Chaitivel - Marie de France

This piece was different than the other pieces we have read by Marie de France. The woman is not married and it does not end with lovers staying together, avoiding the platonic relationship. In this lai however, she does have the knights compete in a tournament for her love. The woman in this lai is in love with four different men who are also each in love with her. Because of this and her inability to choose between them, she had them fight for her love.

She watched all four as they fought, watching all of them fall. "Three of them were killed dead and the fourth had a wound that bled through the thigh...All four fell there in the fields." This deeply saddened the woman as she had lost her lovers. "I will never be happy again! I loved theres four knights, it's true! Each for himself, I wanted these men...Three are dead; one wounded I see; Nothing on earth can comfort me." I cannot imagine there being tournaments to decide who a true lover is. That seems too extreme. And even at the end of the tournament she would still have been upset because only one would have one, meaning that she would still have lost three.

"The others died a while ago, their days in this world were through. They suffered terrible pain and woe from the love they had for you."

The wounded knight says that the other men died much before their physical death as result of their love for her. Their love for her tortured them to death, and was killing them before the tournament even began. He too feels dead as he is not shown love by the lady even after surviving the tournament which was the point, to see who was her true lover. "The thing in the world I could love so I watch day after day come and go talking to me morning, evening -- yet I can't enjoy it, not so much as a kiss, an embrace, a touch. Talking is all the good I get. With so many such griefs you torture me, I'd be better off dead, truth to tell." She is torturing him - only talking to him, doing nothing physical like she would have done if she truly loved him; she is teasing and killing him. She is very selfish and rude, but she is the one controlling the relationship she had with the wounded knight. Marie de France gave the woman the power and control in this lai. Since she cannot have all four knights to love, she will not love the only one she has left. It was either all four or nothing which killed the remaining, wounded knight.