The Romance of Tristan Lies and Deceit Quotes

The whole point of the Irish king's stipulation that the man who kills the dragon gets Yseut is to ensure that she ends up with a knight strong enough to protect her. The seneschal's deceit undermines all that. This episode introduces the idea of Yseut being given to the wrong man, something that will later haunt her relationship with both Mark and Tristan.

Brangain has to take Yseut's place in the marriage bed because Yseut has already lost her virginity to Tristan and is afraid Mark will notice. Now there's a plan. Some people think Mark's inability to recognize the switch is evidence of his stupidity or that he does not really "deserve" Yseut. Of course, he has just met her, after all. Plus, it's dark. It's also a pretty common thing to happen in medieval literature, and even Shakespeare uses it in some of his plots. So make of it what you will.

A common medieval anti-woman proverb said that "deceit, weeping, and spinning" were God's gifts to women. Well, it's 2 for 3 as far as Yseut is concerned. Here Yseut foreshadows the oath she will take in Part 15 when she swears before God that only Mark and the leper who carried her across the ford have been between her thighs. It's technically true that the only man Yseut has loved is the one who had her as a maiden. But that's not Mark; it's Tristan. The oath Yseut swears here is called an "equivocal oath." It's an oath that is true to the letter, but not the spirit, of the law. It plays on Mark's misconception about the identity of the man who took Yseut's virginity, relying upon deception for its effectiveness and validity.

Tristan and Yseut continually insist that the barons are deliberately deceiving Mark. The irony, of course, is that Tristan insists this while pulling Mark's leg and insisting that he and Yseut are not lovers.

The "suitable falsehoods" that Ogrin advises Tristan and Yseut to tell Mark are that they have never been lovers and that Tristan only fled with Yseut to protect her. The fact that it's a religious man advising them to engage in this deception might be the story's way of saying this behavior on the part the two lovers is okay. This also suggests that Tristan and Yseut always did right to attempt to hide their adultery from Mark.

Here, Tristan pretends to be a leper in order to help Yseut with the oath she is about to swear. Like the oath she swore to Mark earlier, Yseut's deception depends on Mark's misunderstanding of someone's identity in order to work. Notice that much like Yseut's equivocal oaths, a lot of what Tristan says to Mark here is true: he has been living away from people for about three years, and it is because of his noble lover—Yseut—that he has bumps on his skin, since it was she who prompted him to don his disguise.

Arthur is correct that Mark is easily influenced, but not to say that Mark has believed "false words." What his barons have told Mark is technically true. However, their words may be false in the sense that they are not uttered with Mark's best interests at heart, but out of jealousy and spite for Tristan.

The audience for Yseut's oath believes she has done more than was required by giving the details of her sexual history, since in fact all that she was asked to swear was that she never had Tristan as a lover. Yseut's oath here is "equivocal" because it is technically true, but misleading. It depends on everyone's misunderstanding of the identity of the leper who carried her across the ford, and on their assumption that he has been between her thighs only once.

It's possible to read Tristan's death as a taste of his own medicine, in more ways than one. He has received his wound helping a friend carry on an adulterous affair. (What does this say about Tristan's attitude toward adultery in general?) But he dies because of a lie his wife tells. Given the lies and deception in which Tristan and Yseut have engaged, their deceit-driven death seems somehow appropriate.