The Relationship of Guillaume de Roussillon and Guillaume de Guardestaing

Guillaume de Roussillon and Guillaume de Guardestaing are presented as exemplary companions whose shared life in arms makes the betrayal between them especially devastating. Both are Provençal knights of high standing, each with castles and vassals; they ride together to tournaments and other feats of arms, even wearing the same colors. Their castles lie roughly ten miles apart, but distance does not diminish their fellowship. The story establishes a bond of affection and public comradeship before revealing how completely that bond will be overturned by Guardestaing’s love for Roussillon’s wife.

Fellowship and betrayal

The rupture begins when Guardestaing, despite his friendship with Roussillon, becomes passionately enamored of his companion’s beautiful wife. Through repeated approaches he makes his desire known, and she returns it. Their meetings recur, and their conduct grows less discreet than the secrecy of the affair requires. Roussillon discovers their intimacy. The account makes the change in him stark: the great love he had borne Guardestaing becomes mortal hatred, while Roussillon proves more successful at concealing his feelings than the lovers have been at concealing theirs.

Roussillon does not confront either lover openly. When a tournament is proclaimed in France, he tells Guardestaing of it and invites him to come so they can decide together whether to attend. Guardestaing accepts cheerfully and arrives unarmed, accompanied by two unarmed servants, trusting the friendship that has long joined them. Roussillon instead arms himself and waits in a wood about a mile from his castle, on the route Guardestaing must take. The contrast between their expectations makes the former companionship the means of the attack: Guardestaing approaches without suspicion, and Roussillon uses his knowledge of where his friend will pass to prepare the ambush.

The ambush and the heart at table

Guardestaing’s trust is answered with sudden violence. When he reaches the wood, Roussillon rushes from concealment with his lance and cries that Guardestaing is a traitor and a dead man. Guardestaing, unarmed and unable to defend himself or even speak, falls from his horse with the lance through his breast and dies shortly afterward. His two servants turn their horses and flee toward their lord’s castle without waiting to learn who attacked him.

Roussillon then dismounts, opens Guardestaing’s breast with a knife, and tears out his heart with his own hands. He has it wrapped in a lance pennon and gives it to one of his men to carry, ordering that no one speak of what has happened. By nightfall he has returned to his castle. The friend who once rode beside him in the same colors is now reduced to a concealed, portable token of the betrayal that Roussillon means to bring into his own household.

Roussillon’s wife has been expecting Guardestaing to come to supper and grows puzzled when he does not appear. Her husband tells her that Guardestaing has sent word he cannot arrive until the next day. He then summons the cook and, presenting the heart as that of a wild boar, orders him to prepare an especially fine dish and serve it in a silver porringer. The cook minces and seasons it with rich spices, turning the remains of the murdered knight into a carefully prepared meal.

At table, Roussillon eats little, occupied by the deed he has committed, but praises the dish to his wife and has it set before her. She finds it pleasing and eats it all. Only after she has finished does he disclose that she has eaten Guardestaing’s heart, which he himself tore from the knight’s breast. The meal converts Roussillon’s secret revenge into a forced revelation: the wife is made to consume the remains of her lover before learning what the food was.

The wife’s response and shared burial

The revelation does not make Roussillon’s wife repent of loving Guardestaing; instead, she turns the accusation back upon her husband. She condemns Roussillon as a disloyal and base knight, arguing that she had freely given Guardestaing her love and that she, not her lover, should have borne the penalty for betraying her husband. She refuses to let any other food follow the heart of the valiant and courteous man she loved. Rising from the table, she throws herself backward through a window high above the ground and is killed by the fall.

Roussillon is dismayed at what he has done and, fearing both the country people and the Count of Provence, saddles his horses and flees. The next day the manner and cause of the deaths become known. Guardestaing’s people and the woman’s people take up the bodies amid grief and lamentation, and bury the lovers together in the chapel of her castle. Verses over the grave identify the dead and explain how they met their end. The shared tomb reverses the betrayal that began the tragedy: the two knights’ former fellowship has been broken by violence, but the lovers are joined in burial. The account is identified with the well-known troubadour story of Guillem de Cabestanh or Cabestaing, whose name Boccaccio changes to Guardestaing.

Narrative framing and literary source

The account is framed as a tale about ill-fortuned love, told by the King after Neifile’s story has stirred compassion among the company. He presents Guillaume de Roussillon and Guillaume de Guardestaing as men of higher standing whose calamity is even more cruel, placing their once-honored companionship inside a narrative shaped by pity for love destroyed. The framing sharpens the contrast at the heart of their relationship: the knights’ shared reputation for valor and fellowship cannot protect them from the private violence that follows betrayal. The King also acknowledges Dioneo’s privilege rather than taking the final story from him, locating this tragedy within the company’s turn-taking order. Its attribution to what the Provençals relate gives the relationship a further dimension: the story is presented as inherited tradition, while its altered name for Guardestaing marks the teller’s adaptation of that tradition.