Provence is the setting for a tale in which the close fellowship of two noble knights collapses into lethal violence. Its castles, vassals, and the distance between the knights’ homes establish a world of aristocratic power and personal bonds; the story’s final burial places the consequences of betrayal within that same landscape.

Provence as a Setting

The tale is introduced as an account related by the Provençals. It places two knights, Sir Guillaume de Roussillon and Sir Guillaume de Guardestaing, in Provence, where each possesses a castle and vassals. Their castles stand roughly ten miles apart: close enough for regular association, yet separate enough to mark their independent households and authority.

Provence is not merely a backdrop to the lovers’ meetings. It is the territory in which the knights’ friendship, the husband’s revenge, and the community’s knowledge of the deaths unfold. The account also looks beyond the region: a great tournament is proclaimed in France, and Roussillon uses it as the pretext to summon Guardestaing to supper. The contrast between the public world of chivalric contests and the private violence planned at home sharpens the story’s reversal.

The Knights and the Betrayal

Roussillon and Guardestaing are both celebrated for prowess in arms and love one another deeply. They habitually travel together to tournaments, jousts, and other feats of arms, even wearing the same colours. This shared identity makes Guardestaing’s affair with Roussillon’s wife a rupture not only of marriage but also of the friendship that has bound the two men.

Roussillon discovers the lovers’ familiarity and conceals his anger while resolving to kill Guardestaing. He announces the tournament in France and invites his friend to come to his castle so they can consider whether to attend. Guardestaing gladly accepts the invitation to supper, unaware that the familiar hospitality of Provence’s neighboring castles has become the means by which his former friend intends to destroy him.

Violence and Memorial

After Roussillon kills Guardestaing, he gives his wife the heart of the man she loved, and she recognizes the horror of what she has been made to eat. She condemns her husband’s deed as that of a disloyal and base knight, insisting that she—not Guardestaing—should have borne the penalty for their love. She then throws herself from a high window and dies.

Roussillon, dismayed by her death and fearful of the local people and the Count of Provence, saddles his horses and flees. The next day the truth becomes known throughout the country. Guardestaing’s people and the lady’s people raise both bodies with grief and lamentation and bury them together in the chapel of her castle. Verses over the shared tomb record who lies there and the manner and cause of their deaths. The tale thus ends by fixing a private betrayal in a public, local memory: in Provence, the two former companions and the woman caught between them remain joined in death in the very landscape their lives had divided.