Nightbringer

N I G H T B R I N G E R . S E

YWAINE
Ewain, Ewain Le Blanchemains, Owain, Owen, Uwain, Uwaine, Yvain, Yvonet Le Grand, Le Chevalier Au Lion, Knight with the Lion, etc

Ywaine was the son of King Uriens and Queen Morgan of Gore, half-brother to Yvonet li Avoutres, cousin and close friend to Gawaine. He may have come to Arthur's court as early as the funeral of Lot and the other kings of the second rebellion, along with his parents, who attended that funeral.

At Camelot, Ywaine found his mother about to slay his sleeping father. He prevented her, exclaiming,

Merlin

At her pleading, he agreed not to speak of her attempt on condition she did not try it again. She proceeded to leave court, steal the scabbard of Excalibur, and attempt to destroy Arthur by sending him the gift of a poisoned cloak. It would not be surprising if Ywaine felt himself freed of his promise not to reveal her attempt on Uriens' life, but the tale seems to imply that he kept the secret, at least for the time.

After the poisoned cloak incident, both Morgan's husband and son were suspected of being in her counsel. Arthur quickly dismissed his suspicion against Uriens, but banished Ywaine from court, which must have been hard on the young knight. Gawaine remarked,

Whoso banisheth my cousin-germain shall banish me,

and went with Ywaine. They met Sir Marhaus and shortly thereafter found the damsels "Printemps, Été, and Automne" in Arroy Forest. Ywaine chose "Automne" for his guide, saying,

I am the youngest and most weakest [of us three knights] ... therefore I will have the eldest damosel, for she hath seen much, and can best help me when I have need.

Traveling with her, he distinguished himself, winning a tournament near the Welsh marches and gaining back for the Lady of the Rock a barony that Sirs Edward and Hue of the Red Castle had extorted from her. At the end of a twelvemonth, after meeting again with their damsels at the appointed place in Arroy, Ywaine, Gawaine, and Marhaus were found by a messenger of Arthur's. The King must have realized his error in banishing Ywaine almost at once, for he had been seeking his nephews nearly a year. They returned to court, taking Marhaus with them. It may have been at this time that Ywaine was made a member of the Round Table, though Malory only mentions that Marhaus and Pelleas were so honored at the next feast.

Chrétien de Troyes devoted the best of his finished romances to Ywaine; its relationship to the Mabinogion tale Owen and Lunet - which is based on the other, or whether both spring from some lost original - remains, as far as I can tell, under dispute.

Chrétien recounts how, while the court was at Carlisle, Ywaine's cousin Sir Calogrenant told a small group including Ywaine, Kay, Gawaine, Dodinel, Sagramore, and Guenevere about his adventures seven years earlier at a marvelous spring in Broceliande Forest: using a conveniently placed basin to dip water from this spring onto a nearby rock caused a terrific storm to arise and, after the storm, a knight to appear and chastise the impudent person who had poured the water.

Learning this story, Arthur decided to take his court and see the place for himself. Ywaine, however, secretly slipped away and got there well ahead of them, tried his own luck at storm-making, and killed the spring's champion [Esclados the Red] in fair combat. This left Esclados the Red's widow, Dame Laudine, without a protector for herself, her castle, or the spring. Ywaine fell in love with Laudine and, with the assistance of her damsel Lunette, who gave him good advice and a magic ring of invisibility, eventually won her and became guardian of the magic spring in time to carry out his new duties when Arthur, arriving with his court, poured water on the rock.

Not recognizing the fully armored Ywaine, Kay took the fight for Arthur and was promptly defeated. There followed a happy reunion and welcome for Arthur and his people at Laudine's castle.

Unfortunately, Gawaine persuaded Ywaine that he should spend a year adventuring and torneying, lest folk say his marriage had made him soft. Laudine gave her husband a magic ring to keep him safe and let him go on the condition that he return in exactly a year. He let the months get away from him and stayed away too long, whereon Laudine sent a damsel [not Lunette] to demand the ring back and forbade him ever to see him again.

Ywaine promptly went mad with grief and ran amok in the wild forest, augmenting his diet of raw meat with bread from a hermit, until the Lady of Noroison and two of her damsels found him asleep; one of them recognized him by a scar on his face. They healed him with a salve that Morgan the Wise had given the lady, whose war against Count Alier Ywaine then won. Refusing her offer of marriage, he wandered away and rescued a lion from a serpent.

The lion became his grateful companion for life. Under the name of the Knight with the Lion, Ywaine embarked on a series of adventures, always fighting for the good, in contrast to his earlier year's adventures of tourneying for the mere glory of it.

Among other deeds, he saved a sister of Gawaine and her family [see "Alteria"] from the wicked giant Harpin of the Mountain, and rescued Lunette from an accusation of treachery by fighting for her in trial by combat.

With the damsel Phyllis Ann Karr call "Secunda", he visited Pesme Avanture and righted the injustice there by slaying two demons with the assistance of his lion. Eventually, still incognito, he arrived at Arthur's court to champion the younger daughter of the lord of Noire Espine in an inheritance dispute with her sister. Unknown to Ywaine, Gawaine was championing the elder sister, so there resulted one of those grand battles, so beloved of the romancers, between two great and evenly matched knights who are really dear friends or relatives that do not recognize each other in their armor.

Fortunately for Gawaine, this time the lion was successfully kept out of the fight, so it ended happily: on finally learning each other's identity, each hero swore himself vanquished by the other, and Arthur settled the case between the two sisters with a Solomon-like judgment. After time in the infirmary to heal, Ywaine, with his lion, returned to Broceliande, where Lunette effected a reconciliation between husband and wife.

Without attempting to summarize Ywaine's adventures as recorded in the Vulgate, we return to Malory. While Tristram, Palomides, and Dinadan were languishing in Sir Darras' prison after the Castle of Maidens tournament, Ywaine le Blanchemains, seemingly having joined a general search for Tristram and quite possibly suspecting Mark of further treachery, appeared before Mark's castle and issued a challenge to "all the knights of Cornwall".

Only Andred was willing to encounter him, to Andred's immediate unhorsing and wounding. At Mark's insistence, Sir Dinas the Seneschal jousted with Ywaine and was overthrown. Then Sir Gaheris, who happened to be visiting Mark, rode out, but Ywaine recognized his shield and refused to have ado with a brother of the Round Table. As Ywaine rode away, Mark rode after and dealt him a treacherous and serious blow from behind. Fortunately, Sir Kay happened along in time to get Ywaine to the Abbey of the Black Cross to be healed.

Ywaine fades out of Malory's account after this episode; he is mentioned with his half-brother and namesake, and after that, perplexingly, there is little or nothing. Possibly by XVI Malory himself had the Ywaines confused and considered this Ywaine - rather than his half-brother Les Avoutres - to have been the one who was killed during the Grail Quest and was therefore out of the story. In Vulgate VI we learn that the deaths of Gawaine, his brothers, and Kay, and the rift between Arthur and Lancelot with his supporters, have left Ywaine as Arthur's remaining mainstay. Ywaine is killed by Mordred in the last battle.

Ywaine's coat of arms presumably includes a lion.

Whether or not Arthur is an historical figure, Ywaine and his father Uriens seem to be based on men who actually lived in the sixth century in Rheged [northern England and southern Scotland].

The adventures of a knight named Owayne in Saint Patrick's Purgatory, another very popular focus of romance from at least as early as the 12th century, make me wonder why Ywaine seems to have missed getting into the Grail cycle in any major way.

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