fellowship and the renewal of ties that had remained active even while he pursued Hermance’s killers.

Narrative significance

The revenge follows a clear chain of responsibility: Hermance’s generosity and trust are exploited by Helius and Helake; Ebel preserves the dying king’s appeal; Palamides accepts the task; and the Red City’s people recognize the result. The letter makes the murder answerable beyond the king’s own household, while the duel supplies the public, bodily risk by which a knight proves that he will stand behind his undertaking. The outcome also exposes the difference between reputation and conduct: the brothers possess knightly prowess, but their betrayal has made them enemies of the very order their skill might otherwise honor.

Palamides’s decision after the duel completes the episode’s account of fidelity. The city’s offer might reward the victory with possessions and authority, but his promise to return to King Arthur and his companions takes precedence. The action thus pairs vengeance with restraint: he avenges the king without claiming the kingdom as his own, and restores Hermance’s people to their lordship before resuming the wider fellowship of errant knights.