Peredur's victory at the Empress's tournament

Peredur’s victory at the Empress of Cristinobyl the Great’s tournament turns an extended spell of watching into decisive action: summoned into the lists by a miller’s rebuke, he defeats the assembled challengers and earns a place beside the Empress. The episode makes his prowess visible not only through victory, but through the way he repays a debt, answers successive challenges, and eventually fulfils a prior pledge to the Empress.

The Tournament and Its Setting

The tournament takes place in a fair valley crossed by a river, where Peredur encounters a vast assembly of tents and an extraordinary number of water-mills and windmills. The chief miller explains that the Empress of Cristinobyl the Great is present and will choose the most valiant man; riches are not what she seeks. Because the gathering numbers in the thousands, the mills have been built to provide food. The scale of the preparations gives the contest a public, organized character, while the Empress’s stated preference makes courage, rather than wealth, its measure.

The chief miller welcomes Peredur into his pleasant home. Peredur borrows money from him to buy meat and drink for the household, promising to repay the loan before he leaves. The miller’s wife resents the repeated borrowing, but the miller continues to lend. This practical obligation becomes part of the tournament’s outcome: Peredur ultimately sends the horses and arms taken from defeated opponents to the miller’s wife as payment, turning martial success into repayment rather than leaving the household’s generosity unanswered.

From Spectator to Champion

On the first day, Peredur equips himself and his horse but does not enter the tournament. His attention is fixed on a beautiful maiden at a tent, and he watches her from morning until midday and then until evening, while the day’s contest ends around him. He returns to the miller’s lodging and borrows again. The following day repeats the pattern: Peredur spends the tournament watching the maiden rather than competing, and again asks the miller for money at night. The repeated delay establishes a clear contrast between his evident ability to act and his absorption in looking on.

On the third day, as Peredur watches once more, the miller strikes him with the edge of an axe between the neck and shoulder. He orders Peredur either to turn away from the maiden or to go to the tournament. Peredur smiles and enters the contest. Everyone who encounters him that day is overthrown. He sends the defeated men to the Empress’s prison, and sends their horses and arms to the miller’s wife in payment of his loans. The shift is immediate: the man who had watched the tournament for days becomes its dominant combatant, and the miller’s sharp intervention prompts both a public victory and the settlement of a private debt.

Challenges in the Empress’s Tent

After Peredur’s victories, the Empress sends for the Knight of the Mill. He ignores her first two messages. On the third attempt, a hundred knights are sent to bring him against his will; Peredur fights them, has them restrained, and they are put into the mill-dyke. A wise counsellor then approaches him himself, asking him, for the sake of the lady he loves, to visit the Empress. Peredur goes with the counsellor and the miller, sits in the tent’s outer chamber, and speaks little with the Empress before taking his leave. The next day he returns and sits beside her, speaking courteously.

Three men then bring wine before the Empress, each demanding that the cup be given only to someone willing to fight him for it. The first presents a goblet; the second, a cup fashioned from a wild beast’s claw; the third, a bowl. Peredur asks the Empress to give each vessel to him, drinks the wine, and sends each cup to the miller’s wife. These challenges extend the pattern of the tournament into the Empress’s own tent: Peredur accepts what is offered, while the repeated gifts to the miller’s wife continue to acknowledge the household that sustained him.

The following day Peredur goes to the meadow and kills all three challengers. He then returns to the tent. The Empress reminds him that when she gave him the stone and he killed the Addanc, he pledged faith to her. Peredur acknowledges that she speaks truly and that he remembers his promise. The contest thus ends not simply with his victories over the gathered opponents and the three wine-bearing men, but with the fulfilment of an earlier obligation. As the story relates, the Empress entertains Peredur for fourteen years, giving the episode an unusually long aftermath within the account of his adventures.