Alisander's Escape from La Beale Regard

Alisander’s Escape from La Beale Regard turns a knight’s search for recovery into a struggle over freedom and the meaning of a promise. Queen Morgan le Fay heals Alisander, but makes his cure conditional on remaining within her castle for a year and a day. A woman with a claim to the castle then warns him of Morgan’s intentions and arranges his escape through a postern as her uncle’s forces set the stronghold on fire. The episode ends with Alisander free, his oath unbroken, and La Beale Regard destroyed.

Wounds, marriage, and confinement

After Alisander is wounded, Morgan le Fay examines him and applies an ointment. It is followed by another treatment the next morning, after which he is relieved of his pain. The apparent care does not settle his future: a damsel from the castle asks Morgan to help her marry Alisander, saying that he has won her through his deeds. Morgan instead advises him to refuse her, declaring that the damsel is not a suitable match for him. Alisander declines marriage in the country, but agrees to the damsel’s request that he give her to another knight who has loved her for many years. Morgan arranges for Sir Gerine le Grose to be summoned, and the two are formally joined in marriage.

Morgan then has Alisander placed in a horse-litter and gives him a drink that keeps him asleep for three days and three nights. She takes him to her own castle, then called La Beale Regard. Once there, she asks whether he wishes to be healed. Alisander answers that anyone would want to recover from illness. Morgan makes his full recovery conditional: he must promise by his knighthood not to go beyond the castle’s bounds for a year and a day. He assents, and soon becomes well. The improvement in his health thus brings a new constraint; he is healed, yet confined by a pledge he has given himself.

The damsel’s warning and plan

When Alisander is well, he regrets the oath because it prevents him from taking revenge on King Mark. His sense of imprisonment deepens when a damsel related to the Earl of Pase visits him. She explains that she has a rightful inheritance claim to La Beale Regard and warns that Morgan keeps him there with the intention of having her way with him. Alisander rejects that prospect, saying he would rather die than submit to it. The damsel offers to secure his release while preserving his honor, and he agrees to trust her.

Her plan depends on both her family connection and the castle’s disputed ownership. She will ask her uncle, the Earl of Pase, to destroy La Beale Regard because of the evil customs practiced there. She expects him to come with force and set the castle alight. Alisander is to use a private postern to reach a garden, where his horse and armor will be waiting. The damsel also makes clear that escape need not violate his oath: he can remain within the bounds of the castle for the promised year and a day, then leave. Alisander recognizes the sense of this interpretation and kisses her.

The destruction of La Beale Regard

The damsel sends word to her uncle, who replies that he will come on an appointed day. When that day arrives, she shows Alisander the postern through which he can flee into the garden and points him to his waiting horse and armor. The Earl of Pase comes with four hundred knights and sets fire to the parts of the castle. Alisander stays in the garden while the attack proceeds; when it is over, not one stone of La Beale Regard remains standing.

The earl then orders a proclamation reserving the piece of land where the castle stood for a year and a day against any knights who might come. This detail echoes the duration of Alisander’s own pledge, while also extending the episode beyond his private escape: the destruction of the stronghold gives rise to a new challenge connected to the land. The narrative therefore makes the castle’s fall both the means of release and the beginning of another contest.

Promise, power, and the episode’s resolution

The episode’s central reversal is that Alisander’s recovery depends first on accepting Morgan’s restriction, while his eventual freedom depends on a careful reading of its limits. The damsel does not ask him to break his word; instead, she devises a way for him to remain within the castle’s bounds for the full term even as the castle itself is destroyed around him. His release emerges through her knowledge of the inheritance dispute, her alliance with the Earl of Pase, and the hidden route to the garden.

Morgan’s role likewise shifts across the episode. She first appears as the person able to treat Alisander’s wounds, but the promise she obtains makes healing inseparable from control over his movement. The damsel counters that control without contesting the oath directly: she exposes the danger of Alisander’s situation and organizes the conditions under which he can leave with his honor intact. The castle’s destruction closes his confinement decisively, but the earl’s proclamation preserves the year-and-a-day motif as a new boundary governing the place. The episode thus joins bodily recovery, sworn obligation, inherited claim, and escape in a single chain of cause and consequence.